"I make up my mind to be very good an amiable, and the next minute let anyone, big or little, child or servant say any thing crass or disagreeable, and my spirits ooze out, until my only safety lies in flight, and if I want to regain my equanimity of temper I have to run away and sing Dixie, or Keep your Ark a-moving, before I make another sortie...
"...considering how much the happiness of those around us depends on our loving words, and kind feelings towards them, how whole days may be made miserable by one cross word or thoughtless deed, how a dozen merry faces can be clouded by one ill tempered or anger one - considering how we are responsible to God for every evil influence which may cause other to sin, cultivate amiability, Sarah, as you would the rarest talent bestowed on you prize it above all things...
"If ill humor must have a vent, make faces at your looking glass; but when you enter the family circle, do as our dear father did; throw all care and annoyance to the winds, have a pleasant word for all, for you enter the Holy of Holies - Home - the least and lowest can add a new pleasure, or a new disturbance, the duty of contributing to the common happiness is encumbent on all. Let the home circle be the place for the exchange of pleasant thoughts, let all disagreeable ones be put away. Ours was a happy home; father’s example should influence his children. O Sarah my dear! if you are ever inflicted with a large and interesting family - which Kind Heaven forbid! - teach them to cultivate amiability as the only safeguard of happiness. Teach it, preach it, incessantly. Yes! and by the time my “interesting family” is brought up in the way it should go, I will not have the amiability enough myself to make a respectable appearance! So much for theory without practice!"
~Sarah Morgan - from The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman
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