They begin to think themselves the abused of creation, they begin to advise with their livers and to hate their neighbours, and the whole world becomes a miserable dark blue place quite unfit for human habitation.

Well, all this is often only the result of a neglect to exercise properly those muscles of the body (and of the soul) which have to do with honest laughter.
I've never supposed I was an especially amusing person, but before I got through with it I had the Clark family well loosened up with laughter, although I wasn't quite sure some of the time whether Mrs.Clark was laughing or crying.

I had them all laughing and talking, asking questions and answering them as though I were an old and valued neighbour.
Isn't it odd how unconvinced we often are by the crises in the lives of other people?
They seem to us trivial or unimportant; but the fact is, the crises in the life of a boy, for example, or of a poor man, are as commanding as the crises in the life of the greatest statesman or millionaire, for they involve equally the whole personality, the entire prospects.
The Clark family, I soon learned, had lost its pig.

A trivial matter, you say?
I wonder if anything is ever trivial.

A year of poor crops, sickness, low prices, discouragement and, at the end of it, on top of it all, the cherished pig had died! From all accounts (and the man on the porch quite lost his apathy in telling me about it) it must have been a pig of remarkable virtues and attainments, a paragon of pigs--in whom had been bound up the many possibilities of new shoes for the children, a hat for the lady, a new pair of overalls for the gentleman, and I know not what other kindred luxuries.