Sunbonnet Soliloquy

By Jewell Ellen Smith

Is a pig pretty?

Some 235 million TV viewers in more than a hundred countries are delighted each week with Miss Piggy, “foam-rubber femme fatale” of the televised “Muppet Show.”

National Geographic magazine in its last issue, (September 1978), carries a full-length article titled “The Joy of Pigs,” which points out, among other characteristics, the “beautific quality” of swine. Miss Piggy’s portrait is included.

Our nearest neighbor, a fanner whose father and grandfather before him raised hogs, is quite melancholy this fall because he is obliged to part with his pigs. An eye operation he faces will make it necessary to sell off his entire herd.

But never mind whether a pig is pretty or not. There are in God’s great universe a million other lovely things to look at. Every flower that blooms, every star that shines, every river that flows toward the sea is beautiful.

Of all luxuries, beauty is the most abundant. Beauty is cheap. Often free. The beauty you see can be stored up--high on a shelf in your mind’s eye--and taken down now and again and remembered.

Yet there are things that are NOT to be looked at and remembered. The ugliness you see is to be forgotten. Otherwise, it will seep into your very soul and become a part of you.

This past summer I came across an intriguing idea that has been around a hundred years, even longer. But it is new to me. It has to do with beauty and happiness and living the good life. It is this:

“You have no right to be unhappy.”

What a thought!

The man who made that statement put it in an article prepared in 1863 for a women’s magazine called “The Ladies’ Repository.” It appeared in the January, 1864 issue of that periodical.

The writer, one F. S. Cassady, maintained that our Creator put us on the earth to be happy and therefore out of respect to and adoration or Him, and in justice to ourselves, we should make every effort to enjoy life.

If this be true, that we have no right to be unhappy, it follows that we owe it to ourselves to look at the beauty built into the universe. And further, that we have no right to ignore beauty! We are to search it out. Enjoy it. (This is my thinking, not that of the 1864 writer.)

Beauty is God-given.

Suppose that, like our farmer neighbor, you faced an operation on your eyes. What would you look at just before you entered the hospital? What would be good to set aside in your memory to “see” while your eyes were bandaged?

Just for the fun of it, make a list. Put down, say, the ten loveliest objects you ever saw.

Here is my list:

1. A newborn babe

2. The Evening Star

3. White clouds drifting across the sky

4. A red rose

5. Deep snow in the woods

6. The old church back home

7. My wedding ring

8. Trees bowing and swaying in a windstorm

9. Sunrise

10. The Pacific Ocean

Notice that I left off pigs! Did you?

Published October 1978. Click your browser’s “Back” button to return.