How to Cure Melancholy

"I once started on a short journey in the winter with a cutter.  After leaving home and driving a few miles, I felt a deep melancholy creeping over my mind, and it increased till I felt an overwhelming weight of woe and wretchedness.  I could trace it to no visible cause, but a morbid state of health, and it was not so much alarming as painful.

I drove on in this moody state of mind till near the middle of the day without finding any relief or seeing any one to speak with.  At leangth I met a stranger who wanted information in regard to the route he should take to reach a certain point.  I began to point out the way, and I no sooner began to talk to him than sympathy and kindly feeling sprang up in my heart toward the stranger, and I felt a great pleasue in taking pains to give him all the information that he needed as a stranger; and in this little act of kindness I at once felt a large share of my melancholy removed.  Not but that I would always give a stranger information~and who would not?

I went on a little further, and I met a generous-hearted Scotchman with oxen and sled.  He said a few kind words, and took a good deal of pains to get out into the deep snow with his oxen and sleigh so that I need not go out with my light conveyance.  A few friendly words passed between us, and I went on entirely relieved of my gloom.  

I have several times since had gloom dispelled in the same way by some act of kindness or a little kindly conversation.  The fact is, when we feel gloomy, we feel unsympathetic, and to arouse our sympathies will at once remove the difficulty."~Western Rural (HR May 1871)