Today, we too rarely practice good manners...When we neglect to require our children to say "thank you" when someone gives them a gift or does something for them, we are raising ungrateful children who are highly unlikely to be happy. Without gratitude, happiness is a rare thing. With gratitude, the odds go up dramatically that happiness will be the result.

A classic example of the validity of gratitude in action is the story of Roy Rogers. After he started in his first movie, he began receiving huge stacks of fan mail that he wanted to answer. However, his salary of $150 a week did not even cover the required postage. He talked to the head of Republic Pictures in the hope that the studio would handle some of his fan mail. He was summarily turned down and told he was foolish to think about answering fan mail because nobody else did. It took too much time and money.

Roy Rogers, one of the genuinely good guys of life, couldn't buy that. It was his conviction that if someone thought enough about him to write a letter, he should have enough respect for the person to answer it. Fortunately, the movie that caused him his "problem" also made him so popular that he could go on a personal appearance tour. He traveled many miles and performed countless one-night stands to raise the money to pay the salaries of the four people it took to answer his fan mail.