poor thing to
pity herself and to go about with a long face. She

"Welcomes and makes hers
Whate'er of good though small the present brings--
Kind greetings, sunshine, song of birds, and flowers,
With a child's pure delight in little things;
And of the griefs unborn will rest secure,
Knowing that mercy ever will endure."

"_She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of
kindness_." Perhaps few things have done so much harm in the world as
sympathy! Are we not all conscious of having perpetually allowed the
kindness of our tongue to be divorced from wisdom, so that our
affectionate sympathy has weakened our friend and done more harm than
good? It is so much pleasanter to both when we join in her discontent or
irritation, instead of being to her a second and a better self, aiding her
to see things wisely, as she would see them when she grew calmer. "A
book," said Dr. Johnson, "should teach us either to enjoy life, or to
endure it," and so should a friend.

"_The law of kindness_." It may seem a small thing that the Virtuous Woman
should never lose an opportunity of saying a kind word, but, if we all did
this, the world would be revolutionized; how it lowers our moral
temperature when some needless criticism is made, or some disparaging
remark is repeated to us! The Virtuous Woman would set herself to be a
non-conductor of these "stings and arrows," while, in "a voice ever soft,
gentle, and low," she would pass on to us the pleasant things our friends
say, which make us feel "on the sunny side of the wall." What was said of
St. Theresa will be true of her--"it came to be understood that absent
persons were safe where she was. It would be hard to exaggerate the power
of influence for good which the confidence she had thus won must have
given her. Her nobility felt the treachery which always lies in
detraction, the kind of advantage taken, as it were, of the
unprotectedness of the absent."

Some separate wisdom and kindness in another way; they are so anxious to
help others that they stretch a point of conscience, and persist in a
forbidden friendship, in order to help the friend. Now you may be unjustly
treated in being told to give up your friend, and you may feel, and
rightly, that it is very cruel to him or her. Perhaps so, but your want of
principle, in being disobedient or deceitful, must harm your friend
infinitely more than any amount of your good advic