, the least of
the benefits these excursions conferred, at least on my poor mother. She
learned then to see and to feel that the sorrows of life fall uniformly;
that few, indeed, are singled out for especial suffering; and that
the load is apportioned to the strength that is to bear it. She saw,
besides, how the hard necessities of existence formed in themselves
a barrier against the wearing influence of grief: the hands that must
labor for daily bread are not wrung in the wild transports of misery!
It is the law of human nature, and the claims of the living are the
counterpoise to the memory of the dead.

Neither her early education nor her habits disposed her to any exertion.
All her ideas of life were circumscribed within the limits of certain
pleasures and enjoyments. From her infancy she had never known any other
care than how to make time pass swiftly and agreeably: now she had to
learn the more rewarding lesson that life can be profitably passed;
and to this task she addressed herself, I believe, with a hearty
earnestness.

It is only by estimating the change which took place in her character at
this time, and which marked it during the short remainder of her life,
that I am led to speculate upon the cause. Her days were passed in
intercourse with the peasantry, whom, at last, she began to understand,
through all the difficulties of their strange temperament and all the
eccentricities of their habits. There was not a cabin for miles round,
with every one of whose inmates she was not acquainted, and of whose
joys and sorrows, whose hopes and cares, she was not in some shape the
participator.

When the sea was too rough and the weather too wild for the fishermen to
venture out, she was constantly amongst them with some material for home
occupation; and it was curious to see those fingers, which had never
been used to harder toil than the mock labor of the embroidery frame,
ingeniously moving through the mazes of a fishing-net, while in her
foreign English she would relate some story of her Breton countrymen,
certain to interest those who sat admiringly around her.

How singular it is that the experience and the habits which are destined
to guide us through the great trials of life are frequently acquired in
scenes and amongst people the very opposite to those wherein the lesson
is to be profitable! And yet so it was. In exhorting and cheering others
she elevated the tone of her own mind; in suggesting exertion