e holier sister before it.

And thus he died--in the bright spring-time of the year, in the bright
spring-time of his life. Love had been the cradle-song of his infancy,
love was the requiem of his youth. His was no romantic fable, no
heroic epic; adventures, passions, fame, made up none of its
incidents; it was simply the history of a boy's manful struggling
against fate--of the quiet heroism of endurance, compensated by inward
satisfaction, if not by actual happiness.

True, his career was in the low-lying paths of humanity; but it was
none the less beautiful and pure, for it is not deeds, it is their
spirit, which makes men noble, or leaves them stained. Had Herbert
Lawson been a warrior, statesman, hero, philosopher, he would have
shewn no other nature than that which gladdened the heart of his
widowed mother, and proved a life's instruction to Jessie Hamilton, in
his small deeds of love and untaught words of faith in the solitude of
that lodging-house. Brave, pure, noble then, his sphere only would
have been enlarged, and with his sphere the weight and power of his
character; but the spirit would have been the same, and in the dying
child it was as beautiful as it would have been in the renowned
philosopher.

We have given this simple story--simple in all its bearings--as an
instance of how much real heroism is daily enacted, how much true
morality daily cherished, under the most unfavourable conditions. A
widow and her young son cast on the world without sufficient means of
living--a brave boy battling against poverty and sickness combined,
and doing his small endeavour with manful constancy--a dying youth,
whose whole soul is penetrated with love, as with a divine song: all
these are elements of true human interest, and these are circumstances
to be found in every street of a crowded city. And to such as these is
the divine mission of brotherly charity required; for though poverty
may not be relieved by reason of our inability, suffering may always
be lightened by our sympathy. It takes but a word of love, a glance of
pity, a gentle kiss of affection--it takes but an hour of our day, a
prayer at night, and we may walk through the sick world and the
sorrowful as angels dropping balm and comfort on the wounded. The cup
of such human love as this poured freely out will prove in truth
'twice blessed,' returning back to our own hearts the peace we have
shed on others. Alas! alas! how thick the harvest and how few t