ll to aspire and hope and prophesy, and points to a
future where all its dreams shall be outdone by reality.

A full faith in such a perfect future--a perfect faith that God has
planted in man no desire which he cannot train to complete enjoyment in
that future--gives the mind rest and contentment to postpone for a while
gratifications that will certainly come at last.

Such a faith is better even than that native philosophical good sense
which restrains the ideal calculations and hopes of some; for it has a
wider scope and a deeper power.

We have seen in our time a woman gifted with all those faculties which
rejoice in the refinements of society, dispensing the elegant
hospitalities of a bountiful home, joyful and giving joy. A sudden
reverse has swept all this away, the wealth on which it was based has
melted like a fog-bank in a warm morning, and we have seen her with her
little family beginning life again in the log cabin of a Western
settlement. We have seen her sitting in the door of the one room that
took the place of parlor, bed-room, nursery, and cheerfully making her
children's morning toilette by the help of the one tin wash-bowl that
takes the place of her well-arranged bathing- and dressing-rooms; and
yet, as she twined their curls over her fingers, she had a laugh and a
jest and cheerful word for all The few morning-glories that she was
training over her rude porch seemed as much a source of delight to her
as her former green-house and garden; and the adjustment of the one or
two shelves whereon were the half-dozen books left of the library, her
husband's private papers, and her own and her children's wardrobe, was
entered into daily with a zealous interest as if she had never known a
wider sphere.

Such facility of accommodation to life's reverses is sometimes supposed
to be merely the result of a hopeful and cheerful temperament; in this
case it was purely the work of religion. In early life, this same woman
had been the discontented slave of ideality, had sighed with vain
longings in the midst of real and substantial comfort, had felt even the
creasing of the rose-leaves of her pillow an intolerable annoyance. Now
she has resigned herself to the work and toil of life as the soldier
does to the duties of the camp, satisfied to do and to bear, enjoying
with a free heart the small daily pleasures which spring up like
wild-flowers amid daily toils and annoyances, and looking to the end of
the campaign