of goodness never trouble themselves about rewards; they face the
shadows of doom only as they face the squalor of their daily
martyrdom. A certain philosopher said that he could not endure so
sombre an existence because his nerves and sinews were frail and the
pain would have mastered him; but he gladly owned that the enthusiasts
had conquered his admiration and taken it for their permanent
possession. The cool keen eye of the scoffer divined the strength of
sorrow, and he admired the men whom he durst not imitate.

There are others who pass through life enwrapped by the veil of a
noble sorrow; and, when I see them, I am minded to wonder whether any
one was ever the worse for encountering the touch of the chilly
Mistress whom most children of earth dread. When I think the matter
over I become convinced that no one who has once felt a noble and
gentle sorrow can ever become wholly bad; and I fancy that even the
bad, when once a real sorrow has pierced them, have a chance of
becoming good. So in strange ways the things that seem hard to bear
steadily tend to make the world better. When the bell tolls and the
brown earth gapes and the form of the loved one is passed from sight
for ever, it is bitter--ah, how bitter! But the chastening touch of
Time takes away the bitterness, and there is left only an intense
gentleness which seeks to soothe those who suffer; and the mother
whose babe seemed to take her very heart away when it went into the
Darkness can pity the other bereaved ones; so that her soul is exalted
through its grief. The poet is thought by some to have uttered a mere
aimless whim in words when he said--

"To Sorrow
I bade good-morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly--
She is so constant to me and so kind.
I would deceive her,
And so leave her;
But, ah, she is so constant and so kind!"

It sounds like a whim; but it is more than that to those who have been
in the depths of grief; for they know that out of their affliction
grew either a solemn scorn of worldly ills or a keen wish to be
helpful to others.

I have no desire to utter a paradox when I say that all the world
holds of best has sprung from sorrow. Shakspere smiles and is still. I
love the smiles of his wiser years; but they would never have been so
calmly content, so cheering with all their inscrutable depth, had not
the man been weighed down with some