, they learn what they need, and, so far as
they can, supply it, even when they wonder a little, and perhaps grow a
little weary.

We see a tender and just mother sometimes sighing because one
over-sensitive child must be so much more gently restrained or admonished
than the rest. But she has her reward for every effort to adjust her
methods to the instrument she does not quite understand. If she doubts
this, she has only to look on the right hand and the left, and see the
effect of careless, brutal dealing with finely strung, sensitive natures.

We see, also, many men,--good, generous, kindly, but not
sensitive-souled,--who have learned that the sunshine of their homes all
depends on little things, which it would never have entered into their
busy and composed hearts to think of doing, or saying, or providing, if
they had not discovered that without them their wives droop, and with them
they keep well.

People who are neither tender nor sensitive can neither comprehend nor
meet these needs. Alas! that there are so many such people; or that, if
there must be just so many, as I suppose there must, they are not
distinguishable at first sight, by some mark of color, or shape, or sound,
so that one might avoid them, or at least know what to expect in entering
into relation with them. Woe be to any sensitive soul whose life must, in
spite of itself, take tone and tint from daily and intimate intercourse
with such! No bravery, no philosophy, no patience can save it from a slow
death. But, while the subtlest and most stimulating pleasures which the
soul knows come to it through its affections, and are, therefore, so to
speak, at every man's mercy, there is still left a world of possibility of
enjoyment, to which we can help ourselves, and which no man can hinder.

And just here it is, I think, that many persons, especially those who are
hard-worked, and those who have some special trouble to bear, make great
mistake. They might, perhaps, say at hasty first sight that it would be
selfish to aim at providing themselves with pleasures. Not at all. Not one
whit more than it is for them to buy a bottle of Ayer's Sarsaparilla (if
they do not know better) to "cleanse their blood" in the spring! Probably
a dollar's worth of almost any thing out of any other shop than a
druggist's would "cleanse their blood" better,--a geranium, for instance,
or a photograph, or a concert, or a book, or even fried oysters,--any
thing, no matter what