at in so doing he is guilty of cruelty, ingratitude and stupidity: I
mean old maids. People amuse themselves with remarking the surprising
dress and ways of some of them--things of no consequence, for that
matter. They persist also in reminding us that others, very selfish,
take interest in nothing but their own comfort and that of some cat or
canary upon which their powers of affection center; and certainly these
are not outdone in egoism by the most hardened celibates of the stronger
sex. But what we oftenest forget is the amount of self-sacrifice hidden
modestly away in so many of these truly admirable lives. Is it nothing
to be without home and its love, without future, without personal
ambition? to take upon one's self that cross of solitary life, so hard
to bear, especially when there is added the solitude of the heart? to
forget one's self and have no other interests than the care of the old,
of orphans, the poor, the infirm--those whom the brutal mechanism of
life casts out among its waste? Seen from without, these apparently tame
and lusterless lives rouse pity rather than envy. Those who approach
gently sometimes divine sad secrets, great trials undergone, heavy
burdens beneath which too fragile shoulders bend; but this is only the
side of shadow. We should learn to know and value this richness of
heart, this pure goodness, this power to love, to console, to hope, this
joyful giving up of self, this persistence in sweetness and forgiveness
even toward the unworthy. Poor old maids! how many wrecked lives have
you rescued, how many wounded have you healed, how many wanderers have
you gently led aright, how many naked have you clothed, how many orphans
have you taken in, and how many strangers, who would have been alone in
the world but for you--you who yourselves are often remembered of no
one. I mistake. Someone knows you; it is that great mysterious Pity
which keeps watch over our lives and suffers in our misfortunes.
Forgotten like you, often blasphemed, it has confided to you some of its
heavenliest messages, and that perhaps is why above your gentle comings
and goings, we sometimes seem to hear the rustling wings of ministering
angels.

* * * * *

The good hides itself under so many different forms, that one has often
as much pains to discover it as to unearth the best concealed crimes. A
Russian doctor, who had passed ten years of his life in Siberia,
condemned for political reason