on; he must supply by courage and skill the place of the lacking
strength. It is what man can do under limitations and disabilities that
shows his high-water mark of achievement. Any one can be cheerful in
perfect health, but to be cheerful under weakness and pain,--_that_ is
worth trying for! To be considerate and unselfish, when one is at ease
and has all he wants, does not cost much; but to take thought for others
and to spare them, and to be sympathetic with their joys and troubles,
when pain forces you to be self-conscious, and long endurance tempts you
to become self-centred,--well, if you can do that, you are good for
something. If you can do that, have no fear that you are useless. Such
fruit is rare enough to be precious. The lessons taught from many a
sick-bed of bravery and gentleness and love,--we get no other teaching so
good as that. There is many a family where it is the one who can do the
least who does the most,--where it is the invalid's room from which goes
out the strongest influence of patience and sweet courage and that divine
quality which transforms trouble.

In one sick-room in a foreign land, for years a home-loving woman has
been an exile; a woman of active and eager disposition, with large,
executive capacity and ripe experience, shut up almost to idleness; a
woman of large benevolence, who had entered on work of peculiar
excellence and attractiveness, cut off from all such activities. This,
with frequent pain, with fluctuation of hope and discouragement as to the
future; and yet there is about her an atmosphere as serene as the Alpine
heights that look down upon her, as cheerful as the sunny Alpine pastures
with their tinkle of sheep-bell and hum of mountain bee. Her constant
thought goes out to distant friends and brings them near; her close
attention follows the march of the world's great interests, the fortunes
of England and Russia and America, the course of freedom and reform; a
sense of nature's beauty, trained to fineness through years of enforced
quietude, brings exquisite ministrations; she shares the lives of the
little circle of friends about her; heart and mind are at rest in the
peace of God. Patience has had her perfect work.

Up, friend! leave your law case, your sermon, your accounts, and come out
for an hour into this delicious March day, bracing as winter and sweet as
spring. The new life of the year is stirring in the trees whose tops
begin to redden, and in t