e one thing needful: those days may be soon numbered every
year. I would make a calculation in the spring how much it would cost to
hire a woman to keep my windows and paint clean, and I would do with one
less gown and have her; and when I had spent all I could afford on
cleaning windows and paint, I would harden my heart and turn off my
eyes, and enjoy my sunshine and my fresh air, my breezes, and all that
can be seen through the picture-windows of an open, airy house, and snap
my fingers at the flies. There you have it."

"Papa's hobby is sunshine," said Marianne.

"Why shouldn't it be? Was God mistaken, when He made the sun? Did He
make him for us to hold a life's battle with? Is that vital power which
reddens the cheek of the peach and pours sweetness through the fruits
and flowers of no use to us? Look at plants that grow without sun,--wan,
pale, long-visaged, holding feeble, imploring hands of supplication
towards the light. Can human beings afford to throw away a vitalizing
force so pungent, so exhilarating? You remember the experiment of a
prison, where one row of cells had daily sunshine, and the others none.
With the same regimen, the same cleanliness, the same care, the inmates
of the sunless cells were visited with sickness and death in double
measure. Our whole population in New England are groaning and suffering
under afflictions, the result of a depressed vitality,--neuralgia, with
a new ache for every day of the year, rheumatism, consumption, general
debility; for all these a thousand nostrums are daily advertised, and
money enough is spent on them to equip an army, while we are fighting
against, wasting, and throwing away with both hands that blessed
influence which comes nearest to pure vitality of anything God has
given.

"Who is it that the Bible describes as a sun, arising with healing in
his wings? Surely, that sunshine which is the chosen type and image of
His love must be healing through all the recesses of our daily life,
drying damp and mould, defending from moth and rust, sweetening ill
smells, clearing from the nerves the vapors of melancholy, making life
cheery. If I did not know Him, I should certainly adore and worship the
sun, the most blessed and beautiful image of Him among things visible.
In the land of Egypt, in the day of God's wrath, there was darkness, but
in the land of Goshen there was light. I am a Goshenite, and mean to
walk in the light, and forswear the works of darkness.--