their age realize the loss they have
sustained, have a right to expect to be brought up in that cheerfulness
which is the very keynote of the education of children.

The real heroine is the woman who leaves her grief in her private
apartments and appears smiling and cheerful before her children. The
best way to serve the dead is to live for the living. There is no
courage in the display of sorrow; there is heroism in the control of it.

Great hearts understand this so well that many of them, like the late
Henry Ward Beecher, desire in their wills that none of their relatives
should wear mourning at their death. There is a great difference between
being in mourning and being in black, and I often suspect that the more
in black a person is the less in mourning he or she is.

To be able to attend minutely to all the details of a most correct
mourning attire almost shows signs of recovery from the depth of the
sorrow.

But even when our sorrow is deeply felt and perfectly sincere is it not
an act of selfishness on our part to impose it, to intrude it, on
others--even on our nearest relatives?

I admire the Quaker who, quietly, without attracting the attention of
anyone at table, silently says grace before taking his meal.

How favourably he compares with the host who invites every one of his
guests to bend their heads, and to listen to him while he delivers a
long recital of all the favours he has received from a merciful God, and
of all the favours he expects to receive in the future!

The first is a Christian, the second a conceited Pharisee. There is as
much selfishness in an exaggerated display of sorrow as there is in any
act that is indulged in in order to more or less command admiration.

The truly brave and courageous people are modest in their countenance;
the truly religious are tolerant and forgiving; the truly great are
forbearing, simple, and unaffected; the truly sorrowful remember that
their griefs are personal; before strangers they are natural and even
cheerful, and before their children they are careful to appear with
cheerful and smiling faces.

After all, the greatest virtue, the greatest act of unselfishness, is
self-control. Sorrow gives man the best opportunity for the display of
this virtue.

CHAPTER V

THE RIGHT OF CHANGING ONE'S MIND

A woman's prerogative, it is said, is the right of changing her mind.
How is it that she so rarely avails herself of it when she is wrong?

It