love and his wisdom
for strengthening your character and bringing your will into closer
conformity with his. You should cultivate the general habit of
considering every trial in this peculiar point of view; thinking over
the subject in your quiet hours especially, that you may thus have your
spirit prepared for moments of unexpected excitement.

To a person of your reflective turn of mind, the prudent management of
the thoughts is one of the principal means towards the proper government
of the temper. As some insects assume the colour of the plant they feed
on, so do the thoughts on which the mind habitually nourishes itself
impart their own peculiar colouring to the mental and moral
constitution. On your thoughts, when you are alone, when you wander
through the fields, or by the roadside, or sit at your work in useful
hours of solitude, depends very much the spirit you are of when you
again enter into society. If, for instance, you think over the trials of
temper which you are inevitably exposed to during the day as indications
of the unkindness of your fellow-creatures, you will not fail to
exaggerate mere trifles into serious offences, and will prepare a sore
place, as it were, in your mind, to which the slightest touch must give
pain. On the contrary, if you forcibly withdraw yourself from any
thought respecting the human instrument that has inflicted the wounds
from which you suffer or are likely to suffer,--if you look upon the
annoyance only as an opportunity of improvement and a message of mercy
from God himself,--you will then gradually get rid of all mental
irritation, and feel nothing but pity for your tormentors, feeling that
you have in reality been benefited instead of injured. When you have
acquired greater power of controlling your thoughts, it will be
serviceable to you to think over all the details of the annoyance from
which you are suffering, and to consider all the extenuating
circumstances of the case; to imagine (this will be good use to make of
your vivid imagination) what painful chord you may have unconsciously
struck, what circumstances may possibly have led the person who annoys
you to suppose that the provocation originated with yourself instead of
with her. It may be possible that some innocent words of yours may have
appeared to her as cutting insinuations or taunts, referring to some
former painful circumstance, forgotten or unknown by you, but
sorrowfully remembered by her, or a wilful