plates and
knives and spoons, and, worse, the sickening smell of victuals. How can
they laugh and joke when he, a man and a brother, lies sick of a fever?
Ah! my friend, it would not be so were you the head of the house. All
would be changed. The supper-hour would come with a hush instead of a
clatter. The light stol'n forth o' the building would leave the whole
house in gloom. And in your selfish soul you would be glad, for God so
made all of us! Now you turn yourself to the wall, and marvel at the
lightness of human words and

THE GREEDINESS OF HUMAN WANTS.

You are little to be pitied in justice--greatly, in mercy! Lie there and
pity humanity, for they would be all like you, did not they follow in
nature's paths, where the roses of the wayside hide more of their
ugliness. All I would impose is that you walk where you will look least
hideous, even in your own eyes.

As, in Paradise, when Milton was all ablaze with poetic glory, he waved
his more than kingly sceptre and thus ushered in the night--

Now came still evening on--
Now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires: Hesperus that led
The starry host rode brightest--

--So does woman, soft as still Evening, shining as all the starry hosts
with goodness and with mercy, come into the night of disease, and soften
its harsh desert with the dews of her kindness. Sickness teaches us how
good and true is woman, how useful in the world, how necessary to our
welfare and proper destiny. If any man have learned this on a sick bed

HE HAS NOT BEEN SICK FOR NAUGHT.

He is a man of progressive ideas and unfolding nature. Sir Walter Scott
has put into words a thought that has ever had man's approbation:

O woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light, quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!

"It is in sickness," says Hosea Ballou, "that we most feel the need of
that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent one upon another for
our comfort and even necessities. This desire, opening our eyes to the
realities of life, is an indirect blessing." "Sickness," says Burton,
"puts us in mind of our mortality, and while we drive on heedlessly in
the full career of worldly pomp and jollity, kindly pulls us by the ear,
and brings us to a sense of our duty." "It is then," says Pliny, "that
man recolle