val are helpful if we accept them for the use
they can be to us, but are equally injurious if we take them to feed
our vanity or annoyance.

It is hard to believe, until our new standard is firmly established,
that only from this true freedom do we get the most vital sense of
loving human intercourse and companionship, for then we find ourselves
working hand in hand with those who are united to us in the love of
principles, and we are ready to recognize and to draw out the best in
every one of those about us.

If this law of freedom from others--which so greatly increases our
power of use to them and their power of use to us--had not been proved
absolutely practical, it would not be a law at all. It is only as we
find it practical in every detail, and as obedience to it is proved to
be the only sure road to established freedom that we are bound to
accept it. To learn to live in such obedience we must be steady,
persistent and patient,--teaching ourselves the same truths many times,
until a new habit of freedom is established within us by the experience
of our daily lives. We must learn and grow in power from every failure;
and we must not dwell with pride and complacency on good results, but
always move steadily and quietly forward.

IX

_Human Sympathy_

A NURSE who had been only a few weeks in the hospital training-school,
once saw--from her seat at the dinner-table--a man brought into the
house who was suffering intensely from a very severe accident. The
young woman started up to be of what service she could, and when she
returned to the table, had lost her appetite entirely, because of her
sympathy for the suffering man. She had hardly begun her dinner, and
would have gone without it if it had not been for a sharp reprimand
from the superintendent.

"If you really sympathize with that man," she said, "you will eat your
dinner to get strength to take care of him. Here is a man who will need
constant, steady, _healthy_ attention for some days to come,--and
special care all this afternoon and night, and it will be your duty to
look out for him. Your 'sympathy' is already pulling you down and
taking away your strength, and you are doing what you can to lose more
strength by refusing to eat your dinner. Such sympathy as that is poor
stuff; I call it weak sentimentality."

The reprimand was purposely sharp, and, by arousing the anger and
indignation of the nurse, it served as a counter-irritant which
res