while writing _one_ letter, or settling an account. What holiness, what
self-control, is needed to be always calm and unruffled amid these little
vexations, and never to manifest the slightest impatience!

Leaving the work without apparent annoyance, replying with a smile upon
the lips, awaiting patiently the end of a long conversation, and finally
returning calmly to the yet unfinished work--all this is the sign of a
recollected soul, and one that waits upon GOD.

Oh! what blessings are shed around them by such patient souls ... but,
alas! how rarely they are to be met with!

XX.

There are times in one's life when all the world seems to turn against us.
Our motives are misunderstood, our words misconstrued, a malicious smile
or an unkind word reveals to us the unfriendly feelings of others. Our
advances are repulsed, or met with icy coldness; a dry refusal arrests on
our lips the offer of help....

Oh, how hard it all seems, and the more so that we cannot divine the
cause!

Courage, patience, poor disconsolate one! GOD is making a furrow in your
heart, where He will surely sow His grace.

It is rare when injustice, or slights patiently borne, do not leave the
heart at the close of the day filled with marvellous joy and peace.

It is the seed GOD has sown, springing up and bearing fruit.

XXI.

That which costs little is of little worth. This thought should make us
tremble. In our self-examination we may experience at times a certain
satisfaction in noticing the little virtues we may possess, above all,
those that render us pleasing in the eyes of others.

For instance, we may like to pray at a certain place, with certain
sentiments, and we think ourselves devout; we are gentle, polite, and
smiling towards one person in particular; patient with those we fear, or
in whose good opinion we would stand; we are devoted, charitable,
generous, because the heart experiences an unspeakable pleasure in
spending and being spent for others; we suffer willingly at the hands of
some one we love, and then say we are patient; we are silent, because we
have no inclination to speak; shunning society because we fail to shine
there, and then fancy that we love retirement.

Take these virtues that give you such self-satisfaction, one by one, and
ask yourself at what sacrifice, labor, or cost, above all, with what care
you have managed to acquire them.... Alas! you will find that all that
patience, affability, generosity,