THE WIDOW.

A sorrowful widow, oppressed with the burden of grief for the loss of an affectionate husband, would have been bowed down by her heavy load, had not the surviving children with great alacrity stepped forward and supported her.  Their kindness, after a while, so much lightened the load, which threatened at first to be intolerable, that she even went on her way with cheerfulness, and more than repaid their help, by applying the strength she derived from it, to their future assistance.

THE HUSBAND.

I next saw a poor old man tottering under a burden so heavy, that I expected him every moment to sink under it.  I peeped into his pack, and saw it was made up of many sad articles:  there were poverty, oppression, sickness, debt, and what made by far the heaviest part, undutiful children.  I was wondering how it was that he got on even so well as he did, till I spied his wife, a kind, meek, Christian woman, who was doing her utmost to assist him.  She quietly got behind, gently laid her shoulder to the burden, and carried a much larger proportion of it than appeared to me when I was at a distance.  She not only sustained him by her strength, but cheered him by her counsels.  She told him that “through much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom;” that “he that overcometh shall inherit all things.”  In short, she so supported his fainting spirit, that he was enabled to “run with patience the race that was set before him.”

THE KIND NEIGHBOR.

An infirm blind woman was creeping forward with a very heavy burden, in which were packed sickness and want, with numberless other of those raw materials out of which human misery is worked up.  She was so weak that she could not have got on at all, had it not been for the kind assistance of another woman almost as poor as herself; who, though she had no light burden of her own, cheerfully lent a helping hand to a fellow-traveller who was still more heavily laden.  This friend had indeed little or nothing to give; but the very voice of kindness is soothing to the weary.  And I remarked in many other cases, that it was not so much the degree of help afforded as the manner of helping, that lightened the burdens.

Some had a coarse, rough, clumsy way of assisting a neighbor, which, though in fact it might be of real use, yet seemed, by galling the travellers, to add to the load it was intended to lighten; while I observed in others, that so cheap a kindness as a mild word, or even an affectionate look, made a poor burdened wretch move on cheerily.  The bare feeling that some human being cared for him, seemed to lighten the load.