Those who feel the sympathy of experience will surely wish, under all such circumstances, to exercise untiring patience and unremitting attention; but, however strong this wish may be, they cannot execute their purpose if their own health has been injured by previous unnecessary watchings, by exclusion from fresh air and exercise.  Those whose nervous system has been thus unstrung will never be equal to the painful exertion which the recovering invalid now requires.  How much better it would have been for her if walks and sleep had been taken at times when an attentive nurse would have done just as well to sit at the bedside, when absence would have been unnoticed, or only temporarily regretted!  This prudent, and, we must remember, generally self-denying care of one’s self, would have averted the future bodily illness or nervous depression of the nurse of the convalescent, at a time too when the latter has become painfully alive to every look and word, as well as act, of diminished attention and watchfulness; you will surely feel deep self-reproach if, from any cause, you are unable to control your own temper, and to bear with cheerful patience the petulance of hers.

I have dwelt so long on this part of my subject, because I think it very probable that, with your warm affections, and before your selfishness has been hardened by habits of self-indulgence, you might some time or other fall into the error I have been describing.  In the ardour of your anxiety for some beloved relative, you may be induced to persevere in such close attendance on the sick-bed as may seriously injure your own health, and unfit you for more useful, and certainly more self-denying exertion afterwards.  How much easier is it to spend days and nights by the sick-bed of one from whom we are in hourly dread of a final separation, whose helpless and suffering state excites the strongest feelings of compassion and anxiety, than to sit by the sofa, or walk by the side, of the same invalid when she has regained just sufficient strength to experience discomfort in every thing;—­when she never finds her sofa arranged or placed to her satisfaction; is never pleased with the carriage, or the drive, or the walk you have chosen; is never interested in the book or the conversation with which you anxiously and laboriously try to amuse her.  Here it is that woman’s power of endurance, that the real strength and nobleness of her character is put to the most difficult test.  Well, too, has this test been borne:  right womanly has been the conduct of many a loving wife, mother, and sister, under the trying circumstances above described.  Woman alone, perhaps, can steadily maintain the clear vision of what the beloved one really is, and can patiently view the wearisome ebullitions of ill-temper and discontent as symptoms equally physical with a cough or a hectic flush.

This noble picture of self-control can be realized only by those who keep even the best instincts of a woman’s nature under the government of strict principle, remembering that the most beautiful of these instincts may not be followed without guidance or restraint.  Those who yield to such instincts without reflection and self-denial will exhaust their energies before the time comes for the fulfilment of duties.