The women of this sentimental class are those that read and write verses upon “tiny graves,” “dainty coffins,” and “baby shrouds.”

The other day a friend shuddered audibly over the poem, admired by many, entitled—­“The Little White Hearse.”

“Just listen,” she exclaimed, “to this last verse!  After describing the grief of the mother whose baby has just ridden to what she calls ‘its long, lasting sleep,’ she further harrows up the feelings by winding up with:—­

“’I know not her name, but her sorrow I know—­
  While I paused on that crossing I lived it once more. 
And back to my heart surged that river of woe
That but in the heart of a mother can flow—­
  For the little white hearse has been, too, at my door.’

“How could she write it?  How could she bring herself to put that down in black and white with the memory of the baby she has lost, in her mind?”

“My dear,” quietly answered a deep-natured, practical woman,—­“either the author of that poem is incapable of such suffering as some mothers endure, or the little white hearse has never stopped at her door.  If it had, she could not have written the poem.”

She who “talks out” her pain is not the one who is killed by it.  A peculiarity of hopeless cases of cancer is that the sufferer therefrom has a dread of mentioning the horror that is eating away her life.

Since, then, imaginary woe is a species of self-indulgence, let us stamp that healthful person who gives way to it as either grossly selfish or foolishly affected.  Illness is the only excuse for such weakness, and even then will-power may do much toward chasing away the blue devils.

Some people find it harder than others to be uniformly cheerful.  While one man is, as the saying is, “born happy,” another inherits a tendency to look upon the sombre aspect of every matter presented to him.  To the latter, the price of cheerfulness is eternal vigilance lest he lapse into morbidness.  But after a while habit becomes second nature.  I do not advocate the idea of taking life as a huge joke.  The man or woman who does this, throws the care and responsibility that should be his or hers upon some other shoulders.  My plea is for the brave and bright courage that makes labor light.  When we work, let us work cheerfully; when we play, let us play with our whole hearts.  In this simple rule lies the secret of the youth that endures long after the hair is white and the Delectable Mountains are in sight.

There is no habit of more fungus-like growth than that of melancholy, yet many good people give way to it.  Some Christians go through this life as if it were indeed a vale of tears, and they, having been put in it without their consent were determined to make the worst of a bad bargain, and to be as wretched as opportunity would allow.  How much better to consider this very good world as a garden, whose beauty depends largely upon our individual exertions to make it fair.  We may cultivate and enjoy the flowers, or let them become so overrun with underbrush that the blossoms are smothered and hidden under the dank growth of the evil-smelling and common weeds.