THE MOST MISERABLE OF CREATURES,

a sick man who cannot move from his bed of pain and discontent.  If we are impenitent, let us arise out of our wearying couch respectful to those who worship God, and reverent also before God in the presence of other worshipers.  Perhaps if we aim our sudden goodness at a lower mark, we may make a record that will not entirely proclaim (as the quick eye of Pope has cynically perceived) our unpromising folly, and our unteachable ignorance of human nature.

[Illustration]

SORROW.

     When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
     But in battalions.—­Shakspeare.

     But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,
     And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.—­Campbell.

Gathering clouds crowd thickest round the tallest mountain, yet do their summits, far up above, forever gaze out upon the undimmed sun.  So is it with the great heart smitten with deep sorrow.  There is no soul upon whom the glory of God’s love falls more serenely and uninterruptedly.  There is no better friend, no lovelier associate.  “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”  And comfort does come, in the broad and kindly love and mercy toward humanity which those who have known suffering so frequently evince, “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls;” says Chapin, “the most massive characters are seamed with scars; martyrs have put on their coronation robes glittering with fire, and through their tears have the sorrowful first seen the gates of heaven.”  “The echo of the nest-life, the voice of our modest, fairer, holier soul” says Richter, “is audible only in a sorrow-darkened bosom, as the nightingales warble when one veils their eye.”  “Every noble crown is, and on earth will ever be, a crown of thorns,” says Carlyle “Sorrow”, says Haunay, with rare knowledge, “turns all the stars into mourners, and every wind of heaven into a dirge.”  Sometimes all nature seems to condole with animate woes: 

     One weeping heart may tone a rural scene
     To sadness.  Reverently the trees will bend;
     The little stream will sigh, with heaving pulse,
     And swans, in soft and solemn silence float—­
     Grief’s snowy celebrants.

It is a manifest peculiarity of the human mind to believe that its sorrows should be more enduring than they really are.  We have in this phenomenon some of the clearest views of our weakness and inconsistency, for though we deplore the destiny which deals out so much misery to us, yet we despise ourselves, and are also thought somewhat less of by our associates, if we do not embalm our griefs and remain a sort of mummy-house above ground until the memory of our friends has grown faulty and unreliable when applied to our affairs.  Thus,

A WIFE LOSES HER HUSBAND.