THIS YOUTHFUL PEAK OF GRIEF,

the young man finds in after years, is but the more substantial bottom of two slopes which rise sublimely toward the zenith of his life.  He banishes his false conceptions of the grandeur of the human mind.  He banishes an attachment which had not a substantial girder under it, and within a few years his heart is all the broader, gentler and more charitable for his young sorrow.  Do not think me underrating the poignancy of ill-requited love.  It is no mean sorrow.  But no great mind ever was crushed under it.  No great mind ever was crushed under any sorrow dealt out to humanity.

TRUE GREATNESS,

after all, lies in true humanity, true understanding of the feebleness of our nature and our capacities.  We do not overload an animal, merely because it evinces a willingness to make an effort.  We therefore must not overweight our soul with sorrow.  We must not nurse our woe.  We must not have that grand, conceited idea of our nobility which demands of us a great long future of melancholy; but rather must we nurse our bodies, suspecting our liver if our soul be heavy, and blaming our chamber if our brow be clouded.  Then, if a high intelligence wait at the couch of our sick soul, as does faithful woman by an invalid, soon will vanish all the clouds, soon will come a brighter vista in the journey of our lives.  We are as God has made us, weak, miserable and sinful.  Let us expect from ourselves conduct becoming a being weak, sinful and miserable.  It would seem that this is the secret of those great lives who profit by adversity.  They have charity, for they have erred.  They have hope, for it has been their true anchor, never failing.  They have withal more consistency than have we, though they have

NEVER MADE SUCH HIGH-SOUNDING REQUISITIONS

on their untried natures.  Where they have stepped into the stream of their existence in some new fording-place, they have gone with great caution, not with an immature confidence born of naught save foolish audacity.  Their river of life is an open water before their pleasant eyes; they prepare not for a flood in the fall, neither do they make ready to pass over dry-shod when the waters come down in the spring.  Though they have the more mercy, they make the lesser appeals for mercy; though they have the more strength, they pray the oftener for aid.  Sorrow has brought it about.  Affliction has stretched their heart-chords

INTO TRUE HARMONY.

“The safe and general antidote against sorrow,” says Dr. Johnson, “is employment.  It is commonly observed that among soldiers and seamen, though there is much kindness, there is little grief; they see their friend fall without any of that lamentation which is indulged in security and idleness, because they have no leisure to spare from the care of themselves; and whoever shall keep himself equally busy will find himself equally unaffected with irretrievable losses.  Time is observed to wear out sorrow, and its effects might doubtless be accelerated by quickening the succession and enlarging the variety of objects.”