[Sidenote:  The Child Upon Her Breast]

The little one may have lived but a few days, yet, if it has once lain upon her breast, she has something Death may never hope to destroy.  Other children, equally dear, may grow to stalwart manhood and gracious womanhood, but that face rises to immortality in a world of endless change.

No single cry, no weak clasp of baby fingers is ever forgotten.  Through all the years, unchanging, and taking on new beauty with every fleeting day, the little face is still before her.  And thus in a way Death brings her a blessing, for when the others have grown she has it still—­the child upon her breast.

Love’s best gifts are not to be taken away.  Tender memories must always be inwoven with the sad, and the sympathy and unselfishness which great loves ever bring are left to make sweet the nature of one who is chastened by sorrow.  Grief itself never stings; it is the accusing conscience which turns the dagger remorselessly in the heart.

[Sidenote:  Our unsuspected Kindness]

Life, after all, is a masquerade.  We fear to show our tenderness and our love.  We habitually hide our best feelings, lest we be judged weak and emotional, and unfit for the age in which it is our privilege to move.  Sometimes it needs Death to show us ourselves and to teach our friends our deep and unsuspected kindness.

The woman who hungers throughout her marriage for the daily expression of her husband’s love, often looks longingly towards the day to come, when hot tears will fall upon her upturned face and that for which she has vainly thirsted will be laid upon her silent lips.  But swiftly upon the vision comes the thought, that even so, it would be of short duration; that the newly awakened love would soon be the portion of someone else.

It would be a beautiful world, indeed, if we were not at such pains to hide our real selves—­if all our kindly thoughts were spoken and all our generous deeds were done.  No one of us would think of Death as our best friend, if we were not all so bitterly unkind.  Yet we put into white fingers the roses for which the living might have pleaded in vain, and too often, with streaming eyes, we ask pardon of the dead.

[Sidenote:  Atonement]

Atonement is not to be made thus.  A costly monument in a public square is tardy appreciation of a genius whose generation refused him bread.  A man’s tears upon a woman’s hands are not enough, when all her life she has prayed for his love.

There is no law so unrelenting as that of compensation.  Gravitation itself may be more successfully defied.  It is the one thing which is absolutely just and which is universal in its action, though sometimes as slow as the majestic forces which change rock to dust.

We cannot have more joy than we give—­nor more pain.  The eternal balance swings true.  The capacity for enjoyment and the capacity for suffering are one and the same.  He who lives out of reach of sorrow has sacrificed his possible ecstasy.  “He has seen only half the universe who has not been shown the House of Pain.”