of taking a tough job if you don't face the toughest
part of it? I don't want the comfortable end of the business.
_Somebody's_ got to nurse smallpox, and yellow fever, and
raving-distracted people; and I _know_ the Lord made me fit to do just
that very work. There ain't many that He _does_ make for it, but I'm
one. And if I shirked, there'd be a stitch dropped."

"Yellow fever! where have you nursed that?"

"Do you suppose I didn't go to New Orleans? I've nursed it, and I've
_had_ it, and nursed it again. I've been in the cholera hospitals, too.
I'm seasoned to most everything."

"Do you think everybody ought to take the hardest thing they can find,
to do?"

"Do you think everybody ought to eat drumsticks? We'd have to kill an
unreasonable lot of fowls to let 'em! No. The Lord portions out breasts
and wings, as well as legs. If He puts anything into your plate, take
it."

Dr. Gracie always had a word for the nurse, when he came; and, to do her
justice, it was seldom but she had a word to give him back.

"Well, Miss Sampson," said he gayly, one bright morning, "you're as
fresh as the day. What pulls down other folks seems to set you up. I
declare you're as blooming as--twenty-five."

"You--fib--like--sixty! It's no such thing! And if it was, I'd ought to
be ashamed of it."

"Prodigious! as your namesake, the Dominie, would say. Don't tell me a
woman is ever ashamed of looking young, or handsome!"

"Now, look here, doctor!" said Miss Sampson, "I never was handsome; and
I thank the Lord He's given me enough to do in the world to wear off my
young looks long ago! And any woman ought to be ashamed that gets to be
thirty and upward, to say nothing of forty-five, and keeps her baby face
on! It's a sign she ain't been of much account, anyhow."

"Oh, but there are always differences and exceptions," persisted the
doctor, who liked nothing better than to draw Miss Sampson out. "There
are some faces that take till thirty, at least, to bring out all their
possibilities of good looks, and wear on, then, till fifty. I've seen
'em. And the owners were no drones or do-nothings, either. What do you
say to that?"

"I say there's two ways of growing old. And growing old ain't always
growing ugly. Some folks grow old from the inside, out; and some from
the outside, in. There's old furniture, and there's growing trees!"

"And the trunk that is roughest below may branch out greenest a-top!"
said the doctor.

The talk Faith