eir
rooms or by the care their illness makes necessary, they fancy that
their aches and pains, the medicines they have to take, and the diet
they are obliged to be contented with are as important to other people
as to themselves. This is a point to guard against. Let nothing about
liniments and pills and prescriptions creep into your talk, for though
you are an invalid to-day, you expect to be well to-morrow or next week,
and illness is only temporary, while health is the rule, and the state
to look forward to with eagerness and hope.

It is worth while for us all, even when suffering pain, to refrain from
frowning and wrinkling up our faces, and saying impatient words. Every
passing thought and feeling write themselves upon the countenance, and
the young girl is making day by day not only the woman she will be in
character later on, but the woman she will be in looks. Handsome or
plain, agreeable or the opposite, the woman of forty is dependent for
her looks on the girl of fourteen. You owe an amount of thought and
consideration to the woman you are going to be, and the friends who will
love her, and so you must not let needless lines and furrows come to
your pretty brows, but keep your foreheads smooth, and do not draw your
lips down at the corners, nor go about looking unhappy. It is possible,
even when bearing much pain, to wear a tranquil expression if one will,
but remember that the tranquil mind in the end can conquer pain.

Crossing town the other day in haste to catch a train, the horse-car was
three times blocked by great vans which stood upon the track. The
van-drivers appeared to be unloading their goods in a very leisurely
manner; to us in the car, with the precious minutes slipping away like
grains of sand in the hour-glass, they seemed exceedingly slow and
unhurried. I looked about on my fellow-passengers. Some had flushed and
angry faces, some could not sit still, but tapped the floor with their
feet, and uttered exclamations, and looked at their watches. One or two
stepped out with their bags and walked hastily onward. But a dear old
lady in the corner of the car was a pattern of sweetness and amiability,
and I heard her observe to her neighbor, "We will probably lose our
train, but at this time of the day there are trains every half-hour, and
it's never well to be put out by little accidents of this sort." She had
the right philosophy.

Through life when little things go wrong it will be wise to acce