el lighter and happier
when I have difficulties to overcome. Could you look in upon me you
would think it impossible that I could be even tolerably comfortable,
and yet I am cheerful, and get along as easily as possible, and am in
truth happy."

Evidently, all we can do with such a person is to congratulate her
over the most terrible experiences. In a letter five days later, the
baby dies of whooping-cough, and in her arms; a fortnight later, the
mother dies of typhus fever; within another month, two boys, now
orphans, are down with the same fever at once, and one of them dies.
In the space of eight weeks, she saw five persons of one family
buried, and four of them she had nursed. By this time, the aunt was
ill, and Miss Pickard nursed her to convalescence.

This campaign had lasted three months, and she left the scene of
combat with a clear conscience. She was allowed a breathing spell of a
month in which to visit some pleasant friends and recuperate her
strength, when we find her back in Osmotherly again nursing her aunt.
It was the end of December and she was the only servant in the house.
Before this ordeal was over, she was taken ill herself, and had to be
put to bed and nursed. In crossing a room, a cramp took her; she fell
on the floor, lay all night in the cold, calling in vain for
assistance. She did not finally escape from these terrible scenes
until the end of January, five months from the time she entered them.

Miss Pickard returned to Boston after an absence of about two years
and a half, during which time, as one of her friends wrote her, "You
have passed such trying scenes, have so narrowly escaped, and done
more, much more, than almost any body ever did before." She went away
a dear school-girl friend and a valued acquaintance; she was welcomed
home as a martyr fit to be canonized, and was received as a
conquering heroine.

In a letter dated from Gretna Green, where so many run-away lovers
have been made happy, she playfully reflects upon the possibilities of
her visit, if only she had a lover, and concludes that she "must
submit to single blessedness a little longer." Our sympathies would
have been less taxed if she had submitted to single blessedness to the
end. Why could she not now be quiet, let well enough alone, and make
herself comfortable? Destiny had apparently ordered things for her
quite differently. One cannot avoid his destiny, and it was her
destiny to marry, and marriage was to bring