laughing matter. Homesickness
is something midway between a physical disease and a mental worry. It
has a real, physiological cause, and is due to the inability of the
brain to adapt itself, without a struggle, to the strangeness of new
scenes and new surroundings; and that struggle is often a very painful
one.

Homesickness had not fallen upon me at first, there were so many new
things to see, so many new cousins and young neighbors to get acquainted
with. For a time my attention was wholly taken up with the novelties of
the place. The farm, the cattle, the birds, the work which we had to do,
everything, in fact, was novel. Perhaps for that very reason, when the
mental struggle to really adapt myself to it came, it was the more
profound and severe.

That morning I had no sooner unwrapped this old book than the pang began
again. I could not swallow a mouthful of breakfast. It really seemed to
me that I should die right then and there if I did not get up and start
for home.

_Blue_ is no adequate word with which to describe what I suffered. It
came upon me with a suddenness, too, which nearly took my breath with
it. At the table were the bright, cheery faces of my cousins, and of the
Old Squire and Gram; but for the moment, how saddening, poor and dreary
everything looked to me! The thought of remaining there, month after
month, gave me heart-sink like death.

Kind parent, if you have a boy or girl off at school, or anywhere at a
distance, whom you wish to be happy and content, do not write very much
to them, and above all things do not go on to tell them of home affairs,
home scenes and familiar objects. It is mistaken kindness. It might
possibly answer--if a boy--to speak of a woodpile soon to be sawn;
or--if a girl--to allude to great heaps of dishes to be washed; but I
would not even advise much of that, nor anything else in the least
suggestive of home scenes; in fact, write as little as possible.

I remember, as I sat there at table, unable to eat, or even to swallow
my coffee, that Cousin Theodora glanced compassionately at me, and Ellen
and Addison curiously. They surmised what ailed me, from their own
previous experience, but said nothing. The Old Squire and Gram, too,
wisely forebore to stir me by foolishly expressed sympathy. How glad I
was that they did not speak to me!

The day passed drearily enough, and as evening drew on, still gloomier
shadows fell into my mind. I stole away to read my mother's le