ng up
heart. When a good wife sees her husband unfortunate and out of work,
what is it that she most dreads? Not that they will starve,--starvation
seldom happens in this country. Not that they will be poor, though of
that she may be somewhat afraid. Her greatest fear is lest her husband
should get discouraged and down-hearted; should take to drink, perhaps;
at any rate, should become so despondent and embittered that the light
shall go out of their lives and their children's. Now it is his business
not to let that happen. It is his part to keep up for her sake a
resolute heart and a cheerful face. And if she is a true woman, how
gladly will she do the same for him! Out of just such circumstances
there come two opposite results, according as people meet them. There
comes failure of effort and resolution, then despondency, then
recklessness, drunkenness perhaps, and at last ruin, the break-up of
character, the destruction of the children's prospects, or sometimes
suicide. When a man, under pressure of such trouble, really gives up,
even for an hour, the effort to be brave and make the best of things, he
takes a step on a road at the end of which is suicide. _That_ is the
consummate act of cowardice; that is the last logical result of refusing
to face and conquer our troubles. Heaven have mercy on the man who seeks
in death a refuge, and so multiplies the suffering of those he leaves
behind! And at the point where begins the wretched road of despondency,
which if followed out leads to this or some other ruin, there branches
another road--manly endurance of the worst, courage which is strong
because it is loving,--a road which leads to heights beyond our sight.
To bear trouble together, and for each other's sake to rise above
it,--what knits hearts together like that?

Take, again, the case of a man who is by circumstances shut off from work
that he could do and longs to do for the large benefit of mankind,--the
man who has a gift of teaching and is not allowed to teach, or who has
the statesman's quality and finds no place in public affairs, or who,
with any large executive and beneficent faculty, finds himself denied all
opportunity of exercising it. For a faculty to be repressed is hard just
in proportion as its quality is noble. A caged canary is hardly a
painful sight, but a caged eagle stirs one with regret. And the world
has such need of all noble talent; such exigent and hungry need of the
true teac