urn,
Her love of light quenching her fear of pain.

There are quite a number of people who get through life without
realizing their own insignificance. Ninety-nine out of a hundred persons
signify nothing, and the hundredth is usually so absorbed in the message
which he has been sent into the world to deliver that he loses sight of
the messenger altogether.

By a merciful dispensation of Providence we are permitted to bustle
about in our immediate little circle like the ant, running hither and
thither with all the sublime conceit of that insect. We pick up, as he
does, a burden which on close inspection will be found to be absolutely
valueless, something that somebody else has thrown away. We hoist it
over obstructions while there is usually a short way round; we fret and
sweat and fume. Then we drop the burden and rush off at a tangent to
pick up another. We write letters to our friends explaining to them what
we are about. We even indite diaries to be read by goodness knows whom,
explaining to ourselves what we have been doing. Sometimes we find
something that really looks valuable, and rush to our particular
ant-heap with it while our neighbours pause and watch us. But they
really do not care; and if the rumour of our discovery reach so far as
the next ant-heap, the bustlers there are almost indifferent, though a
few may feel a passing pang of jealousy. They may perhaps remember our
name, and will soon forget what we discovered--which is Fame. While we
are falling over each other to attain this, and dying to tell each other
what it feels like when we have it, or think we have it, let us pause
for a moment and think of an ant--who kept a diary.

Desiree did not keep a diary. Her life was too busy for ink. She had had
to work for her daily bread, which is better than riches. Her life had
been full of occupation from morning till night, and God had given her
sleep from night till morning. It is better to work for others than to
think for them. Some day the world will learn to have a greater respect
for the workers than for the thinkers, who are idle, wordy persons,
frequently thinking wrong.

Desiree remembered the siege and the occupation of Dantzig by French
troops. She was at school in the Jopengasse when the Treaty of
Tilsit--that peace which was nothing but a pause--was concluded. She
had seen Luisa of Prussia, the good Queen who baffled Napoleon. Her
childhood had passed away in the roar of siege-guns. He