[47] I have spoken of the sick bed as surrounded by loving friends and near of kin. There are sick beds where the situation is quite different,—in the poor wards of hospitals for instance. Nevertheless, the loneliest person is never without certain human relations. It may be the pauper in the next bed, the nurse, or the physician, to whom his behavior will be of lasting meaning. I would add a word as to the attitude of a person who is threatened with insanity, and who is aware that the disease is approaching. His last conscious act should be to honor the community to which he belongs by voluntarily putting himself out of the way of harming them. Not that the physical harm is itself the principal thing, but that the wish not to harm physically is the sign of his sense of the ethical relation in which he stands to his fellows. Also a person threatened in this way ought to be willing to put himself in the keeping of others, even of strangers, as being no longer himself competent to judge rightly of what shall be done to him. It is true that in accepting the judgment of strangers as a substitute for his own he is taking the risk of being treated with insufficient consideration, and possibly even mistreated. Yet the jeopardy in which he thus puts his future, the sacrificial act he performs, is evidence of mental nobility at the very moment when mental night is about to set in for him. CHAPTER III BEREAVEMENT When we reflect on what actually happens in cases of bereavement, we shall find great diversity in different situations. It may be that the deceased person has led a worthless life, and that the grave is allowed to close over him without much regret. Nevertheless, the honor due to worth that _never appeared in him_ ought to be shown. In the worst cases we may not treat human beings like animals. Besides, there are generally one or more persons who seem to have an unreasoning natural affection for the wretched being, and so he does not go wholly without the tribute of tears. Others, like sufferers from cancer, pass through days, weeks, months of acute pain before they die. In their case it is said that death comes as a relief, and often the final relief from the suffering obscures the loss. Again, in most men’s lives there is an upper and an under side. Though the public career of statesmen, poets, artists may be dazzling, yet their faults or obliquities are probably well enough known to those who have seen them at close range. Obituaries are seldom truthful. Sometimes, however, the reverse happens; men whose names are held up to public obloquy are not always as black as they are painted. Their worst side becomes known to the public, yet they sometimes possess wonderfully fine traits. Very pathetic is the mourning for a baby, and its unfulfilled promise, or for a defective child, long a burden, yet strangely grieved for when its feeble little flame of life is extinguished.