When we look at the apparent recklessness with which great sorrows seem to be distributed among the children of the earth, there is no way to keep our faith in a Fatherly love, except to recognize how invariably the sorrows that spring from love are a means of enlarging and dignifying a human being. Nothing great or good comes without birth-pangs, and in just the proportion that natures grow more noble their capacities of suffering increase. * * * * * [Sidenote: Line between right and wrong.] The line between right and wrong seems always so indefinite, like the line between any two colors of the prism; it is hard to say just where one ends and another begins. * * * * * [Sidenote: Doubt.] “Doubt is very well as a sort of constitutional crisis in the beginning of one’s life; but if it runs on and gets to be chronic it breaks a fellow up, and makes him morally spindling and sickly. Men that _do_ anything in the world must be men of strong convictions; it won’t do to go through life like a hen, craw-crawing and lifting up one foot, not knowing where to set it down next.” * * * * * [Sidenote: Friends.] “I don’t think,” said she, “you should say ‘_make_’ friends,—friends are _discovered_, rather than made. There are people who are in their own nature friends, only they don’t know each other; but certain things, like poetry, music, and painting, are like the free-masons’ signs,—they reveal the initiated to each other.” WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS. [Sidenote: Forgiveness of friends.] “Yes,” said Harry, “forgiveness of enemies used to be the _ultima thule_ of virtue; but I rather think it will have to be forgiveness of friends. I call the man a perfect Christian that can always forgive his friends.” * * * * * [Sidenote: Altruism.] Do not our failures and mistakes often come from discouragement? Does not every human being need a believing second self, whose support and approbation shall reinforce one’s failing courage? The saddest hours of life are when we doubt ourselves. To sensitive, excitable people, who expend nervous energy freely, must come many such low tides. “Am I really a miserable failure,—a poor, good-for-nothing, abortive attempt?” In such crises we need another self to restore our equilibrium. * * * * * [Sidenote: Reproach.] The agony of his self-reproach and despair had been doubled by the reproaches and expostulations of many of his own family friends, who poured upon bare nerves the nitric acid of reproach. * * * * * [Sidenote: Help from work.] Something definite to do is, in some crises, a far better medicine for a sick soul than any amount of meditation and prayer. One step fairly taken in a right direction goes farther than any amount of agonized back-looking. * * * * * [Sidenote: Praise and blame.]