You are “discouraged!” _You?_ with strong limbs, good health, the green earth beneath your feet, and the broad blue sky above? “Discouraged?” and why? You are poor, unknown, friendless, obscure, unrecognized, and alone in this great swarming metropolis; the rich man suffocates you with the dust of his pretentious chariot wheels. As you are now, so once was he. Did he waste time whining about it? No, by the rood! or he would not now be President of the Bank before which he once sold beer at a penny a glass, to thirsty cabmen and newsboys. For shame, man! get up and shake yourself, if you are not afraid such a mass of inanity will fall to pieces. Cock your hat on your head, torn rim and all; elbow your way through the crowd; if they don’t move for you, _make_ them do it; push past them; you have as much right in the world as your neighbor. If you wait for him to take you by the hand, the grass will grow over your grave. Rush past him and get employment. “You have tried, and failed.” So have thousands before you, who, to-day, are pecuniarily independent. I have the most unqualified disgust of a man who folds his hands at every obstacle, instead of leaping over it; or who dare not do any thing under heaven, unless it be to blaspheme God, wrong his neighbor, or dishonor woman. I tell you, if you are determined, you _can_ get employment; but you won’t get it by cringing round the doors of rich relations; you won’t get it if you can’t dine on a crust, month after month, and year after year, if need be, with hope for a dessert; you won’t get it if you stand with your lazy hands in your pockets, listening to croakers; you won’t do it if you don’t raise your head above every billow of discouragement which dashes over you, and halloo to Fate, with a stout heart: “Try again, old fellow!” No--and it is not right you should--you are good for nothing but to go sniveling through the world, making wry faces at the good fortune of other people. Bah! I’m disgusted with you. * * * * * _You_ despair. Why? “You are a widow.” Of how much sorrow is that little word the voice? Oh! I know, poor mourner, how dark earth looks to you. I know that sun and stars mock you with their brightness. I know that you shut out the placid moonbeams, and pray to die. Listen! Are there no bleeding hearts but yours? Your dead sleep peacefully; their tears are all shed; their sighs all heaved; their weary hands folded over quiet hearts; but oh, repiner! the _living_ sorrows that are masked beneath the smiling faces you envy! the corroding bitterness of a _dishonored_ hearth-stone; the mantle all too narrow, all too scant, to hide from prying, malignant eyes, the torturing secret!--bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh, and yet, stranger to you than the savage of the desert--colder to you than the dead for whom you so repiningly grieve. Ah! are there no bleeding hearts save yours? Is the “last vial” emptied on your shrinking head?