And certainly the example of the good faithful souls around me, of their untiring devotion, contributed not a little to nerve and strengthen me whenever my own courage seemed like to fail. How weak and faint-hearted must I account myself, when I looked in Frau Baring’s face, to read there the tale of bygone suffering--of struggles valiantly fought out, despair triumphantly lived down. Little by little I won her confidence, and she told me the story of her life--of the grim fight sustained with direst poverty, since the day when her husband, a government under-official, had lost his post through ill-health, and the task of providing for him as well as for their child had devolved on her alone. She could speak quite calmly of her bereavement, could take comfort in the thought that the husband and daughter she had loved so dearly and tended so well, were both at rest at last, and could suffer no more, but when she told of the privations they had endured, her lips quivered uncontrollably, and the tears trickled down her faded cheeks. No sermon preached me on the duty of resignation could have been half as effective as this living testimony to the severity of the hardships borne thus uncomplainingly. And this woman, herself so sorely tried, was full of sympathy for the troubles that pressed so heavily on my young life. Of these we never spoke, but I saw that she understood, and felt for me, and the knowledge made my burden lighter. For several years we lived as if on an island, shut off from the rest of the world, and out of reach of even most intimate friends. It was better so. There seemed to be no leisure then for the pleasures of social intercourse. They only who themselves were suffering or in need of help, were encouraged to draw near. Besides the serious view of life which solitude thus engendered in us, it had another salutary effect, in preventing any comparison between our lot and that of others, in keeping far from us the faintest suspicion that there was aught unusual in our existence. From our parents’ example, as well as from their precepts, we learned a lesson of deep import, that of the absolute subordination of bodily to spiritual needs--we were taught to regard our bodies as mere servants and ministers to the nobler half of our nature, and to treat any mere physical suffering or inconvenience as a matter of but small moment. Any of the little ailments or accidents which weaker parents are inclined to bemoan as real misfortunes to their offspring, were put on one side by my mother as wholly unworthy of attention, with the remark that such things might happen to anyone, that few people had not something more to complain of! Her own fear was of being betrayed into any weakness, and I still remember the tone in which she murmured--“I must not give way!” when in watching by her side the protracted agony of poor Otto’s death-struggle, I had given vent to a cry of anguish and despair.