From them have sprung: dissatisfaction and contempt of your life and its surroundings, restlessness, a longing for power and dominion over others, malice, habitual discontent, and incessant murmurings. Have you any further doubts? Then inquire of those with whom you live. Ah! if this be indeed the sad result, then, whatever may be your age, close, oh! close those books, and seek once more those two elements of happiness you ought never to have forsaken, and which, had you made them the companions of your study, would have kept you pure and good. I refer to prayer and manual labor. XVII. Listen to the story of a simple shepherd, given in his own words: "I forget now who it was that once said to me, 'Jean Baptiste, you are very poor?'--True.--'If you fell ill, your wife and children would be destitute?'--True. And then I felt anxious and uneasy for the rest of the day." "At Evensong wiser thoughts came to me, and I said to myself: Jean Baptiste, for more than thirty years you have lived in the world, you have never possessed anything, yet still you live on, and have been provided each day with nourishment, each night with repose. Of trouble GOD has never sent you more than your share. Of help the means have never failed you. To whom do you owe all this? To GOD. Jean Baptiste, be no longer ungrateful, and banish those anxious thoughts; for what could ever induce you to think that the Hand from which you have already received so much, would close against you when you grow old, and have greater need of help? I finished my prayer, and felt at peace." XVIII. The work of the Sower is given to each of us in this world, and we fall short of our duty when we let those with whom we are brought in contact leave us without having given them a kind thought or pious impression. Nothing is so sad as the cry, "I am useless!" Happily none need ever _be_ so. A kind word, a gentle act, a modest demeanor, a loving smile, are as so many seeds that we can scatter every moment of our lives, and which will always spring up and bear fruit. Happy are those who have many around them ... they are rich in opportunities, and may sow plenteously. XIX. Few positions in life are so full of importunities as that of the mother of a family, or mistress of a house. She may have a dozen interruptions while writing _one_ letter, or settling an account. What holiness, what self-control, is needed to be always calm and unruffled amid these little vexations, and never to manifest the slightest impatience! Leaving the work without apparent annoyance, replying with a smile upon the lips, awaiting patiently the end of a long conversation, and finally returning calmly to the yet unfinished work--all this is the sign of a recollected soul, and one that waits upon GOD. Oh! what blessings are shed around them by such patient souls ... but, alas! how rarely they are to be met with! XX.