The manifestations of sympathetic feeling are as various as of other feelings; but the differences are marked by those whom they concern, with a keenness proportioned to the hunger of their heart. The sick man has even sometimes to assure himself of the grief of his friends, by their silence to him on circumstances which he cannot but feel most important. Their letters, extending over months and years, perhaps contain no mention of his trial, no reference to his condition, not a line which will show to his executors that the years over which they spread were years of illness. Though he can account for this suppression in the very love of his friends, yet it brings no particular consolation to him. Others, perhaps, administer praise;--praise, which is the last thing a humbled sufferer can appropriate;--praise of his patience or fortitude, which perhaps arrives at the moment when his resolution has wholly given way, and tears may be streaming from his eyes, and exclamations of anguish bursting from his lips. Such consolations require forbearance, however it may be mingled with gratitude. Far different was my emotion, when one said to me, with a face like the face of an angel, “Why should we be bent upon your being better, and make up a bright prospect for you? I see no brightness in it; and the time seems past for expecting you ever to be well.” How my spirits rose in a moment at this recognition of the truth! And again--when I was weakly dwelling on a consideration which troubled me much for some time, that many of my friends gave me credit for far severer pain than I was enduring, and that I thus felt myself a sort of impostor, encroaching unwarrantably on their sympathies, “O! never mind!” was the reply. “That may be more than balanced hereafter. You will suffer more, with time--or you will seem to yourself to suffer more; and then you will have less sympathy. We grow tired of despairing, and think less and less of such cases, whether reasonably or not; and you may have less sympathy when you need it more. Meantime, you are not answerable for what your friends feel; and it is good for them--natural and right--whether you think it accurate or not.” These words put a new heart into me, dismissed my scruples about the over-wealth of the present hour, and strengthened my soul for future need--the hour of which has not, however, yet arrived. It is a comfortable season, if it may but last, when one’s friends have ceased to hope unreasonably, and not “grown tired of despairing.” Another friend, endowed both by nature and experience with the power I speak of, gave me strength for months--for my whole probation--by a brave utterance of one word, “Yes.” In answer to a hoping consoler, I told a truth of fact which sounded dismal, though because it was fact I spoke it in no dismal mood; and the genius at my side, by a confirmatory “Yes,” opened to my view a whole world of aid in prospect from a soul so penetrating and so true.