The objection commonly brought to this system is, that it is injurious to one’s loving and anxious friends. But I do not find it so. So loving and anxious are my friends, that they do not need the wretched stimulus of seeing me suffer. All that can be done for me is done; and it would be no consolation, but a great aggravation to me, that they should suffer gratuitously. Their general love, and care and concern for me, are fully satisfying to me; and I know that I have only to call and they will come. But I feel with inexpressible comfort what a difference there is between their general concern for my state, and the pain of days, now separately spent by them in ease and joy, which would be more dreary to them than to me, if I let them share my dreariness. A trifling incident, which occurred the other day, gave me strong satisfaction, as proving that where my method can be made a system, it works well,--promoting the cheerfulness, without impairing the sympathies, of even the youngest of those for whom I have a welcome only at certain seasons. Two little friends were with me--one greatly admiring various luxuries about me, and thence proceeding to reckon up a large amount of privileges and enjoyments in my possession and prospect, when his companion said, with a sigh and tenderness of tone, musical to my soul, “Ah! but then, there is the unhealthiness! that spoils everything!” To which the other mournfully assented. What more could these children know by having their hearts wounded by the spectacle of suffering! And if they may be spared the pain, larger minds and more ripened hearts must require it even less. I need not say that this plan of solitude in pain supposes sufficient and kindly attendance; but, for a permanence, (though I know it to be otherwise in short illnesses,) there is no attendance to be compared with that of a servant. In as far as the help is mechanical, it tends to habituate the sufferer to his lot, and the relation is sustained with the least expenditure of painful feeling on both sides,--with the least anxiety, as well as pain of sympathy.