There is sufficient kindliness excited in the attendant by the appeal to her feelings, while there is no call for the agony which a congenial friend must sustain; and, on the other side, there is no overwhelming sense of obligation to the nurse, but a satisfactory consciousness of, at least, partial requital. It is no small item in the account of this method, that the promotion of the happiness of the attendant is a cheerful, natural, and salutary pursuit to the invalid; a daily duty imposed when so many others are withdrawn; a fragment of beneficent power left in the scene of its wreck. To dignify her by putting one’s self under express and frequent obligations to her,--to rejoice her by enjoying relief or pleasure devised by her ingenuity,--to spare her health, promote her little fortunes, encourage her best tastes and aspirations, and draw out for her, as well as for one’s self, the lessons of the sick-room; to study these things befits the mutual relation, and cheers the life of the sufferer, while the connexion is not so close as to involve the severer pains of sympathy. In a sick-room, where health is never again to enter, it is well and easily understood that commemorative seasons, anniversaries, &c., are far from being, as elsewhere, among the gayest. In truth, they are often mournful enough; but I am confident that they are most cheerily spent alone. No heart leal to its kind can bear to let them pass unnoticed. It is an intolerable selfishness to abolish them, as far as in one lies, because they have ceased to gladden us; this would be as paltry as to turn one’s back on an old companion, formerly all merriment and smiles, because he comes to us in mourning or in tears; or, let us say, abstracted and thoughtful. But it does not succeed to make small attempts to keep the day, for the sake of one or two companions, putting up Christmas holly over the fire-place, where there is only one to sit, and having Christmas fare brought to the couch, to be sent away again. But when one is alone, the matter is very different, and becomes far gayer. There is nothing, then, to prevent my being in the world again for the day; no human presence to chain me to my prison. When my servant is dismissed to make merry with the rest, and I am alone with my holly sprigs and the memories of old years, I can flit at will among the family groups that I see gathered round many fire-sides. If the morning is sunny, I actually see, with my telescope, the gay crowds that throng the opposite shore after church; and the sight revives the dimmed image of crowded streets, and brings back to my ear the almost forgotten sound of “the church-going bell.” When it grows dark, and my lamp burns so steadily as to give of itself a deep impression of stillness; when there is no sound but of the cinder dropping on the hearth, or of the turning of the leaf as I read or write, there is something of a holiday feeling