I have spoken of the relief afforded by visitations of severe pain. These rally the vital forces, and dismiss the temptation, by substituting torture for weariness--at times a welcome change. The healthy are astonished at the good spirits of sufferers under tormenting complaints; and the most strait-laced preachers of fortitude and patience admit an occasional wonder that there is no suicide among that class of sufferers. The truth is, however, that the influence of acute pain, when only occasional, and not extremely protracted, is vivifying and cheering on the whole. The immediate anguish causes a temporary despair: but the reaction, when the pain departs, causes a relish of life such as the healthy and the gay hardly enjoy. Though a slow death by a torturing disease is a lot unspeakably awful to meet, and even to contemplate, there can be no question to the experienced, that illness in which severe pain sometimes occurs is less trying than some in which a different kind of suffering is not relieved by such a stimulus and its consequent sensations. Thus much it is useful to know,--useful to the student of human nature, to the nurse, and to a sufferer under sentence of lasting disease. But instances have been known, perplexing to those inexperienced in pain, of devout thankfulness for the suffering itself, under its immediate and agonising pressure; and this in men far superior to the superstition of believing present pain the purchase-money of future ease,--the fine paid down here for admission to heavenly benefits hereafter.