But besides lengthening, industry sweetens life; the habitation of the industrious man is comfortable and clean, and his careful wife is truly his counterpart, always usefully employed. Difficulties in this life, however, must be expected--they should not depress or discourage us,--they were necessary to quicken us to exertion and disappeared before a determined resolution to accomplish our object. Even in Paradise man was not allowed to be idle: "The Lord God put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it."--Gen., ch. ii, v. 15. And ever since the fall, as part of the curse entailed by sin and mortality, its consequence, the sentence of God has come forth--"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread."--Gen., ch. iii, v. 19. The very angels of Heaven were ministering Spirits who performed the Divine will cheerfully, actively, and diligently. A man's affairs run fast to ruin who allows his powers to lapse into indolence and sloth, and thus according to the wise man: "He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand; but the hand of the diligent maketh rich;" and "seest thou a man diligent in business; he shall stand before Kings; he shall not stand before mean men." This was the general direction of her thoughts when in graver moments she sought to prepare her children for the career of life. Having represented the means and the value of success in worldly matters lest the imagination might be unduly excited, she would suddenly remind them that there was a purer, brighter, nobler world than this; a world where there is no ignorance to darken, no error to mislead, no infirmities to lament, no enemies to assail, no cares to harass, no sickness to endure, no changes to experience, but where all will be perfect bliss, unclouded light, unspotted purity, immortal tranquility and joy. It is easy to understand that their childhood was happy, and that all their recollections of it are associated with their mother, who in her capacity as wife and mistress of the family was responsible, by reason of their father's repeated absences, for the general arrangement and combination of the different elements of social and domestic comfort. She was arbiter in all their trivial disputes, the soother of all jarring and discord, the explainer of all misunderstandings, and in short the main-spring of the machinery by which social and domestic happiness was constantly supplied both in her household and within the circle she adorned. In the wider sphere, beyond the family circle, she was known by acts of benevolence, rather than as one endeavoring to conform to the world. She did not strive at the same time to be a follower of the fashions and maxims of the world and a friend to Him who has declared "The friendship of the world is enmity with God: Whosoever therefore will be a friend to the world is the enemy of God."