“Yes,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “if you ever feel to express proper gratitude for the good things of this life, be sure that you express your gratitude for the right thing. Very likely you will not have a great deal of gratitude, and you must not waste any of it--but what you do have will be of the most excellent quality. For it will accumulate, and the accumulation will all go to quality. And the things for which you are to be grateful are the bitternesses you have known. If you have had it in mind ever to give way to bursts of gratitude for this air that comes from off the salt sea, for that line of pearls and violets that you see just above the horizon, for the health of your body, for the sleep that comes to you at the close of the day, for any of those things, then get rid of the idea at once. Those things are quite well, but they are not really given to you. They are merely placed where any one can reach them with little effort. The kind fates don’t care whether you get them or not. Their responsibility ends when they leave them there. But the bitternesses they give to each person separately. They give you yours, Mary MacLane, for your very own. Don’t say _they_ never think of you.” “I’ve no intention of saying it,” said I. “You will find,” said my friend Annabel Lee--without noticing my interruption, and with curious expressions in her voice and upon her two red lips--“you will find that these bitternesses come from time to time in your life, like so many milestones. They are useful as such--for of course you like to take measurements along the road, now and again, to see what progress you have made. Along some parts of the road you will find your progress wonderful. If you are appreciative and grateful, at the last milestone you have come to thus far you will express your measure of gratitude to the kind fates. That is, no--” said my friend Annabel Lee, “you will not do this _at_ the milestone, but after you have passed it and have turned a corner, and so can not see it even when you look back.” “But why shall I express gratitude there?” I inquired in a tone that must have been rather lifeless. “Why?” repeated my friend Annabel Lee. “Because you will have grown in strength on account of these milestones; because you will have learned to take all things tranquilly. Why, after the very last milestone I daresay you would be able to sit with folded hands if a house were burning up about your ears!” “Which must indeed be a triumph,” said I.