"What have I learned by looking through this veil?" said Olivia to him, bitterly, one day when they were coming out of a house where they had been visiting a mourning family. "I was trusting in God as an indulgent Father; life seemed beautiful to me in the light of his goodness; now I see only his inflexible severity. I never knew before how much mourning and sorrow there had been even in this little village. There is scarcely a house where something dreadful has not at some time happened. How many families here have been called to mourning since we have! I have not taken up a paper in which I have not seen a record of two or three accidental deaths; some of them even more bitter and cruel than what has befallen us. I read this morning of a poor washerwoman, whose house was burned, and all her children consumed, while she was away working for her bread. I read the other day of a blind man whose only son was drowned in his very presence, while he could do nothing to help him. I was visiting yesterday that poor dress-maker whom you know. She has by toil and pains been educating a fine and dutiful son. He is smitten down with hopeless disease, while her idiot child, who can do nobody any good, is spared. Ah, this mourning veil has indeed opened my eyes; but it has taught me to add all the sorrows of the world to my own; and can I believe in God's love?" "Daughter," said the old man, "I am not ignorant of these things. I have buried seven children; I have buried my wife; and God has laid on me in my time reproach, and controversy, and contempt. Each cross seemed, at the time, heavier than the others. Each in its day seemed to be what I least could bear; and I would have cried, '_Anything but this!_' And yet, now when I look back, I cannot see one of these sorrows that has not been made a joy to me. With every one some perversity or sin has been subdued, some chain unbound, some good purpose perfected. God has taken my loved ones, but he has given me love. He has given me the power of submission and of consolation; and I have blessed him many times in my ministry for all I have suffered, for by it I have stayed up many that were ready to perish." "Ah," said Olivia, "you indeed have reason to be comforted, because you can see in yourself the fruit of your sorrows; but I am not improving; I am only crushed and darkened,--not amended."