You who have suffered some great loss, and stagger for want of strength to walk alone, thank God for work. Nothing like that for bracing up a feeble heart! I worked restlessly from morning till night, and often encroached on what should have been sleep. Hard work, real sinewy labor, was all that would content me; and I found enough of it. To have been a proper heroine, I suppose I should have devoted myself to works of charity, read sentimental poetry, and folded my hands very meekly and prettily; but I did no such thing. I ripped up carpets, and scoured paint, and swept down cobwebs, I made sweetmeats and winter clothing, I dug up and set out trees, and smoothed the turf in my garden, and tramped round my fields with the man behind me, to see if the fences needed mending, or if the marshes were properly drained, or the fallow land wanted ploughing. It made me better. All the sickliness of my grief passed away, and only the deep-lying regret was left like a weight to which my heart soon became accustomed. We can manage trouble much better than we often do, if we only choose to try resolutely. I had but one relapse. It was when I got news of their marriage. I remember the day with a peculiar distinctness; for it was the first snow-storm of the season, and I had been out walking all the afternoon. It was one of those soft, leaden-colored, expectant days, of late autumn or early winter, when one is sure of snow; and I went out on purpose to see it fall among the woods; for it was just upon Christmas, and I longed to see the black ground covered. By-and-by a few flakes sauntered down, coquetting as to where they would alight; then a few more followed, thickening and thickening until the whole upper air was alive with them, and the frozen ridges whitened along their backs, and every little stiff blade of grass or rush or dead bush held all it could carry. It was pleasant to see the quiet wonder go on, until the landscape was completely changed,--to walk home _scuffing_ the snow from the frozen road on which my feet had ground as I came that way, and see the fences full, and the hollows heaped up level, and the birches bent down with their hair hidden, and the broad arms of the fir-trees loaded, like sombre cotton-pickers going home heavily laden. Then to see the brassy streak widen in the west, and the cold moon hang astonished upon the dead tops of some distant pine-trees, was to enjoy a most beautiful picture, with only the cost of a little fatigue.