“I sometimes hear people,” said he, “deplore their living in vain. No one lives in vain who does or bears the will of God. Where there is little or nothing to perform, there may be something to endure. A baby can do nothing, and is only the object of solicitude to others, but I suppose no one with any sense or feeling will say that babies live in vain. Even if they answer no other purpose, they are highly useful in creating sympathy, watchfulness, and unselfishness in others. A paralyzed person, a person shut up in a dark cell, may, by patient endurance, eminently glorify God. And, as long as He thinks it worth while we should live, we may always find it worth while to fulfil the purposes of living in things however small. Only the bad, the slothful, the selfish, live in vain. We may have our good and evil tempers without speaking a word. We may nourish holy or unholy wishes, contented or discontented dispositions, without stirring from our place. ‘Since trifles make the sum of human things,’ even a bit of liquorice given to a servant-girl with an irritable throat, going out in a cutting wind, shall not be in vain. “No one can say, my dear Mrs. Cheerlove, that that good and great man, Sir Isambard Brunel, lived in vain. Towards the close of his life, however, days of weakness and helplessness supervened, when he was drawn about his son’s garden in a Bath chair, on sunshiny mornings. Well, Lady Brunel told me that on those occasions he would often bid them bring him one of his favourite blue and white minor convolvuluses, and he would then examine it with his magnifying glass, till he espied the minute black insect which he was sure to find in it, soon or late. ‘See here,’ he would exclaim, ‘this little creature is so small as scarcely to be discernible, and yet the Almighty has thought it worth while to give it every function requisite for life and happiness.’ He did not think it lived in vain.” * * * * * Harry has had tea with me for the last time, though he does not go to London till the day after to-morrow. We have promised to correspond, which, I saw, pleased him; for, poor boy, he feels very homesick, now that he is actually going, and will be glad of any little glimpse of his family that I can give. I said, “How is it that you, who thought anything better than your monotonous life, are now sorry to leave home?” “Ah! what can be more monotonous than a solitary lodging will be!” cried Harry. “But the romping of noisy children—the crying baby—” “Don’t name them, please! I see now, they are not worthy to be named.” —“Are destructive of the repose needful for literary composition,” said I, rather mischievously. “Then, Margaret’s daily practising—the surgery bell—” “Will be sounds by distance made more sweet,” interrupted he. “Pray, Mrs. Cheerlove, have you ever taken the trouble to—ever found leisure to—dip into the little manuscript volume of poems I placed in your hands before our unhappy loss?”