and humiliation on a velvet cushion and in silk attire, can we reasonably blame Joan that her soul hankers after a hassock of felt, and a penance-sheet of homespun cut according to my lady's pattern? _IN SICKNESS._ Life not being holiday-making throughout, we have to allow for the bad half-hours that must come to us; and, if we are wise, we make provision to pass them with as little annoyance as possible. And of all the bad half-hours to which we are destined, those to be spent in sickness need the greatest amount of care to render them endurable. Without going to the length of Michelet's favourite theory, which sees in every woman nothing but an invalid more or less severely afflicted according to individual temperament, but always under the influence of diseased nerves and controlled by sickly fancies, there is no doubt that women suffer very much more than men; while their patience under physical ailments is one of the traditional graces with which they are credited. Where men fume and fret at the interruption to their lives brought about by a fit of illness, calculating anxiously the loss they are sustaining during the forced inaction of their convalescence, women submit resignedly, and make the best of the inevitable. With that clear sense of Fate characteristic of them, they do not fight against the evil which they know has to be borne, but wisely try to lighten it by such wiles and arts as are open to them, and set themselves to adorn the cross they must endure. One thing indeed, makes invalidism less terrible to them than to men; and that is their ability to perform their home duties, if not quite as efficiently as when they are up and about, yet well enough for all practical purposes in the conduct of the family. The woman who gives her mind to it can keep her house in smooth working gear by dictation from her sick couch; and what she cannot actively overlook she can arrange. So far this removes the main cause of irritation with which the man must battle in the best way he can, when his business comes to a stand-still; or is given up into the hands of but a makeshift kind of substitute taken at the best; while he is laid on his back undergoing many things from doctors for the good of science and the final settling of doubtful pathological points.