but still through imperishable perseverance, and hoping under clouds when all hope seemed darkened. "But it seems to me important not to omit this particular caution: The patient will be naturally anxious, as he goes on, frequently to test the amount of his advance, and its rate, if that were possible; but this he will see no mode of doing except through tentative balancings of his feelings, and generally of the moral atmosphere around him, as to pleasure and hope, against the corresponding states so far as he can recall them from his periods of intemperance. But these comparisons I warn him are fallacious when made in this way. The two states are incommensurable on any plan of _direct_ comparison. Some common measure must be found, and _out of himself_; some positive fact that will not bend to his own delusive feeling at the moment; as, for instance, in what degree he finds tolerable what heretofore was _not_ so--the effort of writing letters, or transacting business, or undertaking a journey, or overtaking the arrears of labor, that had been once thrown off to a distance. If in these things he finds himself improved, by tests that can not be disputed, he may safely disregard any sceptical whispers from a wayward sensibility which can not yet, perhaps, have recovered its normal health, however much improved. His inner feelings may not yet point steadily to the truth, though they may vibrate in that direction. Besides, it is certain that sometimes very manifest advances, such as any medical man would perceive at a glance, carry a man through stages of agitation and discomfort. A far worse condition might happen to be less agitated, and so far more bearable. Now when a man is positively suffering discomfort, when he is below the line of pleasurable feeling, he is no proper judge of his own condition, which he neither will nor can appreciate. Toothache extorts more groans than dropsy."