The best is Patience and Courage. “Whoever,” says Bishop Sailer, “is able to submit to God in every hour of darkness will soon see the morning light again arise; for his submission is the cock-crow that heralds and greets the coming day.” And indeed it is a fact remarkably true to experience, how often all difficulty vanishes as soon as we have taken a stand in regard to it, as soon as we have actually shouldered it. Our very best possessions we really possess only when we were once in our life compelled to give them up. Besides, it is easy to notice, from our own experience, that even our judgment of things that befall us is often wrong at first. Again and again we discover that what was apparently unpropitious and injurious has later revealed itself as advantageous, and that, on the other hand, so-called lucky events have turned out to be of uncommonly little use, if not actually harmful. And so, one is very sensible if he can suspend his judgment in times of anxiety; and still more help can many a time be gained from the thought that all trouble is always borne merely from moment to moment, and that the next moment will bring a change, or at least new strength. Very often trouble lasts, in its full force, no longer than three days; those one may easily undertake to endure. The real burden of unhappiness consists in the notion that it is going to last an unlimited while; this is merely a delusion of the fancy. But there are still some minor remedies besides, or at least palliatives, and it is well worth the pains for one to review them quietly and get a clear conception of them; for what is said in the second part of “Faust” is only too true, that if sorrow but breathes upon us, she makes us blind. The first and most efficacious of these remedies is Work, not merely for its immediate results, but because it busies the mind and keeps it from useless brooding over things that perhaps never come at all; for a great part of sorrow consists of unfounded fear. Work gives courage, and it gives momentary forgetfulness in a legitimate way, as unwarranted and pernicious “distractions” and drink do not. It is the only true, permissible, and beneficent Lethe-draught of the modern world.