All I would impose is that you walk where you will look least
hideous, even in your own eyes.
As, in Paradise, when Milton was all ablaze with poetic glory, he waved
his more than kingly sceptre and thus ushered in the night--
Now came still evening on--
Now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires: Hesperus that led
The starry host rode brightest--
--So does woman, soft as still Evening, shining as all the starry hosts
with goodness and with mercy, come into the night of disease, and soften
its harsh desert with the dews of her kindness. Sickness teaches us how
good and true is woman, how useful in the world, how necessary to our
welfare and proper destiny. If any man have learned this on a sick bed
HE HAS NOT BEEN SICK FOR NAUGHT.
He is a man of progressive ideas and unfolding nature. Sir Walter Scott
has put into words a thought that has ever had man's approbation:
O woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light, quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!
"It is in sickness," says Hosea Ballou, "that we most feel the need of
that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent one upon another for
our comfort and even necessities.
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