This desire, opening our eyes to the
realities of life, is an indirect blessing." "Sickness," says Burton,
"puts us in mind of our mortality, and while we drive on heedlessly in
the full career of worldly pomp and jollity, kindly pulls us by the ear,
and brings us to a sense of our duty." "It is then," says Pliny, "that
man recollects there is a God, and that he himself is but a man. No
mortal is then the object of his envy, his admiration, or his contempt."
"In sickness," says Shakspeare, playing with his prepositions, "let me
not so much say, 'Am I getting better of my pain?' as 'Am I getting
better for it?'"
LET US THEREFORE GIVE UP THE IDEA
of those great reformations which we formulate upon our mattresses of
misery, and rather confine ourselves to a few betterments of our lives
which are possible. If we are spendthrifts, we should vow to spend our
money for goods of more solid worth than a taste of this thing, a whiff
of that, or a sight of the other. If we are proud, let us resolve to
speak kindly at least to those who have been lately ill. If we are
stingy, let us make ready to give, notwithstanding, to those who need as
badly as we have needed.
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