For nowhere in
kind-hearted, simple Germany do human beings pass by other human beings,
as we do in America, without so much as a turn of the head to show
recognition of humanity in common.
This one little pleasure kept Gretchen not only alive, but comparatively
glad. Her body suffered for want of sun and air. There was no helping
that, by any amount of spiritual compensation, so long as she must stand,
year in and year out, in a close, dark corner, and do hard drudgery. But,
if she had stood in that close, dark corner, doing that hard drudgery, and
had had no pleasure to comfort her, she would have been dead in three
months.
If all men and women could realize the power, the might of even a small
pleasure, how much happier the world would be! and how much longer bodies
and souls both would bear up under living! Sensitive people realize it to
the very core of their being. They know that often and often it happens
to them to be revived, kindled, strengthened, to a degree which they could
not describe, and which they hardly comprehend, by some little
thing,--some word of praise, some token of remembrance, some proof of
affection or recognition.
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