CONTENTS.

May 1, 1845.

ESSAYS.

LIFE IN THE SICK-ROOM.

ESSAYS.

BY

AN INVALID.

SECOND EDITION.


LONDON:
EDWARD MOXON, DOVER-STREET.
MDCCCXLIV.



LONDON:
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

CONTENTS.

TO——

As I write this, I cannot but wonder when and how you will read it, and whether it will cause a single throb at the idea that it may be meant for you. You have been in my mind during the passage of almost all the thoughts that will be found in this book. But for your sympathy—confidently reckoned on, though never asked—I do not know that I should have had courage to mark their procession, and record their order. I have felt that if I spoke of these things at all, it must be to some fellow-sufferer—to some one who had attained these experiences before me or with me; and, having you for my companion throughout, (however unconsciously to yourself), I have uttered many things that I could hardly otherwise have spoken: for one may speak far more freely with a friend, though in the hearing of others, than when singly addressing a number. Most frequently, however, I have forgotten that others could hear, and have conversed as with you alone.

It matters little, in this view, that we have never met—that each of us does not know, except by the eye of the mind, with what outward face the other has encountered the unusual lot appointed to both. While I was as busy as any one on the sunny plain of life, I heard of you laid aside in the shadowy recess where our sunshine of hope and joy could never penetrate to you; and it was with reverence, and not pity, that I inquired of those who could tell whether you had separate lights of heaven, such as there are for retreats like yours. When I was myself withdrawn into such a recess, if I learned to pity more than before, it was with a still enhanced reverence for your older experience. As the evils of protracted unhealthiness came upon me, one after another, I knew that they had all visited you long ago; and I felt as if they brought me a greeting from you. For me, at least, you have not suffered in vain. Would there might be anything in this volume which might enable you to say the same to me!

At all events, there is something sweet and consoling in the fellowship. Though we would, if we could, endure anything to set the other free—though we would thankfully take upon us any suffering that nature could bear for the thought that no one else was qualified to conceive of our troubles,—yet, as this cannot be, we may make the most of the comfort of our companionship. In our wakeful night seasons, when the healthy and the happy are asleep, we may call to each other from our retreats, to know each how the other fares; and, whether we are at the moment dreary or at peace, it may be that there are angels abroad, (perhaps the messengers of our own sympathies), who may bear our mutual greetings, and drop them on their rounds. Often has this been my fancy, when the images close about me have been terrific enough; and when, in the very throng of these horrors, I have cast about for some charm or talisman wherewith to rid myself of them, and some voice of prayer has presently reached me from a temple on the furthest horizon of my life—or some sweet or triumphant hymn of submission or praise has floated to my spirit’s ear from the far shores of my childhood—I have hoped, in the midst of the heaven thus brought down about me, that the same consolations were visiting you, who in the same need would, I knew, make the same appeal.

But there are times when the sense of fellowship is dearer still. You know, doubtless, as well as I, the emptiness of the consolation when our pitying friends, in all love and sincerity, remind us of what we did by our efforts when we were well and active, and what we are doing still for the world, by preserving a decent quietness in the midst of our troubles. You know, as well as I, how withering would be the sense of our own nothingness, if we tried to take comfort from our own dignity and usefulness. You know, as well as I, how very far we can see from our place on the verge of life, over its expanse, and how ridiculous, if it were not shocking, would be any complacency on the ground of our having followed the instincts of our nature to work, while work was possible,—the issues of such divinely-appointed instrumentality being wholly brought out and directed by Him who framed and actuated us. You know, as I do, how useful it is to human beings to have before their eyes spectacles of all experiences; and we are alike willing, having worked while we could, now to suffer as we may, to help our kind in another mode. We feel it some little service to be appointed to,—having become accustomed to our footing on the shaking plank over the deep dark river,—to lead on and uphold with a steady hand some who may be appointed to follow, and perhaps to pass us upon it.

But while agreeing in this, our happiest fellowship must be, I think, in seeing, with a clearness we could never otherwise have attained, the vastness and certainty of the progression with which we have so little to do. I do not believe it is possible for persons in health and action to trace, as we can, the agencies for good that are going on in life and the world. Or, if they can, it seems as if the perception were accompanied by a breathless fear,—a dread of being, if not crushed, whirled away somewhere, hurried along to new regions for which they are unprepared, and to which, however good, they would prefer the familiar. You and I, and our fellow-sufferers, see differently, whether or not we see further. We know and feel, to the very centre of our souls, that there is no hurry, no crushing, no devastation attending Divine processes. While we see the whole system of human life rising and rising into a higher region and a purer light, we perceive that every atom is as much cared for as the whole. While we use our new insight to show us how things are done,—and gravely smile to see that it is by every man’s overrating the issues of his immediate pursuit, in order that he may devote all his energies to it, (without which nothing would ever be done,) we smile with another feeling presently, on perceiving how an industry and care from above are compensating to every man his mistake by giving him collateral benefits when he misses the direct good he sought,—by giving him and his helpers a wealth of ideas, as often as their schemes turn out, in their professed objects, profitless. When we see men straining every nerve to reach the tempting apples which are to prove dust and ashes in their jaws, we see also, by virtue of our position, the flying messenger who is descending with the ambrosia which is to feed their immortal part. We can tell that while revolutions are grandly operating, by which life and the world will in time change their aspect,—while a progress is advancing to which it is now scarcely conceivable that we should ever have dreamed of putting our hands,—there is not one of our passing thoughts that is not ordained,—not a sigh of weariness unheeded,—not an effort of patience that is not met half-way by divine pity,—not a generous emotion of triumph in the world’s improvement that is not hallowed by the divine sympathy ever living and breathing round about us. This our peculiar privilege, of seeing and feeling something of the simultaneous vastness and minuteness of providential administration, is one in which we most enjoy sympathy;—at least, I do:—and in this, therefore, do I find your undoubted fellowship most precious.

Here then I end my greeting,—except in as far as the whole book is truly conversation with you. I shall not direct it to your hands, but trust to the most infallible force in the universe,—human sympathy,—to bring these words under your eye. If they should have the virtue to summon thoughts which may, for a single hour, soften your couch, shame and banish your foes of depression and pain, and set your chamber in holy order and something of cheerful adornment, I may have the honour of being your nurse, though I am myself laid low,—though hundreds of miles are between us, and though we can never know one another’s face or voice.

Yours,

——

THE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT IN THE SICK-ROOM.

The truth may pass across the mind of one who has suffered briefly—may occur to him when glancing back over his experience of a short sharp illness or adversity. He may say to himself that his temporary suffering brought him lasting good, in revealing to him the sympathy of his friends, and the close connexion of human happiness with things unseen; but this occasional recognition of the truth is a very different thing from the abiding and unspeakably vivid conviction of it, which arises out of a condition of protracted suffering. It may look like a paradox to say that a condition of permanent pain is that which, above all, proves to one the transient nature of pain; but this is what I do affirm, and can testify.

The apparent contradiction lies in the words “permanent pain”—that condition being made up of a series of pains, each of which is annihilated as it departs; whereas all real good has an existence beyond the moment, and is indeed indestructible.

A day’s illness may teach something of this to a thoughtful mind; but the most inconsiderate can scarcely fail to learn the lesson, when the proof is drawn out over a succession of months and seasons. With me, it has now included several New Year’s Days; and what have they taught me? What any future New Year’s retrospect cannot possibly contradict, and must confirm: though it can scarcely illustrate further what is already as clear as its moon and stars.

During the year looked back upon, all the days, and most hours of the day, have had their portion of pain—usually mild—now and then, for a few marked hours of a few marked weeks, severe and engrossing; while, perhaps, some dozen evenings, and half-dozen mornings, are remembered as being times of almost entire ease. So much for the body. The mind, meantime, though clear and active, has been so far affected by the bodily state as to lose all its gaiety, and, by disuse, almost to forget its sense of enjoyment. During the year, perhaps, there may have been two surprises of light-heartedness, for four hours in June, and two hours and a half in October, with a few single flashes of joy in the intermediate seasons, on the occurrence of some rousing idea, or the revival of some ancient association. Over all the rest has brooded a thick heavy cloud of care, apparently causeless, but not for that the less real. This is the sum of the pains of the year, in relation to illness. Where are these pains now?—Not only gone, but annihilated. They are destroyed so utterly, that even memory can lay no hold upon them. The fact of their occurrence is all that even memory can preserve. The sensations themselves cannot be retained, nor recalled, nor revived; they are the most absolutely evanescent, the most essentially and completely destructible of all things. Sensations are unimaginable to those who are most familiar with them. Their concomitants may be remembered, and so vividly conceived of, as to excite emotions at a future time: but the sensations themselves cannot be conceived of when absent. This pain, which I feel now as I write, I have felt innumerable times before; yet, accustomed as I am to entertain and manage it, the sensation itself is new every time; and a few hours hence I shall be as unable to represent it to myself as to the healthiest person in the house. Thus are all the pains of the year annihilated. What remains?

All the good remains.

And how is this? whence this wide difference between the good and the evil?

Because the good is indissolubly connected with ideas—with the unseen realities which are indestructible. This is true, even of those pleasures of sense which of themselves would be as evanescent as bodily pains. The flowers sent to me by kind neighbours have not perished,—that is, the idea and pleasure of them remain, though every blossom was withered months ago. The game and fruit, eaten in their season, remain as comforts and luxuries, preserved in the love that sent them. Every letter and conversation abides,—every new idea is mine for ever; all the knowledge, all the experience of the year, is so much gain. Even the courses of the planets, and the changes of the moon, and the hay-making and harvest, are so much immortal wealth—as real a possession as all the pain of the year was a passing apparition. Yes, even the quick bursts of sunshine are still mine. For one instance, which will well illustrate what I mean, let us look back so far as the Spring, and take one particular night of severe pain, which made all rest impossible. A short intermission, which enabled me to send my servant to rest, having ended in pain, I was unwilling to give further disturbance, and wandered, from mere misery, from my bed and my dim room, which seemed full of pain, to the next apartment, where some glimmer through the thick window-curtain showed that there was light abroad. Light indeed! as I found on looking forth. The sun, resting on the edge of the sea, was hidden from me by the walls of the old priory: but a flood of rays poured through the windows of the ruin, and gushed over the waters, strewing them with diamonds, and then across the green down before my windows, gilding its furrows, and then lighting up the yellow sands on the opposite shore of the harbour, while the market-garden below was glittering with dew and busy with early bees and butterflies. Besides these bees and butterflies, nothing seemed stirring, except the earliest riser of the neighbourhood, to whom the garden belongs. At the moment, she was passing down to feed her pigs, and let out her cows; and her easy pace, arms a-kimbo, and complacent survey of her early greens, presented me with a picture of ease so opposite to my own state, as to impress me ineffaceably. I was suffering too much to enjoy this picture at the moment: but how was it at the end of the year? The pains of all those hours were annihilated—as completely vanished as if they had never been; while the momentary peep behind the window-curtain made me possessor of this radiant picture for evermore. This is an illustration of the universal fact. That brief instant of good has swallowed up long weary hours of pain. An inexperienced observer might, at the moment, have thought the conditions of my gain heavy enough; but the conditions being not only discharged, but annihilated long ago, and the treasure remaining for ever, would not my best friend congratulate me on that sunrise? Suppose it shining on, now and for ever, in the souls of a hundred other invalids or mourners, who may have marked it in the same manner, and who shall estimate its glory and its good!

It is clear that the conviction I speak of arises from the supposition—indispensable and, I believe, almost universal,—that pain is the chastisement of a Father; or, at least, that it is, in some way or other, ordained for, or instrumental to good. The experience of men leaves this belief uncontested, and incontestable. Otherwise, evil and pain would be, in their effects on sufferers, long-lived, if not as immortal as good. If we believed our sufferings to be inflicted by cruelty or malice, our pains would immediately take a permanent existence by becoming connected with our passions of fear, revenge, &c.; though still—as is known to students of the human soul,—the evil, however long sustained, must be finally absorbed in the good. We, of our age and state of society, however, have to do with none who believe pain to be inflicted by the malignity of a superior being. Those who are not so happy as to recognise in it a mere disguise of blessings otherwise unattainable, receive it, under some of the various theories of necessary imperfection, as something unavoidable, and therefore to be received placidly, if not gratefully. These would admit, as cheerfully as the adorers of a chastening Father, the richness of my wealth, as I lie, on New Year’s Eve, surrounded by the treasures of the departing year,—the kindly Year which has utterly destroyed for me so much that is terrible and grievous, while he leaves with me all the new knowledge and power, all the teachings from on high, and the love from far and near, and even the frailest-seeming blossom of pleasure that, in any moment, he has cast into my lap.

Thus has a succession of these friendly years now visited me and gone: and, as far as we can see, thus will every future one repeat the lesson. If any person disputes, no one can disprove, the result, wrought out, as it is, by natural experience. It is no contradiction, that some are soured by suffering. Their pains, like mine, are gone; and with them, as with others, it is ideas which remain; and ideas are essentially good, a part of the indestructible inner life which must, from its very nature, sooner or later part with its evil, through experience of the superabounding good of the universe. If one so soured by pain dies in this mood, the ideal part of him is that which remains to be carried into a fresh scene, where the mood cannot be fed by the experience which nourished it here. If he lives long enough to change his mood, there is every probability that the benignant influences which are perpetually at work throughout life and nature will dissolve and disperse his troubles, as the eastern lights, the breath of morning and the chirp of birds, steal in upon the senses of the troubled sleeper, and thence possessing themselves of his reason, convince him that the miseries of the night season were but a dream.

True and consoling as it may be for him, and for those about him, to find thus that “trouble may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning,” they have not fully learned the lessons of the sick-room if they are not aware that, while the troubles of that night season are thus sure to pass away, its product of thoughts and experiences must endure, till the stars which looked down upon the scene have dissolved in their courses. The constellations formed in the human soul, out of the chaos of pain, must have a duration compared with which, those of the firmament are but as the sparkles showered over the sea by the rising sun. To one still in this chaos,—if he do but see the creative process advancing,—it can be no reasonable matter of complaint, that his course is laid the while through such a region; and he will feel almost ashamed of even the most passing anxiety as to how soon he may be permitted to emerge.

SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID.

If all sorrow teaches us that nothing is more universal than sympathy, long and irremediable sickness proves plainly, that nothing is more various than its kinds and degrees; or, it may be, than the manifestations of the sympathetic grief which is shared by all. In a sharp sickness of a few days or weeks, all good and kind people act and speak much alike; are busy and ingenious in hastening the recovery, and providing relief meantime. It is when death is not to be looked for, nor yet health, that the test is applied; that, on either hand, the genius and the awkwardness of consolation present themselves, with a vast gradation between these extremes. It is easy and pleasant to be grateful for all, and to appreciate the love and pity which inspire them; but it is impossible to relish all equally, or to give the same admiration to that which flows forth fully and freely, and that sympathy which is suppressed, restricted, or in any way changed before it reaches its object.

O! what a heavenly solace to the soul is free sympathy in its hour of need! There is but one that can vie with it; and that one is, in truth, an enhancement of the same emotions. Communion with

is, indeed, the supreme, incommunicable delight which must be only referred to, because no sense of it can be conveyed by language; but, because it is of kindred nature, though separated by immeasurable distance, the solace of human sympathy ranks next to this. What a springing of the heart, like that on the discovery of a new truth, or entrance on a new enterprise in youth, attends the revelation to a sufferer of some stroke of genius in the consolations of one of the many who grieve for his affliction!

Many give their best thoughts to provide alleviations—whether in the form of medicines, or dainties for the mind or palate, for the eye or ear; and sweet is the enjoyment of the kindness which provides, whether the luxuries themselves can be relished or not. Some kind soul does a better service still, by affording opportunity for the sufferer to minister to other afflicted ones; to relieve some distress of poverty, or other want. This is sweet; but there are times when the personal trial needs some solace nearer and more direct than this. Then is the hour when the pain of sympathy in the hearts of friends impels them to cast about for relief, and tempts them to speak of hope to the sufferer who has no hope, or none compatible with the kind of consolation they attempt. Going back to the days when I, myself, was the sympathiser, I remember how strong is the temptation to imagine, and to assure the sick one, that his pain will not last; that the time will come when he will be well again; that he is already better; or, if it be impossible to say that, that he will get used to his affliction, and find it more endurable. How was it that I did not see that such offers of consolation must be purely irritating to one who was not feeling better, nor believing that he should ever be better, nor in a state to be cheered by any speculation as to whether his pain would, or would not become more endurable with time! Exactly in proportion to the zeal with which such considerations were pressed, must have been the sufferer’s clearness of perception of the disguised selfishness which dictated the topics and the words. I was (as I half suspected at the time, from my sense of restraint and uneasiness,) trying to console myself, and not my friend; indulging my own cowardice, my own shrinking from a painful truth, at the expense of the feelings of the sufferer for whom my heart was aching. I, who had no genius for consolation, at least in cases of illness, have been silently corrected by the benignest of reproofs,—by the experience of this genius in my own season of infirmity.

The manifestations of sympathetic feeling are as various as of other feelings; but the differences are marked by those whom they concern, with a keenness proportioned to the hunger of their heart. The sick man has even sometimes to assure himself of the grief of his friends, by their silence to him on circumstances which he cannot but feel most important. Their letters, extending over months and years, perhaps contain no mention of his trial, no reference to his condition, not a line which will show to his executors that the years over which they spread were years of illness. Though he can account for this suppression in the very love of his friends, yet it brings no particular consolation to him. Others, perhaps, administer praise;—praise, which is the last thing a humbled sufferer can appropriate;—praise of his patience or fortitude, which perhaps arrives at the moment when his resolution has wholly given way, and tears may be streaming from his eyes, and exclamations of anguish bursting from his lips. Such consolations require forbearance, however it may be mingled with gratitude. Far different was my emotion, when one said to me, with a face like the face of an angel, “Why should we be bent upon your being better, and make up a bright prospect for you? I see no brightness in it; and the time seems past for expecting you ever to be well.” How my spirits rose in a moment at this recognition of the truth!

And again—when I was weakly dwelling on a consideration which troubled me much for some time, that many of my friends gave me credit for far severer pain than I was enduring, and that I thus felt myself a sort of impostor, encroaching unwarrantably on their sympathies, “O! never mind!” was the reply. “That may be more than balanced hereafter. You will suffer more, with time—or you will seem to yourself to suffer more; and then you will have less sympathy. We grow tired of despairing, and think less and less of such cases, whether reasonably or not; and you may have less sympathy when you need it more. Meantime, you are not answerable for what your friends feel; and it is good for them—natural and right—whether you think it accurate or not.”

These words put a new heart into me, dismissed my scruples about the over-wealth of the present hour, and strengthened my soul for future need—the hour of which has not, however, yet arrived. It is a comfortable season, if it may but last, when one’s friends have ceased to hope unreasonably, and not “grown tired of despairing.”

Another friend, endowed both by nature and experience with the power I speak of, gave me strength for months—for my whole probation—by a brave utterance of one word, “Yes.” In answer to a hoping consoler, I told a truth of fact which sounded dismal, though because it was fact I spoke it in no dismal mood; and the genius at my side, by a confirmatory “Yes,” opened to my view a whole world of aid in prospect from a soul so penetrating and so true.

I know it is pleaded that there are sufferers not strong enough to bear the truth—who like to be soothed with hopes, well or ill-grounded; who find immediate comfort in being told that they will throw off their pain and be at ease. If there be such, I have never known them; and I doubt their existence. I believe that the tendency to make the worst of bodily complaints, on which so many satires (some just) are founded, is much aggravated, if not generally caused, by the tendency in the healthy and happy to disallow pain and a sad prospect. Children, weak and unpractised sufferers as they are, are found not to be consolable in the manner proposed. We all know the story of the little boy in the street, crying from the smart of a fall, who, when assured by a good-natured passenger that he should not cry, because he would be well to-morrow, answered, “Then I won’t cry to-morrow.”

The weakest sufferers are precisely those who are least able to appropriate the future and its good things. If this be true of the weak, and if the strong find it irritating to be medicined with soft fictions, or presented with anything but sound truth, the popular method of consolation appears to be excluded altogether. If my own life were to be lived over again, I should, from the strength of this conviction, convert most of its words of intended consolation into a far more consolatory condolence. Never again should the suffering spirit turn from me, as I fear it has often done—if too gentle to be irritated—yet sickening at hollow words of promise, when instant fellow-feeling was what was needed; and mournfully thinking, though too kind to say it, “‘the heart knoweth its own bitterness,’ and mine must endure alone.” The fair retribution has not followed, for never thus have I been left to feel.

I am here reminded of a sort of consolation, often offered, which I do not at all understand. I do not quarrel with it, however, for it may suit others less insensible to its claims. Sequestered sufferers, whose term of activity is over, and who apparently have only to endure as they may, and learn and enjoy what they can, till they receive their summons to enter on a new career, are referred for solace to their consciences—to their consciousness of services rendered to society, and duty done in active days. I strongly doubt whether Conscience was ever appointed to the function of Consoler. I more than doubt; I disbelieve it. According to my own experience, the utmost enjoyment that conscience is capable of is a negative state, that of ease. Its power of suffering is strong; and its natural and best condition I take to be one of simple ease; but for enjoyment and consolation, I believe we must look to other powers and susceptibilities of our nature.

It is inconceivable to me that our moral sense can ever be gratified by anything in our own moral state. It must be more offended by our own sins and weaknesses than by all the other sin and weakness in the world, in proportion as the evil is more profoundly known to it, and more nakedly disgusting, because it is stripped of the allowances and palliations which are admissible in all other cases. And this disgust is not compensated for by a corresponding satisfaction in our own good; for the very best good we can ever recognise in ourselves falls so far short of our own conceptions, so fails to satisfy the requisitions of the moral sense, that it can afford no gratification. A conscience which can enjoy itself on its own resources, must be of a very low degree—I should say of a spurious nature. In the highest state of health that I can conceive of—health spiritual and physical—I believe the function of the moral sense to be to delight itself in good wherever it is to be found, (and no wise person will look for it within himself,) to keep watch and ward against evil, and to cherish lowliness at home by its incessant consciousness of the imperfection there; an imperfection so keenly felt by an enlightened and accurate conscience, as to cause a wholesome going abroad for interests and gratifications, so that ease may be found in self-forgetfulness. The necessity which so many feel of a relief from their disappointed conscience—of adventitious merits on which to rely in the failure of their own—of a saving interposition between their own imperfections and the requisitions of God and duty; this prevalent need is an unanswerable rebuke to the presumption which talks of “the happiness of an approving conscience.” If it is thus in the season of vigour, health, and self-command, how inexpressibly absurd is the mistake of bringing such a topic as consolation to the sick and sequestered!—to the sick, whose whole heart is faint, and the mental frame disordered, more or less, in proportion as the body is jaded and the nerves unstrung; and to the sequestered, who perforce devour their own hearts, and find them the bitterest food! Why, one of the most painful trials of long sickness and seclusion is, that all old pains, all past moral sufferings, are renewed and magnified; that in sleepless nights, and especially on waking in the morning, every old sin and folly, and even the most trifling error, rises up anew, however long ago repented of and forgiven, and, in the activity of ordinary life, forgotten. Any sort of ghost is more easily laid than this kind. Though their “brains were out” long years ago, they continue to come—they present themselves in defiance of all—even the most sacred, exorcisms; so that it becomes one of the duties of the sick to bear their presence with composure, and cease to struggle for their exclusion. In the midst of this experience, to have one’s friends come, and desire one to look back upon one’s past life for complacency and self-gratulation, in order to assure one’s self how well one has used one’s powers and opportunities—how much one has done for society—how lofty and honourable a life one has led—and so forth,—O! what words can express the absurdity! If the consoler could but see the invisible array which comes thronging into the sick-room from the deep regions of the past, brought by every sound of nature without, by every movement of the spirit within; the pale lips of dead friends whispering one’s hard or careless words, spoken in childhood or youth—the upbraiding gaze of duties slighted and opportunities neglected—the horrible apparition of old selfishness and pusillanimities—the disgusting foolery of idiotic vanities; if the consoler could catch a momentary glimpse of this phantasmagoria of the sick-room, he would turn with fear and loathing from the past, and shudder, while the inured invalid smiles, at such a choice of topics for solace.

Then it might become the turn of the invalid to console—to explain how these are but phantoms—how solace does abound, though it comes from every region rather than the kingdom of conscience—and how, while the past is dry and dreary enough, there are streams descending from the heaven-bright mountain-tops of the future, forever flowing down to our retreat, pure enough for the most fastidious longing, abundant enough for the thirstiest soul. The consoler may then learn for life how easily all personal complacencies may be dispensed with, while the sufferer can tell of a true “refuge and strength,” and “present help,” and of this “river that gladdens the city of God,” and flows to meet us as we journey towards it.

But, the anxious consoler may say, Is it right so to banish these complacencies? If you really have served the world, however imperfectly in your own eyes—if you have sown thoughts in minds, and called forth affections in hearts—ought you to deny the facts, or that they are good?

By no means. If you assure me of these things as facts, you bring me good news. But I should feel it as good news—perhaps better—if the service had been rendered by anybody else; for the simple reason that the good would then be to me unmixed, which now it is not, nor can ever be. Call upon me, whenever you will, to rejoice that men have gained an idea—that the aged or children have been amused or strengthened—or that society has been relieved from an abuse, by anyone’s means. Rouse me from the depression of pain, wake me up from sleep for the better refreshment of this news, and I will rejoice; but do not think to enhance your tidings by telling me that these things are my doing. The only effect of that is, to remind me how much better the service might have been done. Surely we both believe that all truth and goodness are destined to arise sooner or later among men. To be visited with new or good ideas is a blessing: to be appointed to communicate them is an honour: but these blessings and honours are a ground for personal humility, not complacency. It is to me impossible to connect the idea of merit with any such destiny. There is nothing we have so little hand in as our own ideas; there is no occupation less voluntary than that of uttering them. And so will every servant of his race say of his own species of service. He will rejoice that something new and good is acquired or attained by his race; and he must naturally be thankful for the honour and enjoyment appointed to him as the medium: but he can find no ground for personal complacency in the matter. He will be utterly careless whether men know, a hundred years hence, through whom they received the benefit, or whether his name has been for ninety years lost to all but his intimate friends. If he were offered the choice between this reputation and the fact of his having conquered one unkind emotion, or made one single effort of endurance, he would eagerly prefer the secret genuine good to the blazoned apparent one.

“There is something extremely absurd and ridiculous,” says the holy Hartley, “in supposing a person to be perpetually feasting his own mind with, and dwelling upon, the praises that already are, or which he hopes will hereafter be, given to him. And yet, unless a man does this (which besides would evidently incapacitate him for deserving or obtaining praise), how can he fill up a thousandth part of his time with the pleasures of ambition?” Even more absurd is to me the image of a lonely sufferer, trying not only to fill up his time, but to soothe his pains of body, and calm his anguish of spirit, by drawing delight from the remembrance of his own little contrivings and doings in the world. I would recommend, in preference, the project of drawing sunbeams from cucumbers, as a solace on the rack.

If it is asked, after all this, “who can console? how is it possible to please and soothe the sufferer?” I answer, that nothing is easier—nothing is more common—nothing more natural to simple-minded people. Never creature had more title than I to speak confidently of this, from experience which melts my heart day by day. “Speaking the truth in love,” is the way. One who does this cannot but be an angel of consolation. Everything but truth becomes loathed in a sick-room. The restless can repose on nothing but this: the sharpened intellectual appetite can be satisfied with nothing less substantial; the susceptible spiritual taste can be gratified with nothing less genuine, noble, and fair.

Then the question arises, what sort of truth? Why, that which is appropriate to the one who administers. To each a separate gift may be appointed. Only let all avoid every shadow of falsehood. Let the nurse avow that the medicine is nauseous. Let the physician declare that the treatment will be painful. Let sister, or brother, or friend, tell me that I must never look to be well. When the time approaches that I am to die, let me be told that I am to die, and when. If I encroach thoughtlessly on the time or strength of those about me, let me be reminded; if selfishly, let me be remonstrated with. Thus to speak the truth in love is in the power of all. Higher service is a talent in the hands of those who have a genius for sympathy—a genius less rare, thank God! than other kinds.

The archangel of consolation is the friend who, at a fitting moment, reminds me of my high calling. Not the clergyman, making his stated visit for the purpose; not the zealous watcher for souls, who fears for mine on the ground of difference of doctrine; not the meddler, who takes charge of my spiritual relations whether I will or no: none such are, by virtue of these offices, effectual consolers. But if the friend of my brighter days—with whom I have travelled, sung, danced, consulted about my work, enjoyed books and society—the friend, now far off, busy in robust health of body and spirit, sends me a missive which says, “You languish—you are sick at heart. But put this sickness from your heart, and your pains under your feet. You have known before that there is a divine joy in endurance. Prove it now. Lift up your head amidst your lot, and wait the issue—not submissively, but heroically. Live out your season, not wistfully looking out for hope, or shrinking from fear: but serenely and immoveably (because in full understanding with God), ENDURE;” if such an appeal comes, and at any hour (for there is no hour of sickness with which it is not congenial), what an influx of life does it bring! What a heavenly day, week, year, succeeds! How the crippled spirit leaps up at the miraculous touch, and springs on its way, praising God in his very temple! And again, when a thoughtful, conscientious spirit, guided by an analytical intellect, utters from a distance, not as an appeal, but as in soliloquy—“With an eternity before us, it cannot matter much, if we would but consider it, whether we are laid aside for such or such a length of time; whether we can be busy for others at this moment, or must wait so many months or years: and as for ourselves, how can we tell but that we shall find the experience we are gaining worth any cost of suffering?” When such a thought comes under my eye, as if I overheard some spirit in the night-wind communing with itself, I feel a strong and kindly hand take my heart and steep it in patience. Again, a kind visitor, eloquent by using few words or none on matters nearest at heart, takes down from my shelves a Fenelon or other quietist, and with silent finger points to the saying, inexhaustible in truth, that it is what we are that matters—not what we do; and here, in one moment, do I find a boundless career opened to me within the four walls of my room. Again—a tender spirit, anxious under responsibility, says “If you could but fully feel, as you will one day feel, the privilege of having your life and lot settled for you—your spirit free, your mind at leisure—no hurry, no conflicts nor misgivings about duty—you would easily conceive that there are some who would gladly exchange with you, and pour into your lap willingly all the good things that you seem to be without. I dare say we are very philosophical for you about your sufferings; but where I do sympathise with you, is in regard to this clearness and settledness of your life’s duty and affairs.” To this again, my whole being cries “amen!” Here are a few of the heavenly messages which have come to me through human hearts. When below these are ranged the innumerable ministrations of help, of smiles and tears, of solid comforts and beguiling luxuries, it does indeed seem impossible that I should be in any degree dubious or hard to please in the contemplation and reception of human sympathy. What I have said of its most perfect forms, I have said from my own knowledge.

Under this head of sympathy occurs the important practical consideration, what should be the arrangements of a permanent invalid, in regard to companionship?

In most cases, this is no matter of choice, but a point settled by domestic circumstances; where it is not, however, I cannot but wish that more consideration was given to the comfort of being alone in illness. This is so far from being understood, that, though the cases are numerous of sufferers who prefer, and earnestly endeavour to procure solitude, they are, if not resisted, wondered at, and humoured for a supposed peculiarity, rather than seen to be reasonable; whereas, if they are listened to as the best judges of their own comforts, it may be found that they have reason on their side.

In a house full of relations, it may be unnatural for an invalid to pass many hours alone; but where, as is the case with numbers who belong to the middle and working classes of society, all the other members of the family have occupations and duties—regular business in life—without the charge of the invalid, it does appear to me, and is felt by me through experience, to be incomparably the happiest plan for the sick one to live alone. By experience it is found to be not only expedient, but important in regard to happiness. In pictures of the sick-room, drawn by those who are at ease and happy, the group is always of the sufferer supported and soothed by some loving hand and tender voice, and every pain shared by sympathy. This may be an approach to truth in the case of short sharp illness, where the sufferer is taken by surprise, and has his whole lesson to learn; but a very different account would often be given by an invalid whose burden is for life, and who has learned the truths of the condition. We, of that class, find it best and happiest to admit our friends only in our easiest hours, when we can enjoy their society, and feel ourselves least of a burden; and it is indispensable to our peace of mind to be alone when in pain. Where welfare of body is out of the question, peace of mind becomes an object of supreme importance; and this is unattainable when we see any whom we love suffering, in our sufferings, even more than we do: or when we know that we have been the means of turning any one’s day of ease and pleasure into sorrow. The experience of years qualifies me to speak about this; and I declare that I know of no comfort, at the end of a day of suffering, comparable to that of feeling that, however it may have been with one’s self, no one else has suffered,—that one’s own fogs have dimmed nobody’s sunshine: and when this grows to be the nightly comfort of weeks, months, and years, it becomes the most valuable element in the peace of the sufferer, and lightens his whole lot. If not in the midst of pain, he feels in prospect of it, and after it, that it really matters very little whether and how much he suffers, if nobody else is pained by it. It becomes a habit, from the recurrence of this feeling, to write letters in one’s best mood; to give an account of one’s self in one’s best hours; to present one’s most cheerful aspect abroad, and keep one’s miseries close at home, under lock and key.

The objection commonly brought to this system is, that it is injurious to one’s loving and anxious friends. But I do not find it so. So loving and anxious are my friends, that they do not need the wretched stimulus of seeing me suffer. All that can be done for me is done; and it would be no consolation, but a great aggravation to me, that they should suffer gratuitously. Their general love, and care and concern for me, are fully satisfying to me; and I know that I have only to call and they will come. But I feel with inexpressible comfort what a difference there is between their general concern for my state, and the pain of days, now separately spent by them in ease and joy, which would be more dreary to them than to me, if I let them share my dreariness. A trifling incident, which occurred the other day, gave me strong satisfaction, as proving that where my method can be made a system, it works well,—promoting the cheerfulness, without impairing the sympathies, of even the youngest of those for whom I have a welcome only at certain seasons. Two little friends were with me—one greatly admiring various luxuries about me, and thence proceeding to reckon up a large amount of privileges and enjoyments in my possession and prospect, when his companion said, with a sigh and tenderness of tone, musical to my soul, “Ah! but then, there is the unhealthiness! that spoils everything!” To which the other mournfully assented. What more could these children know by having their hearts wounded by the spectacle of suffering! And if they may be spared the pain, larger minds and more ripened hearts must require it even less.

I need not say that this plan of solitude in pain supposes sufficient and kindly attendance; but, for a permanence, (though I know it to be otherwise in short illnesses,) there is no attendance to be compared with that of a servant. In as far as the help is mechanical, it tends to habituate the sufferer to his lot, and the relation is sustained with the least expenditure of painful feeling on both sides,—with the least anxiety, as well as pain of sympathy.

There is sufficient kindliness excited in the attendant by the appeal to her feelings, while there is no call for the agony which a congenial friend must sustain; and, on the other side, there is no overwhelming sense of obligation to the nurse, but a satisfactory consciousness of, at least, partial requital. It is no small item in the account of this method, that the promotion of the happiness of the attendant is a cheerful, natural, and salutary pursuit to the invalid; a daily duty imposed when so many others are withdrawn; a fragment of beneficent power left in the scene of its wreck. To dignify her by putting one’s self under express and frequent obligations to her,—to rejoice her by enjoying relief or pleasure devised by her ingenuity,—to spare her health, promote her little fortunes, encourage her best tastes and aspirations, and draw out for her, as well as for one’s self, the lessons of the sick-room; to study these things befits the mutual relation, and cheers the life of the sufferer, while the connexion is not so close as to involve the severer pains of sympathy.

In a sick-room, where health is never again to enter, it is well and easily understood that commemorative seasons, anniversaries, &c., are far from being, as elsewhere, among the gayest. In truth, they are often mournful enough; but I am confident that they are most cheerily spent alone. No heart leal to its kind can bear to let them pass unnoticed. It is an intolerable selfishness to abolish them, as far as in one lies, because they have ceased to gladden us; this would be as paltry as to turn one’s back on an old companion, formerly all merriment and smiles, because he comes to us in mourning or in tears; or, let us say, abstracted and thoughtful. But it does not succeed to make small attempts to keep the day, for the sake of one or two companions, putting up Christmas holly over the fire-place, where there is only one to sit, and having Christmas fare brought to the couch, to be sent away again. But when one is alone, the matter is very different, and becomes far gayer. There is nothing, then, to prevent my being in the world again for the day; no human presence to chain me to my prison. When my servant is dismissed to make merry with the rest, and I am alone with my holly sprigs and the memories of old years, I can flit at will among the family groups that I see gathered round many fire-sides. If the morning is sunny, I actually see, with my telescope, the gay crowds that throng the opposite shore after church; and the sight revives the dimmed image of crowded streets, and brings back to my ear the almost forgotten sound of “the church-going bell.” When it grows dark, and my lamp burns so steadily as to give of itself a deep impression of stillness; when there is no sound but of the cinder dropping on the hearth, or of the turning of the leaf as I read or write, there is something of a holiday feeling in pausing to view and listen to what is going on in all the houses where one has an interest. By means of that inimitable telescope we carry about in us, (which acts as well in the pitch-dark night as at noon, and defies distance and house-walls,) I see in turn a Christmas tree, with its tapers glittering in a room full of young eyes, or the games and the dance, or the cozy little party of elderly folk round the fire or the tea-table; and I hear, not the actual jokes, but the laughter, and “the sough of words without the sense,” and can catch at least the soul of the merriment. If I am at ease, I am verily among them: if not, I am thankful not to be there; and, at all events have, from life-long association, caught so much of the contagious spirit of sociability, that, when midnight comes, I lie down with an impression of its having been an extraordinary day,—a social one, though, (as these are the days when one is sure not to see one’s doctor,) the face of my maid is, in reality, the only one that has met my eyes. O yes! on these marked days, however it may be on ordinary ones, our friends may take our word for it that we are most cheery alone.

There is one day of the year of which everybody will believe this,—one’s birthday. Regarded as a birthday usually and naturally is, in ordinary circumstances, there must be something melancholy in it when attempted to be kept in the sick-room of a permanent invalid: but this melancholy is lost when one is alone. It is true, one’s mind goes back to the festivals of the day in one’s childhood, and to the mantling feelings of one’s youth, when each birthday brought us a step further into the world which lay in its gay charms all before us; and we find the gray hairs and thin hands of to-day form an ugly contrast with the images conjured up. But, in another view,—a view which can be enjoyed only in silence and alone,—what a sanctity belongs to these gray hairs and other tokens of decay! They and the day are each tokens (how dear!) seals (how distinct!) of promise of our selection for a not distant admittance to a station whence we may review life and the world to better advantage than even now. If, with every year of contemplation, the world appears a more astonishing fact, and life a more noble mystery, we cannot but be reanimated by the recurrence of every birthday which draws us up higher into the region of contemplation, and nearer to the gate within which lies the disclosure of all mysteries which worthily occupy us now, and doubtless a new series of others adapted to our then ennobled powers. This is a birthday experience which it requires leisure and solitude fully to appropriate: and it yet leaves liberty for the human sympathies which belong to the season. Post time is looked to for its sure freight of love and pity and good wishes from a few—or not a few—whose affections keep them even more on the watch than ourselves for one’s own holy day. Letters are one’s best company on that day,—and best if they are one’s only company.

There is one point on which I can speak only as every one may,—from observation and thought,—but on which I have a very decided impression, notwithstanding;—as to the conduct which would be dictated by the truest sympathy in a case which not unfrequently occurs. I have known instances of persons, most benevolent and thoughtless of themselves through life, becoming exigeans and oppressive in their last days, merely through want of information as to what they are doing. One attendant is usually preferred to all others by a dying person: and I have seen the favourite nurse worn out by the incessant service required day and night by the sufferer, in ignorance how time passes,—even in mistake of the night for the day. I have known the most devoted and benevolent of women call up her young nurse from a snatch of sleep at two in the morning to read aloud, when she had been reading aloud for six or seven hours of the preceding day. I have known a kind-hearted and self-denying man require of two or three members of his family to sit and talk and be merry in his chamber, two or three hours after midnight:—and both for want of a mere intimation that it was night, and time for the nurse’s rest. How it makes one shudder to think of this being one’s own case! The passing doubt whether one can trust one’s friends, when the season comes, to save one from such tyrannical mistakes, is a doubt sickening to the heart. Nothing is clearer now, when we are in full possession of ourselves, than that the most sympathising friend is one who cherishes our amiability and reasonableness to the last,—who preserves our perfect understanding with those about us through all dimness of the eyes and wandering of the brain. If I could not trust my friends to save me from involuntary encroachment at the last, I had rather scoop myself a hole in the sand of the desert, and die alone, than be tended by the gentlest hands, and soothed by the most loving voices in the choicest chamber.

It is doubtless easiest to comply at the moment of such exactions, at any sacrifice of subsequent health and nerve: but it should be remembered that the sacrifice is not of health alone. The posthumous love must suffer;—or if not the love, the respect for the departed. It is impossible to love one who appears in a selfish aspect,—though it be the merest mask, most briefly worn,—so well as the countenance that never concealed its benevolence for a moment. Let then the timely thought of the future,—a provident care for the memory of the dying friend, suggest the easy prudence which may obviate encroachment. Let the bewildered sufferer be frequently and cheerfully told the hour,—and informed that such an one is going to rest, to be replaced by another for so many hours. A little forethought and resource may generally prevent the great evil I speak of: and if not, true sympathy requires that there should be a cheerful word of remonstrance—or let us call it rectification. So may it be with me, if so lingering a departure be appointed! Thus would every one say beforehand; and it seems to me a sin against every one’s moral rights not to take him at his word.