Real troubles can never fail to receive the tribute of warm and enduring compassion; but real troubles do not last forever, nor are they the ones concerning which the most rout is made, for deep sorrow is apt to seek to wrap itself in silence, and of the literally cureless diseases of the body, these the sufferer conceals to the last possible moment, and those, by the very fever they excite in the blood, kindle cheerfulness. We are so constituted, both physically and spiritually, that, under too heavy a burden for us to bear, we sink and fail; and real trouble of any amount wears us out, be it of body or of soul, before any great lapse of time, and puts an end to any need of sympathy-wears us out before we have a chance to wear patience out. It is, except for very rare and phenomenal cases, the unreal troubles, the actually slight ones, those to be in some measure avoided, mitigated, or overlooked, that are spread before other people with loudest iteration and demand for sympathy.
This is especially to be noticed in cases of partial illness, where much discomfort is experienced, some pain, great weariness, perhaps, yet not positive danger; but you will observe that where there is an invalid suffering such illness, no guest enters the door who is not hospitably entreated with a detailed account of that invalid's least symptoms and, unless the guest be nurse or physician, to what result? It is even then ten to one if the complainer be well listened to, the first words having recalled some similar instance in the guest's experience, impatience to recount which, according to the very same tendency, dulls the ear to all the rest of the sickly recital. It is perhaps exceedingly sad and dreary to be obliged to suffer as this invalid does; we pity greatly; but when the invalid still lives on, growing no worse, we sometimes feel obliged to husband our resources, and to question if good taste would not try to wear the bright face instead of saddening the world with the darkest side. In reality, we are most of us inclined to sympathize generously with sorrow, with injustice, with pain ; but the instinct of self-preservation prevents our being able, if we are willing, to endure a too prolonged strain, and it may be pronounced as an axiom that the individual receives the best and surest sympathy who makes the least outcry, and bears the sad lot with fortitude.
It is a little singular, withal, tnat the possessors of these numerous private woes private? one should rather say public ! so frequently forget common self-respect. What would the same individuals say of the beggar who goes about showing his sores? And are they doing any differently? Are they not exhibiting a corresponding sort of uncleanness, the same want of modesty and shame, making themselves, as far as in them lies, and with the mere difference and not always that that 'exists between the ills of body and mind, as loathsome in all comparative degree?
The chief thing to be done in this regard by those who consider themselves the victims of any remarkable affliction is always to remember that, in spite of all kindness shown, nobody is so interesting to another as he is to himself, and that dignity requires one to keep one's sorrows, as well as one's joys, rather sacred than otherwise. As a rule, in the ecstasies of our great happiness or our great grief, we prefer to be alone. Why in our small happinesses and small griefs do we need so much more companionship? It seems as if one must, after all, be the possessor of a very reassuring amount of vanity to suppose that one should receive more consideration or consolation from one's acquaintances than Job did from his friends.
If keeping our woes to ourselves is one help to self-respect, another is the habit of taking life as it comes, sure that it is the best for us that comes, that we are not inferior wretches in the divine eyes, but that we are here to perform an appointed part. We will not then spend time in waiting for a path to open for us: "We will go ahead and open it." "By doing my own work," says Ruskin, "poor as it may seem to some, I shall better fulfil God's end in making me what I am, and more truly glorify His name than if I were either going out of my own sphere to do the work of another, or calling another into my sphere to do my proper work for me."
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