50
ll you possibly can. If you are a mother, begin this very day to exercise more patience with your children, recalling over and over again that when you were a child you were just as they are. And remember, for it is only too true, that the day is fast coming when your little boy will no longer be a little boy, he will be a man, and will have gone away from you. Then many times you will wish him back, and you will look back on those days when you thought your nerves were being ruined, and feel a great swelling in your breast, and breathing a sigh, whisper to yourself, "Dear God, I hope I did all I ought to have done for him while he was little."
I know that any one can live with children and find happiness in being one with them, and I know of no better thing to do. After we have hold of ourselves with a firm grip we should endeavor to do this.
I have had people suffering with "nerves" tell me they had lost a little boy or a little girl, and that it seems impossible to get over this loss. I cannot tell you how much I long to help such people. But I always urge them to go right on playing with other children and to remember, for to me it is certain truth, that they will meet that little child again. There should be nothing to grieve about in such a loss. To find compensation, the one who has had such a grief has only to keep on playing the part of a true man or true woman. Childhood with all its pains and pleasures is everywhere about us. And childhood is only the beginning of immortality.
Late one night, a number of years ago, I was sitting in a little restaurant in a western town, and was feeling very lonely and miserable. Sorrow weighed heavily upon me that night and the world never seemed blacker, yet I think my belief in the immortality of the soul had never been more certain. I looked up and high on the smoke-stained wall hung a painted picture of an old-time ship with many sails set. This painting pictured the ship sailing through the darkness of night. But through the dark, seemingly re