In a social gathering, in a certain town, not long ago, the conversation turned to the prevailing tendency among men and women to fret over evils, whether imaginary or real.
A minister who was present related an incident in his own experience the moral of which is too valuable to be lost.
At a celebrated watering-place he met a lady who seemed hovering on the brink of the grave: her cheeks were hollow and worn, her manner listless, her step languid, and her brow wearing the severe contraction so indicative of both mental and physical sufferings, so that she was to all observers an object of sincerest pity. Some years afterward he encountered this same lady: she was now bright, and fresh, and youthful, so full of healthful buoyancy and so joyous in expression that he questioned himself if he hadn’t deceived himself with regard to her identity.
“Is it possible,” said he, “that I see before me Mrs. B, who presented such a doleful appearance at the Springs several years ago?”
“The very same.”
“And pray tell me, madam, the secret of your cure. What means did you use to attain to such vigor of mind and body, to such cheerfulness?”
“The most simple remedy,” returned she with beaming face.” I stopped worrying, and began to live; that was all.”
Many a time since that evening this sentence recurred to me when dejected, complaining spirits have passed before me. I wish that all the anxious world could take to itself this specific remedy for its baneful diseases. It is so common for us to turn God’s serene sky into blackness — so common to stand under all the bright, beautiful heavens, and, instead of looking straight up to the celestial blue, to interpose a somber cloud that our souls weave out of their own morbid tissues.
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