“Oh, and how it depresses one, not to know if you please!—nay, to be pretty sure you don’t! I’m sure, I could do anything, almost, to give satisfaction—take down a bed, lift a box!—”

“You would be like the French crossing the Alps when the trumpet sounded.”

“Just so; I lose all sense of fatigue and crossness.”

“Can’t you hear a mental trumpet?”

“What?”

“Something within, that shall cheer you along your path.”

“Ah! I fear I can’t.”

And the poor little woman, gushing into grief, told me, the acquaintance of an hour, such a tale of woe, that my tears flowed with hers. She was comforted by my sympathy, and said, clasping her hands—

“Oh that I could see my path clear!”