"You may ask the Great King. This is what you must say: 'Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth: keep the door of my lips.' Then He will send Patience to stand on one side and Love on the other, and no unkind word will dare come out."
THE GOLDEN WINDOWS
"Oh dear!" exclaimed Ruth impatiently, as she put the library to rights. "I do wish we could have a new carpet this spring. I never liked this at all, and now it is so faded and worn it is simply dreadful. It makes me miserable every time I look at it."
"Then, since you say you cannot very well have a new one just now, why do you look at it?" asked Aunt Rachel, smiling. "There are a great many unpleasant things in our lives—we find them every day—some of which we are unable to prevent. If we persist in thinking of them and keep fretting about them, we make ourselves and everybody about us miserable.
"It seems to me we might all learn a lesson from the bees. I have read that when anything objectionable that they are unable to remove gets into a hive, they set to work immediately to cover it all over with wax. They just shut it up in an airtight cell, and then forget all about it. Isn't that a wise way for us to manage with our vexations and troubles?