you will find it unwise to dig up your potatoes every day to see if they
are growing." Nor has the moral of his remark been lost on me. It is as
useless to be constantly digging up a person's symptoms to see if they
are better, and still greater folly to preach long sermons of advice to
such as are under the despotism of ungoverned emotion, or whirled on the
wayward currents of hysteria. To read the riot act to a mob of emotions
is valueless, and he who is wise will choose a more wholesome hour for
his exhortations. Before and after are the preacher's hopeful occasions,
not the moment when excitement is at its highest, and the self-control
we seek to get help from at its lowest ebb.

There are, as I have said, two periods when such an effort is wise,--the
days of health, or of the small beginnings of nervousness, and of the
uncontrol which is born of it, and the time when, after months or years
of sickness, you have given back to the patient physical vigor, and with
it a growing capacity to cultivate anew those lesser morals which
fatally wither before the weariness of pain and bodily weakness.

When you sit beside a woman you have saved from mournful years of
feebleness, and set afoot to taste anew the joy of wholesome life,
nothing seems easier than with hope at your side, and a chorus of
gratitude in the woman's soul, to show her how she has failed, and to
make clear to her how she is to regain and preserve domination over her
emotions; nor is it then less easy to point out how the moral failures,
which were the outcome of sickness, may be atoned for in the future, now
that she has been taught to see their meaning, their evils for herself,
and their sad influence on the lives of others.

To preach to a mass of unseen people is quite another and a less easy
matter. I approach it with a strong sense that it may have far less