"Then, in most cases, you had better not speak at all."

"I never thought of that. I can stop talking, if I try."

"So you can, and you can do more. You can get into the habit of finding
'the south or sunny side of things,' as Jean Paul says, and if you do, you
will not be likely to have a snow-storm in your heart very often. Besides,
you ought to remember, that all these disappointments and crosses are a
part of your education for heaven, and you should endeavor to improve them
as such, so that their good effect will not be lost. And another thing, my
child: you ought to ask God to assist you in this self-government--to make
you his child--to give you a new heart--to teach you to love Christ, and to
be like him. Then you will seldom feel cross and fretful, because things go
wrong. You will be cheerful and good-natured. You will make others
happy--and you will very soon forget the old story, that nobody loves you."

Now, many little boys and girls--possibly some who read this story--would
have thought this task too hard. They would have regarded it as a pretty
severe penance. Perhaps they would have concluded, after having put all
these difficult things into one scale, and the thing to be gained by them
into the other, that the reward was not worth so great a sacrifice. So
thought not Angeline, however. She began the work in earnest, that very
day. She went over to her uncle's, with an unusual amount of sunshine in
her countenance, and made it all right with Jeannette. In the evening, she
told her little brother James what she intended to do, and invited him to
help her; and before they retired to rest that night, they knelt down
together and offered up a prayer, that God, for Christ's sake, would help
them in governing themselves.

One day--perhaps some six weeks after this--Mrs Standish said, smilingly,