368 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



system of recognition and care more intelligent, much more devoted 

 had been employed, so much more good could have been done, let the 

 conventional veil of sacred personality be removed from the very begin- 

 nings of the letter, and thus complete the picture as contained in its 

 entirety : " I can only thank you," she begins, " for all your generous 

 thoughts and deeds." Carlyle's remorse at his meager treatment of his 

 " poor Jeanie " comes deprecatingly to mind as one now reads this 

 again. " You are say-well and do-well bound in one frame." — What 

 one ought to have been and done, rather. " Your Christmas book 

 came; it was full of words of comfort. I have written to you in 

 thought many times; it requires heroic effort to make it real. The 

 lovely flowers spoke of you many days after you were here. It will soon 

 be time to think of your coining again — always good to see you, and 

 have your presence." 



Unquestionably this is too personal to be published except for one 

 reason — the immeasurable reason for calling attention anew, and with 

 all the emphasis possible, to the need of a more universal recognition 

 of the thickly peopled realm of psychalgia — the mentally anguished, the 

 sick-of-soul — as well as to the never-lessening need there is of finding 

 ways and means for more successful amelioration of such suffering, 

 and of applying these with an efficiency heretofore unattempted. How 

 often has one in the presence of this unique sufferer, as has been the 

 case in the presence of many another less distinctive, felt an utter un- 

 preparedness for rendering the relief which instinctively one has felt 

 to be needed. Yet note how she understood, magnified and appreciated 

 what little one did attempt. Could one have been intelligent enough, 

 skillful enough, sympathetic enough, and could those in more immedi- 

 ate association with her have been similarly endowed and prepared, 

 what indeed might not have been done to relieve, if not the bodily suf- 

 fering then the mind and heart suffering, which was ever so present and 

 so insulting. 



