1840-42. HOW TO BEAR SORROW. 275 



costly, however, and a project I have set (instead of myself) on 

 foot, of paying my way (literally paying my way) by offering my 

 friends sixpenny or threepenny rides according to the distance, 

 has not been so successful as I could have wished. I observed 

 to the coachman to-day, that if it was not for lame people like 

 me, he would often want a job, and that I need not expect much 

 compassion from him. I am not sure that he knew what the 

 word compassion meant, but he was not destitute of the reality, 

 for he insisted on helping me up stairs, and as good as carried 

 me to the top. One great consolation, however, still remains, 

 in thinking of the vexation the bootmaker must feel in knowing 

 that my shoe- soles will not be thinned by the depth of a wafer 

 by all my locomotions. 



" ' God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,' is not that a 

 beautiful thought ? To me that expression so fully conveys the 

 idea of the kind way in which God moulds our state of mind to 

 our condition, that for these words alone, I can reverence their 

 author Sterne, a man not otherwise ranked among my idols. 

 And among the things I have lately been most thankful for, 

 was the power at times to turn away a dark or sorrowful thought 

 by some perception of the ludicrous in things around. Our 

 great sources of consolation are not to be wasted on everyday 

 griefs ; but these, little as they singly are, may, by oft repetition, 

 devour a man piecemeal. I have a friend, a solemn serious 

 pious man, who thinks he will be allowed to laugh in heaven. 

 I daresay he will, but if he laughs as loudly as he does upon 

 earth (like to the neighing of a troop of wild horses), he will 

 get a box on the ear now and then from the angel Gabriel, for 

 drowning the melody of their harp -music. 



" At this rate I don't know where I'll land next, so I shall be 

 warned and stay my mad pen. This is a love-letter to yourself, 

 I only send the love at present to Maggie, and bid her give the 

 same to my dear god- daughter, who is often in my thoughts." 



In a letter of this period, Dr. Cairns tells James Eussell of 

 the introductory lecture spoken of in the letter just given : 



" I never," he says, " admired anything more than your cousin's 

 firmness in writing down the agonies of pain. I heard his 



