Think what your own life would be if day day after day brought
you nothing but toil; if you had nothing to look back upon, nothing to
look forward to, but the labour that makes a machine of you, deadening
the power to care, and holding mind and body in the galling bondage and
weariness of everlasting routine."
She thought laughter an unfailing specific for most of the ills of
life. "We can none of us be thankful enough for the sensation," she
said. "Nothing relieves the mental oppression, which does such moral
and physical harm, like mirth; of course, I mean legitimate laughter,
not levity, nor the ill-natured rejoicing of small minds in such
subjects for sorrow as their neighbours' faults, follies, and mistakes.
What I am thinking of is the pleasure without excitement which there is
in sympathetic intercourse with those large, loving natures that
elevate, and the laughter without bitterness which is always a part of
it."
Like most people whose goodness is neither affected nor acquired, but
natural to them, Ideala saw no merit in her own works, and would not
take the credit she deserved for them; nor would she have had her good
deeds known at all if she could have helped it.
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