I passed her by chance and did not know her... Her fresh face had grown pale and withered... her tender body had wasted away and grown thin... her radiant countenance had shrunken and dimmed... so that she seemed to be in the last stages of life when she had barely crossed its first. I asked her what was the matter, and she began to say:

This life, young as my acquain-tance with it is, has wearied me and I have wearied it... it has grown weary of me and I of it... yet each of us still grips the other with force and violence, clinging to the other cruelly and without eagerness, cleaving to it in stubbornness and without desire... I do not throw out these words at random, nor do I utter them from spite or caprice; I mean every word of them... And you ask about the cause that has driven me to this dreadful pessimism, which has made of me an aged woman in the prime of life and the flower of youth... It is this: for as long as I have lived, through all the years of my life, many or few, that I have crossed, I have been forever labor-ing in search of an answer to a question that possessed me when I was small, and took hold of my thought and mind when I was grown; it exhausted my imagina-tion and drove me down to water-ing places I could well have spared myself from seeking... The more I thought of it, the more it fled from me; and the more I pressed the pursuit, the farther it withdrew... That question is: Why do I live? What is the cause of my existence, and of the existence of every living being on this earth?...

I put this question of mine, when

I was a crawling child, to my mother, and she was astonished that a girl like me should produce such a question — yet she quickly answered me, saying: You were placed on this earth, my daughter, first to worship God, and then to learn and be educated... And I asked her eagerly: And who is God, mother, that I should exist on this earth merely to worship him?... My mother knit her brows and pressed her fingers over my mouth, signaling me to be silent and not to blaspheme by uttering such questions — for God sees me and hears me wherever I am and wherever I turn, and He will call me to account for my deeds and for what my hands have wrought...

After that I began to picture God as a human being, but one of the giants, with two very wide eyes and two large ears, seeing and hearing everything you do...

And I would imagine him at night, in the pitch darkness, with his gleaming eyes scattered as glittering stars across the reaches of the sky, watching me through the window; and I would shut my eyes in terror, throw my cover over my head, and surrender to sleep — only to find him looming in my dreams, now rebuking me for some ugly deed I had done, now praising another, glorious one, that my hands had offered... Then I outgrew childhood, and the meaning of the word God changed for me... I saw that it is folly and ingratitude to believe that our existence in this world is for nothing but the worship of the Creator... He has no need of us; He does not want us as slaves who spend their lives in prostra-tion... though it is indeed our duty to thank Him for His gifts and His blessings and to sing His praise always... But my eternal question soon came back to me, insisting that the answer be found... And I went off in my turn, searching for an answer that would convince and satisfy... And they said: We were placed in this world to carry out a mission. I said: And what is

Vicks VapoRub

A gentle salve that fights colds in two ways

Vicks VapoRub

Your child gets relief in two ways: you rub his chest and neck with Vicks VapoRub at bedtime, and this gentle salve releases vapors that are inhaled, relieving the cold, easing the soreness of the throat, and calming the cough... And like any hot poultice, Vicks VapoRub relieves the tightness of the chest and its pain. This double action puts an end to many kinds of colds.

1 — Inhaling the medicated vapors

2 — Warming the chest like a poultice

For gentle application

VICKS VAPORUB