"Mother, things have changed, and the outlook of the children of this age contradicts your ideas." Yes, that is true — but have you forgotten that most of your knowledge is built upon her experience? You have now finished changing her life and shaking her confidence, and before you lies one more task to finish her off: to direct all her thinking toward her bodily infirmity. These are facts she has accepted, but which she tries to forget. "I am sorry my hand trembles" — so a respected lady

said to me as she handed me a piece of sweets. Naturally her friends overlook it; but you and I dwell on her weakness: "Let me do this work instead of you. You ought to keep to your bed at such an hour." And so the poor woman's thoughts turn toward her helplessness and weakness instead of toward the amusement she would have had.

The lady's name has faded away behind the title her grandson calls her by. I know a friend who had her first name engraved in letters of gold on the cover of her Bible, and

who was displeased with anyone who did not call her by that name. It means a great deal to her: it is the name she was known by in the days of her youth, the whisper that sprang from between her beloved's lips — it is her very self; and its fading away means her spirit's destruction. And who knows? Those who live around her may be working to efface it little by little — and that means not hardness of heart, but a failure of imagination, and the tyranny of kindness and affection!