"My husband returned after all this was over, quite sick; but he did return without the necessity of my going to him, and returned to be the better for being _at home_, gaining every moment after he entered his house. All this was during that bright, warm interval in April, when nature seemed buoyant with joy. We had just completed our summer arrangements, and altogether it seemed to me as if I had begun existence anew. Although somewhat exhausted by the struggle, I really am better than for months past.
It is the misfortune of those who are often sick to be blamed for their sicknesses in proportion as they are active and laborious when well. Their energy is sure to be considered the _cause_ of subsequent and frequent debility; and if not blamed, they find less compassion or kind consideration than the indolent and self-indulgent. These last may be sick all the time, and it is ascribed only to nature or the providence of God. But the conscientious and energetic, who accomplish wonders for themselves or others in their brief intervals of health, and possibly in sickness likewise, are accused of imprudence and a sinful disregard of self; while in truth it may be only by extreme care and unknown self-denials that they are able to accomplish any thing.
If Mary Ware was ever severely censured, we suppose it to have been in connection with this matter of health. Few women have been blessed with a better constitution, or greater power of action. With an almost masculine frame, there was such a degree of firmness with her gentleness, as always gave the idea of more strength than was wanted. We doubt if in early life she ever thought of saving her strength, so accustomed was she to do any thing that needed to be done, without saying or thinking much about it. She who had been the sole nurse of a sick mother at the age of eleven or twelve, and, as another describes her then, "going through all the offices of the sick-room with the firmness of a woman, holding on leeches with her little hand, and performing _all_ the necessary duties, not absolutely from necessity, but from so much love and so much confidence that no one else was wanted,"--she who had scarcely, from that period until middle life, been free from care and toil for the sick and suffering,--might be pardoned if she became self-relying, or at least self-forgetting. And yet when at last that vigorous frame was impaired, and the overwrought energies of body and mind partially gave way, so that the remainder of her life was subject to constant fluctuations of strength and weakness, powerful exertion and acute suffering, she does not seem to us to have been presumptuous or ever reckless. It is evident now, if it was not at the time, that she made this as much a matter of sober calculation and conscientious questioning as any thing, and much more than is common. Still she tells us that she was blamed for her imprudence; and she brings instances from her own experience to show the frequent error of judging of what one does, or forbears to do, by the apparent result, rather than from knowledge or by principle. "People judge by _consequences_, or what seem to be consequences, rather than by reasoning upon premises."
