I must, besides, remind you that your proud spirit may deceive you when it suggests, that because your sadness or your ill-humour attracts no expressed notice or excites no efforts to remove it, it does not therefore affect those around you.  This is not the case; even the gloom and ill-humour of a servant, who only remains a few minutes in attendance, will be depressing and annoying to the most unobservant master and mistress, though they might make no efforts to remove it.  How much more, then, may your want of cheerfulness and sweet temper affect, though it may be insensibly, the peace of your family circle.  Here you are again seeking great things for yourself, and neglecting your appointed work, because it does not to you appear sufficiently worthy of your high capabilities.  Your proud spirit needs being humbled, and therefore, probably, it is that you will not be allowed to do great things.  No, you must first learn the less agreeable task of doing small things, of doing what would perhaps be called easy things by those who have never tried them.  To wear a contented look when you know that, perhaps, the effort will not be observed, certainly not appreciated,—­to take submissively the humblest part in the conversation, and still bear cheerfully that part,—­to bear with patience every hasty word that may be spoken, and so to forget it that your future conduct may be uninfluenced by it,—­to remove every difficulty, the removal of which is within your reach, without expecting that the part you have taken will be acknowledged or even observed,—­to be always ready with your sympathy, encouragement, and counsel, however scornfully they may have before been rejected; these are all acts of self-renunciation which are peculiarly fitted to a woman’s sphere of duty, and have a direct tendency to cherish the difficult and excellent grace of humility; they may, however, help to foster rather than to subdue a spirit of discontent, if they are performed from a motive of obtaining any, even the most exalted, human approbation.  They must be done to God alone, and then the promise is sure, “thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."[12] Thus, too, the art of contentment may be much more easily learnt.  Disappointment will surely sour your temper if you look forward to human appreciation of a self-denying habit of life; but when the approbation of God is the object sought for, no neglect from others can excite discontent or much regret.  For here there can be no disappointment:  that which comes to us through the day has all been decreed by him, and as it must therefore give us opportunities of fulfilling his will, and gaining his approbation, we must necessarily “be content.”