Melancholy.—­I once gave a lady two-and-twenty receipts against melancholy:  one was a bright fire; another, to remember all the pleasant things said to her; another, to keep a box of sugar-plums on the chimney-piece and a kettle simmering on the hob.  I thought this mere trifling at the moment, but have in after life discovered how true it is that these little pleasures often banish melancholy better than higher and more exalted objects; and that no means ought to be thought too trifling which can oppose it either in ourselves or in others.—­Sydney Smith.

Melancholy sees the worst of things,—­things as they may be, and not as they are.  It looks upon a beautiful face, and sees but a grinning skull.—­Bovee.

There are some people who think that they should be always mourning, that they should put a continual constraint upon themselves, and feel a disgust for those amusements to which they are obliged to submit.  For my own part, I confess that I know not how to conform myself to these rigid notions.  I prefer something more simple, which I also think would be more pleasing to God.—­Fenelon.

Mercy.—­Let us be merciful as well as just.—­Longfellow.

                         Consider this,—­

That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation:  we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. 

          
                          —­Shakespeare.

Among the attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines with even more brilliancy than justice.—­Cervantes.

God’s mercy is a holy mercy, which knows how to pardon sin, not to protect it; it is a sanctuary for the penitent, not for the presumptuous.—­Bishop Reynolds.

It is enthroned in the heart of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. 

          
                          —­Shakespeare.

There is no better rule to try a doctrine by than the question, Is it merciful, or is it unmerciful?  If its character is that of mercy, it has the image of Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life.  —­Hosea Ballou.

The quality of mercy is not strain’d;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath:  it is twice bless’d;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes;
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown. 

          
                          —­Shakespeare.

Lenity will operate with greater force, in some instances, than rigor.  It is therefore my first wish to have my whole conduct distinguished by it.—­Washington.

Teach me to feel another’s woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me. 
—­Pope.