Six Milestones: A Christmas Memory by Ruth Lamb

WITH all my troubles, however, my old nurse was very good to me on that sad Christmas Day. She left me alone. By this, I do not mean that she neglected me. My few wants were thoughtfully supplied, and whenever I looked into her kind face, I saw there a world of tender sympathy. But she did not speak much or trouble me with words, which would have been equally useless and meaningless at such a time. She kept the house quiet, and showed her desire to comfort me rather by deeds than words.

In so doing, Hannah Brown manifested a truer instinct than do many much better bred people. As a rule, one's friends, and kind ones too, think that in the first days of a great sorrow, we must be perpetually followed up and down, and consoled by torrents of commonplace verbiage. If they did but know the uselessness of words, and the pain of being compelled to listen, when the sore heart would fain bare its wounds before the Great Physician, and ask for healing at His compassionate hand alone!