"All I can dare to recommend, is patience and self-control. Don't fret and agitate yourself about what you can't do, but do your best to do calmly what you can. It will be made up, depend upon it."
"But how am I to keep from thinking, Maurice? The weaker I am, the more I think."
"Ah! Albinia, you want to learn, as poor Queen Anne of Austria did, that docility in illness may be self-resignation into higher Hands.
"Perhaps you despise it, but it is no mean exercise of strength and resolution to be still."
- from The Young Stepmother by Charlotte Mary Yonge
Both this portrait and the photograph above are of British author Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901). The few of her works which I have read so far show a depth of understanding of a wide variety of characters and life situations. (Could her extensive knowledge of history, from ancient times on, have aided this?)
While I did not enjoy this book half as much as other Yonge works such as The Daisy Chain, The Trial and The Dove in the Eagle's Nest, this little conversation between a brother and sister contains so much good advice for those of us with chronic illness that I thought it worth sharing.
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