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Pg. xi

1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 INTRODUCTION. xi 

2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0       Our authoress has learned by experience, 
and has ably developed in her sketch, some 
of the most useful and valuable lessons of 
life. One of these is beautifully and power- 
fully given in the following words: “ How 
often are opportunities of doing small acts of 
kindness and usefulness let slip, while we are 
sighing over our narrow sphere and our 
limited means of serving God, or benefiting 
man !” Would it not be a melancholy and 
unwholesome sentimentality that should sit 
down and lament over itself as having no 
space capacious enough for its designs, and 
no arena worthy of its visions, instead of 
contenting itself with the many common 
opportunities of doing good which every-day 
life supplies? It may’ sound, indeed, well 
to sigh over oneself in such circumstances, 

3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air;” 

4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 and, by appropriating the idea to our own 
condition, hug ourselves with the fancy that 
we would, if we might, make ourselves widely 
useful in our generation; but far nobler, 
surely, and far more worthy of our imitation, 

Page 140

Source: https://1853archive.com/wp_annotation/the-pearl-of-days/pg-xi/