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OUNT your blessings! "Mine are soon counted," answers a discontented voice, "I have so few—or, rather, none to count!" And that voice is the echo of how many complaining hearts!

It is startling to note how seldom people are conscious of their actual, indisputable blessings. Not that they are ignored through positive and perverse ingratitude, but partly from sheer want of reflection, partly because custom steals the value from the boon which we habitually receive. And yet, how bountifully those simple daily blessings are showered down upon the poorest, humblest, saddest of us all! And what loud lamentations we send up, to beat against the pearly gates, when the least heeded, the least prized, the very commonest, is denied!

Those who groan under the burden of multiform sorrows, are usually so absorbed in their personal afflictions, that they let the scales God placed in every human hand (to show his benefactions over-weigh man's self-sprung woes) drop from their