People seem to think that there is but one form of self-denial; and that is the "No" form. Now we maintain that great self-denial is often put forth, and intense mental pain incurred, in the "Yes" form; i.e., the gradual acceptance of wrong-doing. Conscience killing is a slow, torturing process, and the successful muffling of the protesting voice of one's better nature is at the expense of days and nights of misery. The son, whose every perverse step away from a loving home is on his mother's heart-strings, cannot at first plant them firmly; many a backward glance, many a sigh and tear, many a half-retraced foot-track marks his downward progress. Is there no self-denial in these abortive attempts? Can he forget at once all her pure aspirations and fond hopes for her boy? Are there not kind words, more dreadful to remember than would be the bitterest curses? Can he turn any way, in which proofs of her all-enduring love do not confront him, and shame him, and sting him into acutest misery? Again, can the husband and father, who screens himself behind the love of wife and children, to perpetrate acts, the constant repetition of which wears away their hope and life in the process—can he, while saying "yes" to the fiends who beckon him on, be deaf to the despairing sighs that follow him, and blind to the wrecks of broken promises that lie thickly strewn around him? Does he suffer nothing in the attempt to extinguish all that is best and noblest in him? can the mother, who, stifling the voice of nature, perjures her daughter, for ambition, at the altar, face calmly that daughter's future? Are there no misgivings, no terrible fears, no shrinking back at the last retrieving moment, from a responsibility so dreadful? Can she kiss her away from her own threshold, and forget the little trusting eyes of her babyhood, and the clinging clasp of her fingers, and the Heaven-sent thrill of happiness when she first pillowed that little head upon her bosom? Can she ever cut the cord, strive as she may, by which the Almighty has solemnly bound her to that child for this world and for eternity? Has it cost her nothing in the process, this denial of her better nature? And so, through all the relations of society, wherever a sacred trust is abused, and a confidence outraged, and obligations rent recklessly asunder, there this self-incurred species of suffering, in a greater or less degree, exists accordingly as the moral sensibilities are blunted, or the contrary. The Almighty has not ordained that this path shall be trodden thornless. Coiled in it is many a deadly serpent; the balmiest air it knows is surely death-laden. Following its tortuous windings to the close, its devotee comes to no refuge, when his heart and soul grow faint, and he casts a backward, yearning glance for the holy "long ago."