You may expect
to see diminish, from day to day, the number of those saintly souls
from whom you could obtain advice, support or light.
For you, perhaps, like many others, life will be a desert which you
must traverse almost alone, without meeting a single soul to reach
you a helping hand in your necessities and trials. Being about to set
out on this pilgrimage of life, which will perhaps be long, fatiguing
and painful, be supplied with an ample provision of strength,
patience, virtue and energy. And, if happily deceived in your fears,
you find the road which leads to eternity smooth under your feet, you
will at least have the merit of having been wise in your conduct, for
not less moral strength is required to bear the happiness of
prosperity than the misfortune of adversity. Happiness here below is
something so extremely perilous to man's eternal welfare that few can
taste it without injury to their souls. Hence, in order to guard
against its fatal influence, not less preparation, nor less time, nor
less efforts, are required than to suffer the privations imposed by
adversity, for experience proves that the former is more destructive
than the latter to the work of eternal salvation.
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