Tears And Feeling
True grief often silences tears, showing deep inner suffering beyond outward expression.
The higher the pitch of refinement, the less the fall of tears. This is true of both sexes, but especially of men, and in men in proportion to the fulness of their manhood. Children, of whichever sex, cry at their own cross will, but the schoolboy will hardly shed tears when he is flogged; the young man is ashamed to weep when he is hurt by a fall, except into love; while the full-bearded adult has completely triumphed over feeling. All these statements are true with a difference among nations, due to climatic, historic, or other influences. One of the mysteries of tears is that tho, as the ministers of emotion, they start to assuage sorrow, yet when a mighty grief strikes us they withhold their relief. Petty troubles not only express themselves, but are garrulous; the great are silent from sore amazement. Friends, brothers, sisters and children can weep over the pallid face, but the wife or mother looks on her dead with wild, unmoistened eyes. Niobe is turned into stone; and, most dreadful of all, she is conscious that she has been petrified to her inmost soul.--J. T. L. PRESTON, _Atlantic Monthly_.