The Signature of All Things: A Novel

Chapter Nine

Alma was sitting at her desk in the carriage house one day in the autumn of 1819, reading the fourth volume of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s natural history of invertebrates, when she saw a figure crossing her mother’s Grecian garden.

Alma was accustomed to White Acre workers passing by in their duties, and usually there was a partridge or a peacock picking about the grounds as well, but this creature was neither worker nor bird. It was a small, trim, dark-haired girl of about eighteen years, dressed in a most becoming rose-colored walking costume. As she strolled the garden, the girl carelessly swung a green-trimmed, tasseled parasol. It was difficult to be certain, but the girl seemed to be talking to herself. Alma put down Mr. Lamarck and watched. The stranger was not in any hurry, and, indeed, she eventually found a bench to sit upon, and then—more curious still—to lie upon, flat on her back. Alma watched, waiting for the girl to move, but it appeared she had fallen asleep.

This was all quite strange. There were visitors at White Acre that week (an expert in carnivorous plants from Yale and a tedious scholar who had written a major treatise on greenhouse ventilation), but none of them had brought daughters. This girl was clearly not related to any of the workers around the estate, either. No gardener could afford to purchase his daughter such a fine parasol as that, and no laborer’s daughter would ever walk with such insouciance across Beatrix Whittaker’s prized Grecian garden.

Intrigued, Alma left her work behind and walked outside. She approached the girl carefully, not wanting to startle her awake, but upon closer examination saw that the girl was not napping at all—just staring up at the sky, her head pillowed in a pile of glossy black curls.

“Hello,” Alma said, peering down at her.

“Oh, hello!” replied the girl, entirely unalarmed by Alma’s appearance. “I was just thanking goodness for this bench!”

The girl popped up into a seated position, smiling brightly, and patted the spot beside her, inviting Alma to sit. Alma obediently sat down, studying her seatmate as she settled in. The girl was certainly a queer-looking thing. She had seemed prettier from a distance. True, she had a lovely figure, a magnificent head of hair, and an appealingly matched set of dimples, but from nearby one could see that her face was a bit flat and round—something like a saucer—and her green eyes were altogether too large and demonstrative. She blinked constantly. All of this added up to make her look overly young, not very bright, and just the tiniest bit frantic.

The girl turned her dotty little face up toward Alma and asked, “Now tell me something, did you hear bells ringing last night?”

Alma pondered this question. In fact, she had heard bells ringing last night. There had been a fire on Fairmont Hill, and the bells had sounded alarm across the entire city.

“I did hear them,” Alma said.

The girl nodded with satisfaction, clapped her hands, and said, “I knew it!”

“You knew that I heard bells last night?”

“I knew those bells were real!”

“I’m not sure we’ve met,” Alma said cautiously.

“Oh, but we haven’t! My name is Retta Snow. I walked all the way here!”

“Did you? May I ask from where?”

One might have almost expected the girl to say, “From the pages of a fairy book!” but instead she said, “From that way,” and pointed south. Alma, in a snap, figured it all out. There was a new estate going up just two miles down the river from White Acre. The owner was a wealthy textile merchant from Maryland. This girl must be the merchant’s daughter.

“I was hoping there would be a girl my age living around here,” said Retta. “How old are you, if I may be so plainspoken?”

“I’m nineteen,” said Alma, though she felt much older, especially by comparison to this mite.

“Exceptional!” Retta clapped again. “I am eighteen, which is not such a big difference at all, is it? Now you must tell me something, and I beg your honesty. What is your opinion of my dress?”

“Well . . .” Alma knew nothing about dresses.

“I agree!” Retta said. “It’s really not my best dress, is it? If you knew the others, you would agree even more strongly, for I have some dresses that are all the crack! But you don’t entirely detest it, either, do you?”

“Well . . .” Alma struggled again for a response.

Retta spared her an answer. “You are far too sweet to me! You don’t want to hurt my feelings! I already consider you my friend! Also, you have such a beautiful and reassuring chin. It makes a person want to trust you.”

Retta slipped an arm around Alma’s waist, and leaned her head against her shoulder, nuzzling in warmly. There was no reason in the world that Alma should have welcomed this gesture. Whosoever Retta Snow may have been, it was obvious she was an absurd person, a perfect little basin of foolishness and distraction. Alma had work to do, and the girl was an interruption.

But nobody had ever called Alma a friend.

Nobody had ever asked Alma what she thought of a dress.

Nobody had ever admired her chin.

They sat on the bench for a while in this warm and surprising embrace. Then Retta pulled away, looked up at Alma, and smiled—childish, credulous, winsome.

“What shall we do next?” she asked. “And what is your name?”

Alma laughed, and introduced herself, and confessed that she did not quite know what to do next.

“Are there other girls?” Retta asked.

“There is my sister.”

“You have a sister! You are fortunate! Let us go find her.”

So off they went together, wandering about the grounds until they found Prudence working at her easel in one of the rose gardens.

“You must be the sister!” Retta exclaimed, dashing over to Prudence as though she had won a prize, and Prudence was it.

Prudence—poised and correct as ever—set down her brush, and politely offered over her hand for Retta to shake. After pumping Prudence’s arm with rather too much enthusiasm, Retta openly took her in for a moment, head cocked to one side. Alma tensed, waiting for Retta to comment on Prudence’s beauty, or to demand to know how it could be humanly possible that Alma and Prudence were sisters. Certainly this is what every other person asked, upon seeing Alma and Prudence together for the first time. How could one sister be so porcelain and the other so ruddy? How could one sister be so dainty and the other so strapping? Prudence tensed, as well, awaiting these same unwelcome questions. But Retta did not seem captivated or daunted by Prudence’s beauty in any manner, nor did she balk at the notion that the sisters were, in fact, sisters. She merely took her time examining Prudence from head to toe, and then clapped her hands in pleasure.

“So now there are three of us!” she said. “What luck! If we were boys, do you realize what we would have to do now? We would have to fall into a terrific scrape with one another, wrestling and fighting and bloodying each other’s noses. Then, at the end of our battle, after suffering ghastly injuries, we would come up as fast friends. It’s true! I’ve seen it done! Now, on one hand that seems like a great lot of fun, but I would be sorry to spoil my new dress—although it is not my best dress, as Alma has pointed out—and so I thank heaven today that we are not boys. And since we are not boys, this means we can be fast friends right away, without any fighting at all. Don’t you agree?”

Nobody had time to agree, as Retta barreled on: “Then it is decided! We are the Three Fast Friends. Somebody should write a song about us. Can either one of you write songs?”

Prudence and Alma looked at each other, dumbstruck.

“Then I’ll do it, if I must!” Retta plowed forth. “Give me a moment.”

Retta closed her eyes, moved her lips, and tapped her fingers against her waist, as though counting out syllables.

Prudence gave Alma a questioning glance, and Alma shrugged.

After a silence so long it would have felt awkward to anyone in the world except Retta Snow, Retta opened her eyes again.

“I think I’ve got it,” she announced. “Somebody else will have to write the music, for I’m dreadful with music, but I’ve written the first verse. I think it captures our friendship perfectly. What do you think?” She cleared her throat and recited:

“We are fiddle, fork, and spoon,

We are dancing with the moon,

If you’d like to steal a kiss from us,

You’d better steal one soon!”

Before Alma had a chance to try to decipher this singular little rhyme (to try to work out who was fiddle, who was fork, and who was spoon), Prudence burst into laughter. This was remarkable, for Prudence never laughed. Her laugh was magnificent, brash, and loud—not at all what one would expect from such a doll-like individual.

“Who are you?” Prudence asked, when she finally stopped laughing.

“I am Retta Snow, madam, and I am your newest and most undeviating friend.”

“Well, Retta Snow,” said Prudence, “I believe you might be undeviatingly mad.”

“So says everyone!” replied Retta, bowing with a flourish. “But nonetheless—I am here!”

Indeed, she was.

Retta Snow soon became a fixture around the White Acre estate. As a child, Alma had once owned a little cat who’d wandered onto the property and conquered the place in much the same manner. That cat—a pretty little item, with bright yellow stripes—had simply strolled into the White Acre kitchen one sunny day, rubbed herself against everyone’s legs, and then settled down beside the hearth with her tail curled around her body, purring lightly, eyes half-closed in contentment. The cat was so comfortable and confident that no one had the heart to inform the creature that it didn’t belong—and thus, soon enough, it did.

Retta’s gambit was similar. She showed up at White Acre that day, put herself at ease, and suddenly it seemed she had always been there. Nobody ever invited Retta, exactly, but Retta did not seem to be the sort of young lady who required invitations for anything. She arrived when she wanted to arrive, stayed for as long as she pleased, helped herself to anything she desired, and departed when she was ready.

Retta Snow lived the most shockingly—even enviably—ungoverned life. Her mother was a society fixture whose mornings were occupied by long hours spent arranging her toilet, whose afternoons were consumed by visits to other society fixtures, and whose evenings were kept terribly busy with dances. Her father, a man both indulgent and absent, eventually purchased for his daughter a reliable carriage horse and a two-wheeled chaise, in which the girl bounced around Philadelphia quite at her own discretion. She spent her days speeding through the world on her chaise like a happy, roistering bee. If she wished to attend the theater, she attended the theater. If she wished to watch a parade, she found a parade. And if she wished to spend the entire day at White Acre, she did so at her own leisure.

Over the next year, Alma would find Retta in the most surprising places at White Acre: standing atop a vat in the buttery, making the dairymaids laugh as she acted out a scene from The School for Scandal; or dangling her feet off the barge dock into the oily waters of the Schuylkill River, pretending to catch fish with her toes; or cutting one of her beautiful shawls in half, in order to share it with a maid who had just complimented it. (“Look, now we each have a bit of the shawl, and so now we are twins!”) Nobody knew what to make of her, but nobody ever chased her away. It was not so much that Retta charmed people; it was merely that fending her off was an impossibility. One had no choice but to submit.

Retta even managed to win over Beatrix Whittaker, which was a truly remarkable accomplishment. By all reasonable expectations, Beatrix should have detested Retta, who was the very personification of all Beatrix’s deepest fears about girls. Retta was everything Beatrix had raised Alma and Prudence not to be—a powdered, hollow-headed, and vain little confection, who ruined expensive dancing slippers in the mud, who was quick to tears and laughter, who pointed crassly at things in public, who was never seen with a book, and who hadn’t even the sense enough to keep her head covered in the rain. How could Beatrix ever embrace such a creature as that?

Anticipating this as a problem, Alma had even tried to hide Retta Snow from Beatrix at the beginning of their friendship, fearing the worst should the two ever encounter each other. But Retta was not easily hidden, and Beatrix was not easily deceived. It had taken less than a week, in fact, before Beatrix demanded of Alma one morning at breakfast, “Who is that child, with that parasol, who is always darting about my property of late? And why do I always see her with you?”

Reluctantly, Alma was forced to introduce Retta to her mother.

“How do you do, Mrs. Whittaker,” Retta had begun, properly enough, even remembering to curtsey, if perhaps a bit too theatrically.

“How do you do, child?” Beatrix had replied.

Beatrix was not seeking an honest answer to this question, but Retta took the query seriously, pondering it a bit before answering. “Well, I shall tell you, Mrs. Whittaker. I am not at all well. There has been a dreadful tragedy in my household this morning.”

Alma looked on in alarm, helpless to intervene. Alma could not imagine where Retta was tending with this line of conversation. Retta had been at White Acre all day, cheerful as can be, and this was the first Alma had heard of a dreadful tragedy in the Snow household. She prayed that Retta would stop speaking, but the girl pushed on, as though Beatrix had urged her to continue.

“Only this morning, Mrs. Whittaker, I suffered the most flurried attack of nerves. One of our servants—my little English maid, to be precise—was in utter tears at breakfast, and so I followed her into her room after the meal was over, to investigate the origins of her sorrow. You shall never guess what I learned! It seems her grandmother had died, exactly three years ago, to this very day! Upon learning of this tragedy, I was put into a fit of weeping myself, as I’m certain you can well imagine! I must have wept for an hour on that poor girl’s bed. Thank goodness she was there to comfort me. Doesn’t it make you want to weep, too, Mrs. Whittaker? To think of losing a grandmother, just three years ago?”

With the mere memory of this incident, Retta’s large green eyes filled with tears, and then spilled over.

“What a great heap of nonsense,” Beatrix rebuked, emphasizing each word, while Alma flinched at every syllable. “At my age, can you begin to imagine how many people’s grandmothers I have seen die? What if I had wept over each one of them? A grandmother’s death does not constitute a tragedy, child—and somebody else’s grandmother’s death from three years past most certainly should not bring on a fit of weeping. Grandmothers die, child. It is the proper way of things. One could nearly argue that it is the role of a grandmother to die, after having imparted, one hopes, some lessons of decency and sense to a younger generation. Furthermore, I suspect you were of little comfort to your maid, who would have been better served had you demonstrated for her an example of stoicism and reserve, rather than collapsing in tears across her bed.”

Retta took in this admonishment with an open face, while Alma wilted in distress. Well, there’s the end of Retta Snow, Alma thought. But then, unexpectedly, Retta laughed. “What a marvelous correction, Mrs. Whittaker! What a fresh way you have of regarding things! You are absolutely in the right! I shall never again think of a grandmother’s death as tragedy!”

One could almost see the tears crawling back up Retta’s cheeks, reversing themselves and then vanishing completely.

“And now I must take my leave,” said Retta, fresh as the dawn. “I intend to go for a walk this evening, so I must go home and select the choicest of my walking bonnets. I do so love walking, Mrs. Whittaker, but not in the wrong bonnet, as I’m sure you can understand.” Retta extended her hand to Beatrix, who could not refuse to take it. “Mrs. Whittaker, what a useful encounter this has been! I can scarcely find a way to thank you enough for your wisdom. You are a Solomon among women, and it is little wonder that your children admire you so. Imagine if you were my mother, Mrs. Whittaker—only imagine how stupid I would not be! My mother, you will be sorry to hear, has never had a sensible thought in her life. Worse still, she cakes her face so thickly with wax, paste, and powder that she has every appearance of being a dressmaker’s dummy. Imagine my misfortune, then—to have been raised by an unschooled dressmaker’s dummy, and not by the likes of you. Well, off I go, then!”

Off she skipped, while Beatrix gaped.

“What a ridiculous conformation of a person,” Beatrix murmured, once Retta had taken her leave, and the house had returned to silence.

Daring a defense of her only friend, Alma replied, “Without a doubt she is ridiculous, Mother. But I believe she has a charitable heart.”

“Her heart may or may not be charitable, Alma. None but God can judge such a thing. But her face, without a doubt, is absurd. She seems able to shape it into any expression whatsoever, except intelligence.”

Retta returned to White Acre the very next day, greeting Beatrix Whittaker with sunny goodwill, as though the initial admonishment had never taken place. She even brought Beatrix a small posy of flowers—plucked from White Acre’s own gardens, which was a rather daring play. Miraculously, Beatrix accepted the posy without a word. From that day forward, Retta Snow was permitted to remain a presence on the estate.

As far as Alma was concerned, the disarming of Beatrix Whittaker was Retta’s most sterling accomplishment. It almost had the trace of wizardry about it. That it happened so quickly was even more remarkable. Somehow, in only one brief and daring encounter, Retta had managed to inveigle herself into the matriarch’s good graces (or good enough graces) such that now she had an open warrant to visit whenever she pleased. How had she done it? Alma couldn’t be certain, but she had theories. For one thing, Retta was difficult to stifle. What’s more, Beatrix was getting older and frailer, and was less inclined these days to battle her objections to the death. Perhaps Alma’s mother was not a match for the Retta Snows of the world anymore. But most of all, there was this: Alma’s mother may have disliked nonsense, and she was decidedly a difficult woman to flatter, but Retta Snow could scarcely have done better than to have called Beatrix Whittaker “a Solomon among women.”

Perhaps the girl was not so foolish as she appeared.

Thus, Retta remained. In fact, as the autumn of 1819 progressed, Alma frequently arrived at her study in the early mornings, ready to work on a botanical project, only to discover that Retta was already there—curled up in the old divan in the corner, looking at fashion illustrations from the latest copy of Joy’s Lady’s Book.

“Oh, hello dearest!” Retta would chirp, looking up brightly, as though they had a prearranged appointment.

As time went on, Alma was no longer startled by this. Retta did not make herself a bother. She never touched the scientific instruments (except the prisms, which she could not resist), and when Alma told her, “For heaven’s sake, darling, you must hush now and let me calculate,” Retta would hush and let Alma calculate. If anything, it became rather pleasant for Alma to have the silly, friendly company. It was like having a pretty bird in a cage in the corner, making occasional cooing noises, while Alma worked.

There were times when George Hawkes stopped by Alma’s study, to discuss the final corrections to some scientific paper or another, and he always seemed taken aback to find Retta there. George never knew quite what to do with Retta Snow. George was such an intelligent and serious man, and Retta’s silliness thoroughly unnerved him.

“And what are Alma and Mr. George Hawkes discussing today?” Retta asked one November day, when she was bored of her picture magazines.

“Hornworts,” Alma responded.

“Oh, they sound horrid. Are they animals, Alma?”

“No, they are not animals, darling,” she replied. “They are plants.”

“Can one eat them?”

“Not unless one is a deer,” Alma said, laughing. “And a hungry deer at that.”

“How lovely to be a deer,” Retta mused. “Unless one were a deer in the rain, which would be unfortunate and uncomfortable. Tell me about these hornworts, Mr. George Hawkes. But tell it in such a way that an empty-headed little person such as myself might be made to understand.”

This was unfair, for George Hawkes only had one manner of speaking, which was academic and erudite, and not at all tailored for empty-headed little persons.

“Well, Miss Snow,” he began awkwardly. “They are among our least sophisticated plants—”

“But that is an unkind thing to say, sir!”

“—and they are autotrophic.”

“How proud their parents must be of them!”

“Well . . . er,” George stuttered. By now, he was out of words.

Here, Alma stepped in, out of mercy for George. “Autotrophic, Retta, means that they can make their own food.”

“So I could never be a hornwort, I suppose,” Retta said, with a sad sigh.

“Not likely!” Alma said. “But you might like hornworts, if you came to know them better. They are quite pretty under the microscope.”

Retta waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, I never know where to look, in the microscope!”

“Where to look?” Alma laughed in disbelief. “Retta—you look through the eyepiece!”

“But the eyepiece is so confining, and the view of tiny things is so alarming. It makes one feel seasick. Do you ever feel seasick, Mr. George Hawkes, when you look through the microscope?”

Pained by this question, George stared at the floor.

“Hush now, Retta,” Alma said. “Mr. Hawkes and I need to concentrate.”

“If you continue to hush me, Alma, I shall have to go find Prudence and bother her while she paints flowers on teacups and tries to convince me to be a more noble person.”

“Go, then!” Alma said with good cheer.

“Honestly, you two,” said Retta, “I simply do not understand why you must always work so much. But if it keeps you out of the arcades and the gin palaces, I suppose it does you no permanent harm . . .”

“Go!” Alma said, giving Retta a fond little push. Off Retta trotted on her hiddy-giddy way, leaving Alma smiling, and George Hawkes entirely baffled.

“I must confess I do not understand a word she speaks,” George said, after Retta had vanished.

“Take comfort, Mr. Hawkes. She does not understand you, either.”

“But why does she always hover about you, I wonder?” George mused. “Is she trying to improve herself by your company?”

Alma’s face warmed in pleasure at this compliment—happy that George might believe her company to be an improving force—but she said merely, “We can never be entirely certain of Miss Snow’s motives, Mr. Hawkes. Who knows? Perhaps she is trying to improve me.”

By Christmas, Retta Snow had managed to become such good friends with Alma and Prudence that she would invite the Whittaker girls over to her family’s estate for luncheons—thus taking Alma away from her botanical research, and taking Prudence away from whatever it was that Prudence did with her time.

Luncheons at Retta’s home were ridiculous affairs, as befitted Retta’s ridiculous nature. There would be a gallimaufry of ices and trifles and toasts, supervised (if one could call it supervision) by Retta’s adorable yet incompetent English maid. Never once was a conversation of value or substance to be heard in this house, but Retta was always prepared for anything foolish, fun, or sportive. She even managed to get Alma and Prudence to play nonsense parlor games with her—games designed for much younger children, such as Post Office, Hunt the Keyhole, or, best of all, Dumb Orator. It was all terribly silly, but also terribly fun. The fact was, Alma and Prudence had never before played—not with each other, not alone, not with any other children. Till now, Alma had never particularly understood what play even was.

But play was the only thing Retta Snow ever did. Her favorite pastime was to read aloud the accident reports in the local newspapers for the entertainment of Alma and Prudence. It was indefensible, but amusing. Retta would put on scarves, hats, and foreign accents, and she would act out the most appalling scenes from these accidents: babies falling into fireplaces, workers decapitated by falling tree limbs, mothers of five thrown from carriages into ditches full of water (drowning upside-down, boots in the air, while their children looked on helplessly, screaming in horror).

“This should not be entertaining!” Prudence would protest, but Retta would not cease until they were all gasping with hilarity. There were occasions when Retta was so overtaken by her own laughter, in fact, that she could not stop herself. She would fall quite out of control of her own spirits, overly possessed by a riotous panic of revelry. Sometimes, alarmingly, she would even roll about on the floor. It would appear at these times as though Retta were being driven by, or ridden by, some external demonic agency. She would laugh until she started gasping in great, riotous heaves, and her face would darken with something that closely resembled fear. Just when Alma and Prudence were about to become quite worried for her, Retta would regain mastery of her senses. She would jump back up to her feet, wipe her damp forehead, and cry out, “Thank heavens we have an earth! Otherwise, where would we sit?”

Retta Snow was the oddest little miss in Philadelphia, but she played a special role in Alma’s life, and in Prudence’s too, it appeared. When the three of them were together, Alma very nearly felt like a normal girl, and she had never felt that way before. Laughing with her friend and her sister, she could pretend that she was any regular Philadelphia lass, and not Alma Whittaker of the White Acre estate—not a wealthy, preoccupied, tall, and unlovely young woman full of scholarship and languages, with several dozen academic publications to her name, and a Roman orgy of shocking erotic images floating through her mind. All that faded in Retta’s presence, and Alma could be merely a girl, a conventional girl, eating a frosted tart and giggling at a buffoonish song.

Moreover, Retta was the only person in the world who ever made Prudence laugh, and this was a supernatural marvel, indeed. The transformation this laughter brought upon Prudence was extraordinary: it turned her from icy jewel to sweet schoolgirl. At such times, Alma nearly felt as though Prudence could be a regular Philadelphia lass, as well, and she would spontaneously embrace her sister, delighting in her company.

Unfortunately, though, this intimacy between Alma and Prudence existed only when Retta was present. The moment that Alma and Prudence left the Snow estate to walk back to White Acre together, the two sisters would return to silence once more. Alma always hoped they could learn how to sustain their warm rapport after leaving Retta’s presence, but it was useless. Any attempt to refer, on the long walk home, to one of the jokes or jests of the afternoon would bring on nothing but woodenness, awkwardness, embarrassment.

During one such walk home in February of 1820, Alma—buoyed and heartened by the day’s capers—took a risk. She dared to mention her affection for George Hawkes one more time. Specifically, Alma revealed to Prudence that George had once called her a brilliant microscopist, and that this had pleased her immensely. Alma confessed, “I would like to have a husband like George Hawkes someday—a good man, who encourages my efforts, and whom I admire.”

Prudence said nothing. After a long silence, Alma pushed on. “My thoughts of Mr. Hawkes are nearly constant, Prudence. I sometimes even imagine . . . embracing him.”

It was a bold assertion, but wasn’t this what normal sisters did? All over Philadelphia, weren’t regular girls talking to their sisters about the suitors they wished for? Weren’t they disclosing the hopes of their hearts? Weren’t they sketching dreams of their future husbands?

But Alma’s attempt at intimacy did not work.

Prudence replied merely, “I see,” and added nothing more to the discussion. They walked the rest of the way home to White Acre in their customary wordlessness. Alma returned to her study, to finish off the work that Retta had interrupted that morning, and Prudence simply vanished, as was her tendency, to tasks unknown.

Alma never again attempted such a confession with her sister. Whatever mysterious aperture Retta pried open between Alma and Prudence, that aperture closed itself up tightly again—as always—as soon as the sisters were once more alone. It was hopeless to remedy. Sometimes, though, Alma could not help but imagine what life might have been like if Retta had been their sister—the littlest girl, the third girl, indulged and foolish, who could disarm everyone, and whisk them all into a state of warmth and affection. If only Retta had been a Whittaker, Alma thought, instead of a Snow! Maybe everything would have been different. Maybe Alma and Prudence, under that familial arrangement, might have learned to be confidantes, intimates, friends . . . sisters!

It was a thought that filled Alma with terrible sadness, but there was nothing to be done for it. Things could only be what they were, as her mother had taught her many times.

As for things that could not be changed, they must stoically be endured.