CI.  LITTLE VICTORIES.

1.  “O Mother, now that I have lost my limb, I can never be a soldier or a sailor; I can never go round the world!” And Hugh burst into tears, now more really afflicted than he had ever been yet.  His mother sat on the bed beside him, and wiped away his tears as they flowed, while he told her, as well as his sobs would let him, how long and how much he had reckoned on going round the world, and how little he cared for anything else in future; and now this was the very thing he should never be able to do!

2.  He had practiced climbing ever since he could remember, and now this was of no use; he had practiced marching, and now he should never march again.  When he had finished his complaint, there was a pause, and his mother said,

“Hugh, you have heard of Huber?”

“The man who found out so lunch about bees?” said Hugh.  “Bees and ants.  When Huber had discovered more than had ever been known about these, and when he was sure that he could learn still more, and was more and more anxious to peep into their tiny homes and curious ways, he became blind.”

3.  Hugh sighed, and his mother went on.

“Did you ever hear of Beethoven?  He was one of the greatest musical composers that ever lived.  His great, his sole delight was in music.  It was the passion of his life.  When all his time and all his mind were given to music, he suddenly became deaf, perfectly deaf; so that he never more heard one single note from the loudest orchestra.  While crowds were moved and delighted with his compositions, it was all silence to him.”  Hugh said nothing.

4.  “Now do you think,” asked his mother—­and Hugh saw that a mild and gentle smile beamed from her countenance—­“do you think that these people were without a Heavenly Parent?”

“O no! but were they patient?” asked Hugh.

“Yes, in their different ways and degrees.  Would you suppose that they were hardly treated?  Or would you not rather suppose that their Father gave them something better to do than they had planned for themselves?”

5.  “He must know best, of course; but it does seem very hard that that very thing should happen to them.  Huber would not have so much minded being deaf, perhaps; or that musical man, being blind.

“No doubt their hearts often swelled within them at their disappointments; but I fully believe that they very soon found God’s will to be wiser than their wishes.  They found, if they bore their trial well, that there was work for their hearts to do far nobler than any the head could do through the eye or the ear.  And they soon felt a new and delicious pleasure which none but the bitterly disappointed can feel.”

“What is that?”

6.  “The pleasure of rousing the soul to bear pain, and of agreeing with God silently, when nobody knows what is in the breast.  There is no pleasure like that of exercising one’s soul in bearing pain, and of finding one’s heart glow with the hope that one is pleasing God.”