Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/174

164 Beyond our power are body, property, reputation, office, and, in one word, whatever are not properly our own affairs.

"Now the things within our power are by nature free, unrestricted, unhindered; but those beyond our power are weak, dependent, restricted, alien, Remember, then, that if you attribute freedom to things by nature dependent, and take what belongs to others for your own, you will be hindered, you will lament, you will be disturbed, you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you take for your own only that which is your own, and view what belongs to others just as it really is, then no one will ever compel you, no one will restrict you; you will find fault with no one, you will accuse no one, you will do nothing against your will; no one will hurt you, you will not have an enemy, nor will you suffer any harm."

Jim and I had been wild boys. We had come down to this far away village in disgrace, with something of bitterness and resentment entering into all our resolutions of good behavior. But in our first hours in the parsonage, the bitterness, the doubt, the resentment, melted away, and there was sown in our souls a seed of reverence, of belief, of purpose, whose whole harvest has never been garnered, neither indeed can be, since in Eternity is neither seed-time nor harvest.

In less than half an hour after prayers were ended, Jim and I had told to our newly found