| “If you find your case is hard, Try, try, try again. Time will bring you your reward, Try, try, try again. All that other people do, Why with patience should not you? Only keep this rule in view, Try, try, try again.” |
“That’s it! That’s it, my little puss,” said Uncle Morris, who was in the parlor which Jessie entered singing her joyous roundelay. “Corporal Try is a little fellow, but he has helped do all the great things that have ever been done. There is nothing good or great which he cannot do. He will help a little girl learn to darn her own stocking, or make a quilt for her old uncle; and he will help men build big steamships, construct railroads over the desert, or lay a telegraph wire under the waters of the ocean. Oh, a great little man is Corporal Try!”
“I know it,” replied Jessie, “and I’ve joined his company; so if you meet little Impulse the wizard, please tell him not to come here again unless he wishes to be beaten with a big club called good resolution.”
“Bravely spoken, Lady Jessie! May you never desert the Corporal’s colors! Above all, may you always obtain grace from above whereby to conquer yourself, which is the grandest deed you can possibly perform.”
Jessie sat down to her work-basket, and took up one of the pieces of cloth for her uncle’s slippers. But as it was now late in the afternoon of a dull November day, she could not see to embroider very well. So she thought she would go out again and buy the brown worsted which was needed in working out the figure on the slippers. Going to the window first, she noticed that the sky looked cold and bleak. The wind, too, was whistling mournfully among the branches of the trees, and round the corners of the house. It was evidently going to be a cold night. Turning from the window again, she said to her brother Hugh, who was sitting very cosily in a large arm-chair before the glowing fire in the grate:
“Please, Hugh, will you run down to the village with me? I want to get some worsted at Mrs. Horton’s.”
“Why didn’t you get it this afternoon?” asked Hugh in his usual grumpy way when asked to do any thing.
“I didn’t think of it.”
“Didn’t think of it, eh? Well, I don’t think I shall be your lackey this cold afternoon. I’d rather sit here and keep my toes warm.”
“Do go, dear Hugh, please do!” said Jessie in her mellowest tones. “I shall want the worsted to-morrow morning.”