“No, I don’t think you are,” replied his mother, “but Tiny is, and her patience will be a great help to you, if you will only let it, just as your courage and energy are a help to her, for she is naturally timid, and a little inclined to be faint-hearted. You have a chance now to win a great victory, and, at the same time, you are running the risk of a great defeat; but you must not try to have patience for the whole thing at once—ask every day for just that day’s patience. You know when it is that we don’t receive; it is when we ‘ask amiss.’ All our fighting for our Great Captain will be in vain, unless we are ‘strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering, with joyfulness.’ We will see, next Sunday, how many times we can find this word ‘patience’ in the Gospels and Epistles; you will be surprised, I think, to find how often it is used.”
“It will be a help to remember, mamma,” said Johnny, with a more hopeful look, “working in the garden, first. And I shall say ‘long patience’ to myself ever so many times, before we begin our lessons.”
So instead of going to bed with the discouraged feeling which the lesson had left, Johnny went with a vigorous determination not to be beaten, and he added to his evening prayer a petition for patience.
“If it hadn’t been for that contract, I wouldn’t have come a step to-night,” said Jim, as they finished planting the gardens, the next evening, “but I thought I would try one more shot, and then, if it’s like last night, you must just let me off, and burn the contract up.”
“Indeed I shall not!” said Johnny, stoutly, “there it is, all framed and glazed, and here I am, and there you are, and you’ll not get off till you know how to read, and then you’ll not wish to!”
We will not follow Johnny through all the discouragements and encouragements which attended his career as a teacher; but you will be glad to hear that, with that help which is always near, he conquered, and that by the time he and Jim were husking the corn which the little gardens had yielded, Jim could read as fluently as his teacher could, and was beginning to write a legible, if somewhat uncertain hand. He had shown a real talent for music, and, having learned all that Tiny could teach him, was joyfully and gratefully taking lessons from Mrs. Leslie.
“And just suppose my patience had turned out to be only the short kind, Tiny!” said Johnny, as Tiny and he, with heads close together, proudly popped the corn from their own farms.