“You’ve been practising so long, mamma,” said Johnny, wistfully, “that you’re just about perfect, I think; but I don’t believe I will be, if I live to be as old as Methusaleh! I wish I had some sort of an arrangement to clap on the outside of my mouth, that would hold it shut for five minutes!”
“But don’t you see, dear,”—and Mrs. Leslie laughed a little at Johnny’s idea—“that if you had time to remember to clap on your ‘arrangement,’ you would have time to stop yourself in another and better way?”
“Yes, mamma, I suppose I should,” admitted Johnny, “but it somehow seems as if the other way would be easier, especially if I had the ‘arrangement’ somewhere where I could always see it.”
“But don’t you remember, dear,” said his mother, “that even after Moses lifted up the brazen serpent, the poor Israelites were not saved by it unless they looked up at it? That came into my mind the other day when we were playing the new game—‘Hiding in plain sight,’ you know. Every time we failed to find the thimble, it was in such ‘plain sight’ that we laughed at ourselves for being so stupid, and then I thought how exactly like that we are about ‘the ever-present help.’ It is always ready for us, and then we go looking everywhere else, and wonder that we fail! And I think you would find it so with your ‘arrangement.’ You would see it and use it, perhaps, for a day or two, and then you would grow used to it, and it would be invisible to you half the time, at least.”
This game of “Hiding in plain sight” was one which Ned Owen had recently taught them, and it was very popular both at school and in the different homes. A thimble was the favorite thing to hide; all but the hider either shut their eyes or went out of the room, while he placed the thimble in some place where it could be very plainly seen—if one only knew where to look for it! Sometimes it would be on a little point of the gas fixture; sometimes on top of a picture-frame or mantel-ornament, and then the hider generally had the pleasure of seeing the seekers stare about the room with puzzled faces, and finally give it up, when he would point it out triumphantly, and they would all exclaim at their stupidity.
The rule was, that if any one found it, he was merely to say so, and not to point it out to the rest.
Johnny was very much impressed with his mother’s comparison, and resolved, as he said to himself, to “look sharper” for the small chances of self-denial which come to all of us, while large chances come but to few, or only at long intervals. There was a poem of which Mrs. Leslie was very fond, and which Tiny and Johnny had learned just to please her, which had this verse in it:—
“I would not have the restless will
That hurries to and fro,