“Well, then,” in a voice of awful solemnity, “you heard wrong, ’cause we didn’t; we were licked.”
“Oh, but I heard that there were two contests; which did you win?”
“Why, I don’t know what you mean, father.”
“Mother told me about it. She told me you lost the match, but you won the big, important thing; you didn’t beat the other fellows, but you beat yourselves, and conquered all the anger and unfairness and bad language. Congratulations, old fellow! You won out and I’m proud of you.”
Billy Boy’s face was slowly undergoing a change. It was growing once more interested, happy, hopeful. “Why, that’s so, dad,” he said joyously, after a minute; “I didn’t see that. And God was on our side after all, wasn’t He?”
“Greater is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city,” said the father, with a smile.
That night when Billy Boy said his prayers, this is the way he ended his petition: “And please, God, excuse me for the way I thought about you this afternoon. I didn’t understand.”—Congregationalist.
(3395)
VICTORY, ULTIMATE
The victory that comes beyond all life’s failures is the subject of these lines from Success: