4. "Now do you think," asked his mother—and Hugh saw that a mild and gentle smile beamed from her countenance—"do you think that these people were without a Heavenly Parent?"
"O no! but were they patient?" asked Hugh.
"Yes, in their different ways and degrees. Would you suppose that they were hardly treated? Or would you not rather suppose that their Father gave them something better to do than they had planned for themselves?"
5. "He must know best, of course; but it does seem very hard that that very thing should happen to them. Huber would not have so much minded being deaf, perhaps; or that musical man, being blind.
"No doubt their hearts often swelled within them at their disappointments; but I fully believe that they very soon found God's will to be wiser than their wishes. They found, if they bore their trial well, that there was work for their hearts to do far nobler than any the head could do through the eye or the ear. And they soon felt a new and delicious pleasure which none but the bitterly disappointed can feel."
"What is that?"
6. "The pleasure of rousing the soul to bear pain, and of agreeing with God silently, when nobody knows what is in the breast. There is no pleasure like that of exercising one's soul in bearing pain, and of finding one's heart glow with the hope that one is pleasing God."
"Shall I feel that pleasure?"
"Often and often, I have no doubt; every time you can willingly give up your wish to be a soldier or a sailor, or anything else you have set your mind upon, you will feel that pleasure. But I do not expect it of you yet. I dare say it was long a bitter thing to Beethoven to see hundreds of people in raptures with his music, when he could not hear a note of it."
7. "But did he ever smile again?" asked Hugh.