We who see more clearly the meaning of life
know that this will not always happen, and we can be content to do
right for right's sake. I don't object to your putting hosts of
slumbering incentives in Lisa's mind, but a slumbering incentive is
not vulgar and debasing, like a bribe.'
A plant might be a feeble and common thing, yet it might grow in
beauty and strength in a garden like Mistress Mary's. Such soil in
the way of surroundings, such patient cultivation of roots and stems,
such strengthening of tendrils on all sorts of lovely props, such
sunshine of love, such dew of sympathy, such showers of kindness,
such favouring breezes of opportunity, such pleasure for a new leaf,
joy for a bud, gratitude for a bloom! What an atmosphere in which to
grow towards knowledge and goodness! Was it any wonder that the
little people 'all in a row' responded to the genius of Mistress
Mary's influence? They used to sing a song calleth The Light Bird,'
in which some one, all unknown to the children, would slip into the
playground with a bit of broken looking-glass, and suddenly a radiant
fluttering disk of light would appear on the wall, and dance up and
down, above and below, hither and yon, like a winged sunbeam. The
children held out longing arms, and sang to it coaxingly.
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