spite of your own little single worries? Well,
_that's_ what God means; and the worry is the interruption. He
_never_ means that. There's a great song forever singing, and we're
all parts and notes of it, if we will just let Him put us in tune.
What we call trouble is only his key, that draws our heart-strings
truer, and brings them up sweet and even to the heavenly pitch.
Don't mind the strain; believe in the _note_, every time his finger
touches and sounds it. If you are glad for one minute in the day,
that is his minute; the minute He means, and works for."

The man was a tuner of pianofortes. He went away with that lesson in
his heart, to come back to him repeatedly in his own work, day by
day. He had been believing in the twists and stretches; he began
from that moment to believe in the music touches, far apart though
they might come. He lived from a different centre; the growth began
to be according to the life.

"It's queer," he said once, long afterward, reminding Mr. Vireo of
what he had spoken in the moment it was given through him, and then
forgotten. "A man can put himself a'most where he pleases. Into a
hurt finger or a toothache, till it is all one great pain with him;
or outside of that, into something he cares for, or can do with his
well hand, till he gets rid of it and forgets it. There's generally
more comfort than ache, I do suppose, if we didn't live right in the
middle of the ache. But you see, that's the great secret to find
out. If ever we _do_ get it,--complete"--

"Ah, that's the resurrection and the life," said Mr. Vireo.

Among the crowd that waited about the open chapel doors, and through
the porches, and upon the stair-ways, one clear, sunny, October
morning, on which the congregation would not gather quietly to its
pews, stood this man, and many another man, and woman, and little
child, to whom a word from Hilary Vireo was a word right out of
heaven.

They would all have a first sight of him to-day,--his first Sunday
among them after the whole summer's absence in Europe. He might
easily not get into his pulpit at all, but give his gift in crumbs,
all the way along from the street curb-stones to the aisles in the
church above,--they waylaid him so to snatch at it from hand, face,
voice, as he should come in. It would not be altogether unlike
Hilary Vireo, if seeing things this way, he stopped right there
amongst them, to deal out heart-cheer and sympathy right and left,
face to face,