f a lad who had
been at the tail of his class ever since his primer days? Well,
Anthony was seventeen now, and he was "educated," in spite of sorry
recitations,--educated, the Lord knows how! Yes, in point of fact the
Lord does know how! He knows how the drill and pressure of the daily
task, still more the presence of the high ideal, the inspiration working
from within, how these educate us.

The blind Anthony Croft sitting in the kitchen doorway had seemingly
missed the heights of life he might have trod, and had walked his close
on fifty years through level meadows of mediocrity, a witch in every
finger-tip waiting to be set to work, head among the clouds, feet
stumbling, eyes and ears open to hear God's secret thought; seeing and
hearing it, too, but lacking force to speak it forth again; for while
imperious genius surmounts all obstacles, brushes laws and formulas from
its horizon, and with its own free soul sees its "path and the outlets
of the sky," potential genius forever needs an angel of deliverance to
set it free.

Poor Anthony Croft, or blessed Anthony Croft, I know not which,--God
knows! Poor he certainly was, yet blessed after all. "One thing I do,"
said Paul. "One thing I do," said Anthony. He was not able to realize
his ideals, but he had the "angel aim" by which he idealized his reals.

O waiting heart of God! how soon would thy kingdom come if we all did
our allotted tasks, humble or splendid, in this consecrated fashion!

III.

"Therein I hear the Parcae reel
The threads of man at their humming wheel,
The threads of life and power and pain,
So sweet and mournful falls the strain."

Emerson's _Harp._

Old Mrs. Butterfield had had her third stroke of paralysis, and died
of a Sunday night. She was all alone in her little cottage on the river
bank, with no neighbor nearer than Croft's, and nobody there but a blind
man and a small boy. Everybody had told her it was foolish to live alone
in a house on the river road, and everybody was pleased in a discreet
and chastened fashion of course, that it had turned out exactly as they
had predicted.

Aunt Mehitable Tarbox was walking up to Milliken's Mills, with her
little black reticule hanging over her arm, and noticing that there
was no smoke coming out of the chimney, and that the hens were gathered
about the kitchen door clamoring for their breakfast, she thought it
best to stop and knock. No response followed the repe