a little lonesome and discouraged. Don't you make it any harder by crying
over a lost apple. Ye know it's possible that the apple will float along
down into the still water where you can pick it up by and by. The
important thing is to keep going ahead."

This bit of fatherly counsel was a help to the boy.

"I've got a book here that I want you to read," Abe went on. "It is the
_Life of Henry Clay_. Take it home and read it carefully and then bring
it back and tell me what you think of it. You may be a Henry Clay
yourself by and by. The world has something big in it for every one if he
can only find it. We're all searching--some for gold and some for fame. I
pray God every day that He will help me to find my work--the thing I can
do better than anything else--and when it is found help me to do it. I
expect it will be a hard and dangerous search and that I shall make
mistakes. I expect to drop some apples on my way. They'll look like gold
to me, but I'm not going to lose sight of the main purpose."

When Harry got home he found Sarah sewing by the fireside, with Joe and
Betsey playing by the bed. Samson had gone to the woods to split rails.

"Any mail?" Sarah asked.

"No mail," he answered.

Sarah went to the window and stood for some minutes looking out at the
plain. Its sere grasses, protruding out of the snow, hissed and bent in
the wind. In its cheerless winter colors it was a dreary thing to see.

"How I long for home!" she exclaimed, as she resumed her sewing by the
fire.

Little Joe came and stood by her knee and gave her his oft repeated
blessing:

"God help us and make His face to shine upon us."

She kissed him and said: "Dear comforter! It shines upon me every time
I hear you say those words."

The little lad had observed the effect of the blessing on his mother in
her moments of depression and many times his parroting had been the word
in season. Now he returned to his play again, satisfied.

"Would you mind if I called you mother?" Harry asked.

"I shall be glad to have you do it if it gives you any comfort, Harry,"
she answered.

She observed that there were tears in his eyes.

"We are all very fond of you," she said, as she bent to her task.

Then the boy told her the history of his morning--the talk with Bim, with
the razor omitted from it; how he had met Abe and all that Abe had said
to him as they sat together in the store.

"Well, Harry, if she's such a fool, you're lucky to have fou