d of a blind sister who
reads all day and into the nights to throngs of ignorant people for
their improvement; who gave the only horse and the last nine dollars on
the place, and left herself nearer helpless than she already was, in
order that you might start out to be a great man--a man like Lincoln, or
like Clay." He missed a touch of fine sarcasm here. "Now let us see what
you have done, and how far you have emulated the great hearts of those
noble patterns you've set out to follow: Yesterday you arrived, and,"
here her cheeks turned a deeper pink, "defended a school teacher
against insult. Understand, you did not champion a defenseless girl; it
was the school teacher, whom you considered as a necessity to your
future. This morning you went out before daylight--I've heard about
it--to punish, not an offender against society, but a probable menace to
your ambition. You are sorry if the school teacher has a headache, not
because a human being is suffering, but because your own desire is
thwarted. You have no more charity in your soul than a stone!"

He was silent, contrite and humble, but she had not finished with him
yet. While the instinct of the teacher had been stirred, more thoroughly
had been aroused a girl's offended pride. So in the same voice she went
relentlessly on:

"First learn that your mountain is not the only place which holds a
Sunlight Patch! There is one everywhere," her hand, unconsciously placed
against her breast, now pressed as she spoke. "In everyone there must be
that same selfless desire to give the last horse and the last nine
dollars to whomsoever it may carry to a higher goal, or mankind is a
failure. Learn this now. Do not think because you were born in Sunlight
Patch that any of its virtues are clinging to you. We carry no virtues
but our own--remember that! Don't forget that other people depend on you
just as much as you depend upon them, and that life is a big game of
give and take--the giver usually winding up with the largest share of
happiness. Now go to the house. Bob has called you twice!"

He rose slowly. There was a tightness in his throat; his head throbbed
and hurt. His capacity for learning, the true offspring of his
insatiable desire, had become so like a dry sponge drawing in from every
trickle of knowledge which flowed through his remote habitation, that he
missed no word of what she said--each had sunk deep into his mind as a
marble that is tossed into a limpid pool, gra