would be only a
loose, useless filament. Trying to wander in an independent or a
disconnected way among the other threads, it would make of the whole
web an inextricable snarl. Yet each little thread must be as firmly
spun as if it were the only one, or the result would be a worthless
fabric.

That we are entirely separate, while yet we entirely belong to the
Whole, is a truth that we learn to rejoice in, as we come to understand
more and more of ourselves, and of this human life of ours, which seems
so complicated, and yet is so simple. And when we once get a glimpse of
the Divine Plan in it all, and know that to be just where we are, doing
just what we are doing just at this hour because it is our appointed
hour,--when we become aware that this is the very best thing possible
for us in God's universe, the hard task grows easy, the tiresome
employment welcome and delightful. Having fitted ourselves to our
present work in such a way as this, we are usually prepared for better
work, and are sent to take a better place.

Perhaps this is one of the unfailing laws of progress in our being.
Perhaps the Master of Life always rewards those who do their little
faithfully by giving them some greater opportunity for faithfulness.
Certainly, it is a comfort, wherever we are, to say to ourselves:--

"Thou camest not to thy place by accident,
It is the very place God meant for thee."

IX.

MOUNTAIN-FRIENDS.

THE pleasure we found in making new acquaintances among our workmates
arose partly from their having come from great distances, regions
unknown to us, as the northern districts of Maine and New Hampshire and
Vermont were, in those days of stage-coach traveling, when rail-roads
had as yet only connected the larger cities with one another.

It seemed wonderful to me to be talking with anybody who had really
seen mountains and lived among them. One of the younger girls, who
worked beside me during my very first days in the mill, had come from
far up near the sources of the Merrimack, and she told me a great deal
about her home, and about farm-life among the hills. I listened almost
with awe when she said that she lived in a valley where the sun set at
four o'clock, and where the great snowstorms drifted in so that
sometimes they did not see a neighbor for weeks.

To have mountain-summits looking down upon one out of the clouds,
summer and winter, by day and by night, seemed to me something both
delightful and te