Seaboard Parish, vol 1 | Page 6

Connie. You, and your sister as well, help me very much in my parish.
You take much off your mother's hands too. And you do a good deal
for the poor. You teach your younger brothers and sister, and meantime
you are learning yourselves."
"Yes, but that's not work."
"It is work. And it is the work that is given you to do at present. And
you would do it much better if you were to look at it in that light. Not
that I have anything to complain of."
"But I don't want to stop at home and lead an easy, comfortable life,
when there are so many to help everywhere in the world."
"Is there anything better in doing something where God has not placed
you, than in doing it where he has placed you?"
"No, papa. But my sisters are quite enough for all you have for us to do
at home. Is nobody ever to go away to find the work meant for her?
You won't think, dear papa, that I want to get away from home, will
you?"
"No, my dear. I believe that you are really thinking about duty. And
now comes the moment for considering the passage to which you
began by referring:--What God may hereafter require of you, you must
not give yourself the least trouble about. Everything he gives you to do,
you must do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible
preparation for what he may want you to do next. If people would but
do what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for
what came next. And I do not believe that those who follow this rule
are ever left floundering on the sea-deserted sands of inaction, unable
to find water enough to swim in."
"Thank you, dear papa. That's a little sermon all to myself, and I think I
shall understand it even when I think about it afterwards. Now let's
have a trot."
"There is one thing more I ought to speak about though, Connie. It is
not your moral nature alone you ought to cultivate. You ought to make
yourself as worth God's making as you possibly can. Now I am a little
doubtful whether you keep up your studies at all."
She shrugged her pretty shoulders playfully, looking up in my face
again.
"I don't like dry things, papa."

"Nobody does."
"Nobody!" she exclaimed. "How do the grammars and history-books
come to be written then?"
In talking to me, somehow, the child always put on a more childish
tone than when she talked to anyone else. I am certain there was no
affection in it, though. Indeed, how could she be affected with her
fault-finding old father?
"No. Those books are exceedingly interesting to the people that make
them. Dry things are just things that you do not know enough about to
care for them. And all you learn at school is next to nothing to what
you have to learn."
"What must I do then?" she asked with a sigh. "Must I go all over my
French Grammar again? O dear! I do hate it so!"
"If you will tell me something you like, Connie, instead of something
you don't like, I may be able to give you advice. Is there nothing you
are fond of?" I continued, finding that she remained silent.
"I don't know anything in particular--that is, I don't know anything in
the way of school-work that I really liked. I don't mean that I didn't try
to do what I had to do, for I did. There was just one thing I liked--the
poetry we had to learn once a week. But I suppose gentlemen count that
silly--don't they?"
"On the contrary, my dear, I would make that liking of yours the
foundation of all your work. Besides, I think poetry the grandest thing
God has given us--though perhaps you and I might not quite agree
about what poetry was poetry enough to be counted an especial gift of
God. Now, what poetry do you like best?"
"Mrs. Hemans's, I think, papa."
"Well, very well, to begin with. 'There is,' as Mr. Carlyle said to a
friend of mine--'There is a thin vein of true poetry in Mrs. Hemans.' But
it is time you had done with thin things, however good they may be.
Most people never get beyond spoon-meat--in this world, at least, and
they expect nothing else in the world to come. I must take you in hand
myself, and see what I can do for you. It is wretched to see capable
enough creatures, all for want of a little guidance, bursting with
admiration of what owes its principal charm to novelty of form, gained
at the cost of