ink of being
told by him that the determination to amount to something was taken that
morning, ten years before, when he seemed not to be listening nor
caring! What is ten years of Christian work when we can hope for such
results as that!

Flossy had forgotten her charge; her face was all aglow; so was her
heart. She knew more about Christian work than she did an hour before.
She had learned that we must take the step that plainly comes next to be
taken, no matter for the darkness of the day and the apparent gloom of
the future. _Work_ is ours; _results_ are God's. This life business is
divided. Partnership with God. Nothing but _the work_ to do; so that it
is done to the utmost limit of our best, the responsibility is the
Lord's. That was blessed! She could dare to try.

Meantime the boy. He had listened in utmost silence, and with eyes that
never for an instant left the speaker's face! When the spell was broken
he drew a long sigh, and this was his mighty conclusion.

"That chap was enough sight meaner than I'd ever be, and yet he got to
be _some_! I'll be blamed if I don't see what can be done in that line!"

A small beginning; so small that on Flossy's face it excited only
smiles. She was ignorant, you know. To Mrs. Partridge that sentence
would have been worth a wedge of gold. But it is possible that Flossy's
first simple little reach after work may have fruit to bear.

It is difficult to begin to tell about that next day at Chautauqua.
There was so much crowded into it that it would almost make a little
book of itself. The morning was spent by a large class of people in a
state of excited unrest and expectancy. The sensible ones by the
hundreds, and indeed I suppose I may say by the thousands, went to the
morning service, as usual, and heard the children's sermon, delivered by
Dr. Newton; and those who did not, and who afterward had the misfortune
to fall in with those who did, bemoaned their folly in not doing
likewise. On the whole, the children, and those who had brains enough to
become children for the time being, were the only comfortable ones at
Chautauqua that Saturday morning.

The president was coming! So, apparently, was the rest of the world!
Oh, the throngs and throngs that continually arrived! It of itself was a
rare and never-to-be-forgotten novelty to those who had never in their
lives before seen such a vast army of human beings gathered into a small
space, and all perfectly quiet and correct