“Discouragement will come, and it is my duty to prepare you for it. You have confidence in human nature. You think all will be as eager to drink in instruction as you are eager to dispense it. You may be mistaken, and will be disappointed. It has taken me some years, Mr. Bramber, to learn a fact which I will communicate to you, as a caution against losing heart. You will remember that when the sower went forth to sow, though all his seed was good, yet only one-fourth part came to anything. We must work for the work’s sake, and not for results. In your patience possess ye your souls. That is one of the hardest of lessons to acquire.” “I will try not to expect too much.” “Expect nothing. Look to the work, and the work only. One sows, another reaps, a third grinds, a fourth bakes, but it is the fifth who eats the loaf and tastes how good it is. Did you ever hear what Mme. de Maintenon said of the carps, that had been transferred to the marble basins of Marly, in which they died? ‘Ah!’ said she, ‘they are like me, they regret their native mud.’ You will find that your pupils do not want to be translated to purer fountains, that in them there is a hankering after their native ignorance. That there will be little receptiveness, no enthusiasm after the light, no hunger after the bread of the Spirit--that is what you must be prepared to find. I have found it so, and am now content with the smallest achievements--to make them take a few crumbs from my palm, to accept the tiniest ray let into their clouded minds. Be content to do your work, and do not be asking for results. Do your duty, leave results to another day and to the reapers. You and I are the humble sowers, enough for us to know that, but for us, there would be no golden harvest which we shall not see.” The rector withdrew his hand from the arm of Bramber. “There is a saying, ‘Except ye be as little children’--You know the rest. What does that mean? Not the simplicity of children--simplicity springs out of inexperience; not the innocence--which arises from ignorance--but the inquisitiveness of the child, which is its characteristic. The child asks questions, it wants to know everything, often asking what it is inconvenient to answer. Mr. Bramber, unless we have this spirit of inquiry, we cannot enter into any kingdom above that of animal life. There is the intellectual kingdom, and when there is eagerness to know, then there is advance into that realm, and you will be the great prophet and mystagogue who will lead the young of this village into that kingdom. Then, secondly, there is the spiritual kingdom, but of that I will not now speak. I hope you will find some pupils apt to learn, but the many will, I fear, be listless.” “A single swallow does not make a summer,” said the schoolmaster; “but I have already met with one here who verily hungers and thirsts after knowledge.” “Ah!” Mr. Fielding looked round, and his face lightened. “You have met--talked to Kitty.”