The doctor's errand that day is to take word to the couple that their son from America wishes them to spend the remainder of their days with him. He has expected them to be overjoyed by the news. But, after talking together of the invitation, they assure him that their place is where they are. "We be road-mending here, making ways smoother for the folks that have rough traveling," is the explanation. "We think we ought to bide at the farm." Thus the old people took the way of conquering unhappiness made known so long ago by Him who set the example of finding joy in caring for other people, the way taken by a modern follower of His who wrote home from the army: "I cast my lot where I knew the road would be rough, and why should I complain? It seems to me at times that I must give way to my lower self and let the work slip off my back on others perhaps more tired than myself. But I have a tender, kind Father in heaven who tells me that my way is right. I have very little to uphold me in this work away from my friends. My happy moments are those which I spend with my Bible during my night watches, or thinking of happy days gone by, or building me air-castles for days to come. I am happy, too, when I read the little verse written in the front of my Testament, and so thankful for the power to understand it: "So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth replies, 'I can.'" Yet there are those who insist that it is the duty of one whose lot is hard to be morose and sad; that by covering his sadness with the gladness of service he is making a cheat of himself! In verse a writer with insight has pilloried such critics: "He went so blithely on his way, The way men call the way of life, That good folks who had stopped to pray, Shaking their heads, were wont to say, It was not right to be so gay Upon that weary road of strife. "He whistled as he went, and still He bore the young where streams were deep, He helped the feeble up the hill, He seemed to go with heart athrill, Careless of deed and wild of will-- He whistled, that he might not weep." III MAKING LITTLE THINGS COUNT There are people who spend so much time looking for the large, spectacular opportunities for serving others, that they pass by as unworthy of notice the opportunities for doing what seem to be little kindnesses. Fortunately, however, there are people who are so taken up with rendering what they call little services, that they have no time to worry because the big opportunities do not come their way. A magazine writer tells of one of these doers of simple kindnesses: