Kike's face settled into more than its wonted severity. The remembrance of his recent vacillation and the sense of his present weakness were fresh in his mind. He would not again give place to the devil. "Mr. Brady, there's something more important than our own ease or happiness. We were not made to seek comfort, but to give ourselves to the work of Christ. And see! your head is already blossoming for eternity, and yet you talk as if this world were all." Saying this, Kike shook hands with the master solemnly and rode away, and Mr. Brady was more appalled than ever. "The lad haint got a wakeniss," he said, disconsolately. "Not a wakeniss," he repeated, as he walked gloomily into the school-house, took down a switch and proceeded to punish Pete Sniger, who, as the worst boy in the school, and a sort of evil genius, often suffered on general principles when the master was out of humor. Was Kike unhappy when he made his way to the distant Pottawottomie Creek circuit? Do you think the Jesuit missionaries, who traversed the wilds of America at the call of duty as they heard it, were unhappy men? The highest happiness comes not from the satisfaction of our desires, but from the denial of them for the sake of a high purpose. I doubt not the happiest man that ever sailed through Levantine seas, or climbed Cappadocian mountains, was Paul of Tarsus. Do you think that he envied the voluptuaries of Cyprus, or the rich merchants of Corinth? Can you believe that one of the idlers in the Epicurean gardens, or one of the Stoic loafers in the covered sidewalks of Athens, could imagine the joy that tided the soul of Paul over all tribulations? For there is a sort of awful delight in self-sacrifice, and Kike defied the storms of a northern winter, and all the difficulties and dangers of the wilderness, and all the hardships of his lonely lot, with one saying often on his lips: "O Lord, I have kept back nothing!" I have heard that about this time young Lumsden was accustomed to electrify his audiences by his fervent preaching upon the Christian duty of Glorying in Tribulation, and that shrewd old country women would nod their heads one to another as they went home afterward, and say: "He's seed a mighty sight o' trouble in his time, I 'low, fer a young man." "Yes; but he's got the victory; and how powerful sweet he talks about it! I never heerd the beat in all my born days." _CHAPTER XXIII._ RUSSELL BIGELOW'S SERMON.