20 OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD

 "You are a saucy boy !" said the captain, turning on
his heel and walking briskly away. Though he said this,
I rather think that, on reflection, he was much of Sam's
opinion.
 Willie found that his mother submitted to the calamity
of losing the cow with that gentleness and patience with
which she took all the inevitable evils, small and great, of
her lot. This was a better lesson to her child than if she
had talked to him a month about the duty of submission.
 "I am very glad you ain't sorrier, mother," said William;
"I was afraid you would feel dreadfully."
 I am sorry, Willie-very sorry; it is a great loss to
us: but it is not that distressing kind of sorrow I should
feel if you had been doing wrong; nor that heart-sickness
I should have felt if anything evil had happened to you,
my dear boy."
 Instead of that, something good has happened to me,
mother." William then told his mother how lucky he
had been in seeing the cattle just in the nick of time.
"Sam says," concluded Willie, "that the captain will never
so much as thank me; but I don't care for that, for it's
just as you say, mother,-it makes you feel somehow so
happy to feel you have done right because it was right,
not because you want anybody to pay you, or thank you,
or praise you for it."
 "That happy feeling, my dear child, is God's reward,
and it is not like men's pay, and thanks, and praise: they
may fail us, but this happy feeling we are sure of when
conscience tells us we have done right; and it is quite
reward enough for our best actions."
 So I know it is, mother."
 Not long after this Mrs. Ellis asked William to go to
the fulling-mill to get their cloth. This was a piece of
cloth for a cloak for Mrs. Ellis, and a new suit of clothes
for William. Mrs. Ellis had spun the yarn, dyed it,
and woven it herself. No one can feel the worth of a
garment as the diligent woman does who has manufac-
tured it herself ; I believe it gives her ten times the plea-
sure a fine lady gets from a new dress from Paris, so,