A WISE FATHER. 11

@ time, Can you not do that, Robert? Make up your
mind, now, and act like a man.”

His tone was both courageous and encouraging, and
his fine eyes were fixed earnestly upon me. “ Only a
few drops ata siied ” IT inwardly repeated it once,
and the great, huge, leviathan shower seemed actually
to dwindle down in an instant to only a few drops at
@ time.

_ “Yes, father,” I answered briskly, in spite of myself.
The shoes were no longer heavy, nor the umbrella
ugly. Off I walked bravely. “ Only a few arops at a
time,” I said aloud to the pelting:rain half a dozen
times, and my walk seemed comparatively a short one.
Passing by Charley’s house on my way home, he cried

out, “T have but just got up, and you have been away
| up to pasture, in the rain. Oh, I would not do that !”

iH Only a few drops at a time, Charley. Make up
your mind to it, and you will find it is nothing,” said I
—marching by with the agreeable consciousness of .
something gained, which I would not have exchanged

with any boy. I now know that it was the experience of