Many of our days must not be the wine, but only small bits of the vine, of
life. We cannot gather or eat _them_; we can only let them grow, branch,
blossom, get here and there green grapes, scarce a tenth of a tithe, in
bulk or weight, of the whole growth, and "in due season--if we faint not"
pluck the purpled clusters. And as the vine is--much, too, as the vine is
tended, so will be the raisins and the wine. There is nothing in life for
which to be more thankful, or in which to be more diligent, than its
intermissions. This is not my sermonizing. I am not going to put
everything off upon "Senda," but really this was hers. I have edited it a
trifle; her inability to make, in her pronunciation, a due difference
between wine and vine rather dulled the point of her moral.
Fontenette remarked to her one Sunday afternoon in our garden, that she
must have got her English first from books.
"Yes," she said, "I didt. Also I have many, many veeks English
conversations lessons befo'e Ame'ica. But I cannot se p'onunciation get;
because se spelling. Hah! I can _not_ sat spelling get!"
O, but didn't I want to offer my services? But, like Bunyan's Christian, I
recalled a text and so got by; which text was the wise saying of that
female Solomon, "se aunt of my muss-er"--"One man can't ever'sing have,
and mine"--establishment is already complete.
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