All the water which seemed so useless in April, all the rain
which seemed so superfluous and so dreary in May and June, has been
used. Not a drop of it was wasted. Its office was to feed life, to
dissolve the substances in the rocks and the soils which the plants
needed, to be mixed with the sunshine in the manufacture of food for
the present and for the future. Nor is the heat nor the light wasted.
Both are stored in the trunks of the trees, and when in the winter the
back log sends out its steady heat and the foresticks their cheerful
blaze, the old tree will give back, measure for measure, the light and
heat it has stored through the years. Let us rejoice in the fervent
heat and the grand work of the August days. So a man works as he
approaches his ideals. Feebly at first he begins. Winds of adversity
buffet him, cold disdain would freeze his ambition, hot scorn would
shrivel his soul. Still he perseveres, striving towards his ideal,
firmly rooted in faith and his heart ever open for the beauty and the
sunshine of the world. In periods of storm and cloud, his heart, like
the sun, makes its own warmth and splendor, knowing that the season
of its strength shall come. When he seems to be growing nearer his
ideal his fervor is at August heat; for him there is no burden in the
heat of the day; tirelessly, joyously, he strives, achieves, attains.
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