Most patient indeed is Madam How. She
does not mind the least seeing her own work destroyed; she knows that it
must be destroyed. There is a spell upon her, and a fate, that
everything she makes she must unmake again: and yet, good and wise woman
as she is, she never frets, nor tires, nor fudges her work, as we say at
school. She takes just as much pains to make an acorn as to make a
peach. She takes just as much pains about the acorn which the pig eats,
as about the acorn which will grow into a tall oak, and help to build a
great ship. She took just as much pains, again, about the acorn which
you crushed under your foot just now, and which you fancy will never come
to anything. Madam How is wiser than that. She knows that it will come
to something. She will find some use for it, as she finds a use for
everything. That acorn which you crushed will turn into mould, and that
mould will go to feed the roots of some plant, perhaps next year, if it
lies where it is; or perhaps it will be washed into the brook, and then
into the river, and go down to the sea, and will feed the roots of some
plant in some new continent ages and ages hence: and so Madam How will
have her own again. You dropped your stick into the river yesterday, and
it floated away. You were sorry, because it had cost you a great deal of
trouble to cut it, and peel it, and carve a head and your name on it.
Madam How was not sorry, though she had taken a great deal more trouble
with that stick than ever you had taken.
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