Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: XIV. EVERY MAN HAS HIS PLACE. " You stout and I stout, "Who shall carry the dirt out! " " Every man cannot be vicar of Bowden." " He that cannot paint must grind the colors." WHO shall be vicar of Bowden and who shall carry the dirt out—who shall paint and who shall grind the colors—are questions which, in various forms, have agitated the world since human society existed. Dissatisfaction with position and condition is well nigh universal. Every man walks with his eyes and wishes upwards—some moved by aspiration for a nobler good, others by ambition for a higher place; some by emulation of a worthy example, others by discontent with the allotments of Providence. The infant does not forget to climb when he learns to walk, nor is the man less a climber than the boy. Every thing is towering, or climbing, or reaching, or lookingupward. The elm stretches its feathery arms and waves its hands toward the clouds that hang over it, the vine pulls itself up the elm by its delicate fingers ; and the violet sits at the foot of the vine and looks up, and breathes its fragrant wishes heavenward. Even the sleeping lakelet in the meadow dreams of stars, and will not be satisfied without a private firmament of water-lilies. It is as if God had whispered into the ear of all existence, the moment it was emerging from nihility, the words—" look up ! " and, hardly knowing why, it had been looking up ever since. "Well, this is right; for, far above every thing shines the great White Throne—sits the Father Soul—abide the treasuries of all good—burns the uncreated fire at which the torches of life were lighted. It is a natural, instinctive thing to look upward. Discontent may be a very good thing, or a very bad thing. There is a discontent which is divine,— which has its birth in the high...