Katharine's Yesterday Read Online Free PDF Page A

easy. Why, Miss Katharine, I’ve many a time laid out to do a piece of work which I thought would benefit the Lord a great deal. I jus’ went ahead and tried it, an’ ’twouldn’t work – o’ course ’twouldn’t. People, when they do those things without consulting the Lord to see if it’s what he would have ’em do, has jus’ got to make up their minds that ’twon’t work. They ain’t a-wearin’ his yoke when they off on that line. Why, you see the verse goes on to say. ‘And learn of me,’ an ’ if they ain’t a-learning of him they ain’t got on his yoke, that’s all . There’s a heap of work a-lyin’ round, ready cut out and basted, for us to go at; and if we prefer to go ahead and cut out our own work, without even asking him for his pattern and getting his advice, we kin decide it’ll be a failure and a botch; that’s the whole story. That’s why my mother used to tell the girls when they wanted to make their own dresses before they was old enough and wise enough; and they tried it once or twice, and they see it was just as she said. It don’t pay to go to work ‘thout learn’ of him.” And the old man shook his head thoughtfully, and looked at the glowing coals.
    “How can you learn of him, Andy?” asked Katharine . She was interested in this subject. It struck home. She thought of her own small attempt at work yesterday, and its failure, and wondered if here were not the secret of her difficulty.
    “Learn o’ him? Why, jus’ go an’ get acquainted with him. You want to read the Book about him, an’ get so well acquainted with him as he was, that you know jus’ what he’d do if he was in your place. Then you have to ask him to help, you know; an’ he always do that. He allus carry the heavy end of the yoke himself.”
    “But it would take a long time to find out all about him,” said Katharine , “and Mr. Richards said that people ought to go right to work as quick as they belong to know all about him, and they couldn’t remember half they read.”
    “Oh, but, Miss Katharine , you do not need to wait. You go to our Father, an’ he takes you, and you ask him to put you to work, an’ he says, ‘I will, my child’; an’ you ask him to take your wicked, sinful heart away, an’ give you a good heart, and he puts his Spirit in your heart, an’ then you keep your eyes wide open, an’ begin to learn about him, an’ love him as fas’ as you can, an’ begin to love everybody else, an d you’ll see plenty to do fer ’em. You grow so you find the work popping up at every turn. You may set it down as pretty sure that when you find a place you can’t work in, or when you do something where you can’t see a bit of work to do for him, then you better get out of it. It ain’t the vineyard if there ain’t any work in it for you, and his children has no business anywhere outside of the vineyard for a minute.”
    “Better stop it, then, Miss Katharine . But I don’t see it that way. There’s that their pretty game you play out on my green lawn that I mowed so nice for you the other day, where you have a fishnet, strung up, and knock little white balls over it. I can’t play it myself, but I like to see it, an’ I feel every time when I see more of you young folks out there playin’, and a-seemin’ to enjoy it all so much, that that’s just what our Father wants us to do. I can think o’ lots o’ ways that there game might be made to come inside the vineyard. There ain’t nothin’ at all to prevent. I s’ppose you could find a whole lot in this very town that would give their two eyes to get a chance at that there bat an’ ball, an’ be allowed to skip ’round on that pretty grass. Then you know we were told to go fishin’ after other folks, an’ bring ’em into the kingdom; an’ it ’ppears to me that there game could make jus’ the best kind of bait. You young folks all seem to enjoy it so much, that it stands to reason other young folks would too; an’