A CLOUD came sailing on the wind, which died away just as it reached a fruitful field.

“Pass on,” said the field, “and let me see the blue sky.”

The cloud spread itself out to catch the little air that was left, and slowly passed on to a field beyond. There it hung motionless. In the night it began to drop its watery contents upon the thirsty sward beneath, so that every green blade glistened as the sun rose upon it, and sprang up with renewed freshness and beauty. The field that had complained, seeing this and being parched with the sun’s rays, said:

“Ah that I had borne the cloud’s presence a while for the sake of the blessing it contained! I was impatient under its shadow, and now long for that which my neighbor has gained who submitted to its visitation without murmuring.”

We put out our hand and thrust away an imagined evil, to find out afterward that, if we had but welcomed it, it would have filled that hand with good.