A MAN came out into his garden one spring morning to prune his grape-vine. Wherever its branches were growing too freely, or in a wrong direction, he cut them off. Then he bound them to a low wooden frame he had placed there, so that they might grow only in the direction he intended. Now, as the day was warm and the sap was beginning to flow, the branches bled, as the vine-dressers say, in the places where he had pruned them.

It happened that just outside of the garden wall a wild[196]
[197] vine was growing, having twined itself around a tall forest-tree that stood there. When this wild vine saw what was done to the vine in the garden, it cried:

“I pity you, wounded and bleeding, and not allowed to grow aloft, as your nature demands.”

“It is not because he delights in wounding me,” replied the other, “that my master has done this. I was once a wild vine too, but he took me up tenderly, and planted me in his garden, and has watered and cared for me ever since. I am willing to submit myself to his hands.”

Not many weeks after this rich blossoms burst forth on both vines, giving to each an equal promise of fruit. Before long the blossoms dropped off and the embryo fruit appeared. As the summer advanced these were tried. Such as were destined to ripen lived on through the heat and the drought, and such as were destined to perish fell to the ground.

At length autumn came. The wild vine had climbed up to the topmost boughs of the forest-tree and was waving its unfettered branches in the air, but on those branches were found only a few withered grapes. But the vine in the garden, tied down to its low frame, was loaded with purple clusters; and the gardener came, and gathered them into baskets, and carried them to his home. Afterward he returned to his vine and bound straw around it, to protect it from the winter’s cold. But going through the forest with his axe in his hand, seeking for fuel, he cut down the wild vine and cast it on the heap for the winter’s burning.

He who believes that a loving, and all-powerful Hand is ordering his lot should see a token of future blessings in the visits of adversity.