A POOR but industrious man who rented a farm that was badly overgrown with weeds set his heart on getting rid of them. To do this he worked early and late. By the dawn of day he might be seen ploughing his fields, and because his own team (two rather sorry-looking horses) were not strong enough to turn up the deep soil he hired a pair of oxen and ploughed with them.

Afterward he went over the ground with his harrow, from one side of the field to the other, and again across it from end to end. He did this to break up the hard clods and throw out the roots of the weeds, that the sun might scorch and kill them. Then he sowed the ground thickly with good seed, so that if any of the roots were left they might be crowded out by the grain. He kept on patiently working in this way until he had gone over every part of his farm.

And his labor was not in vain, for in the fields where the corn and the oats and the rye were growing the weeds almost disappeared. Nevertheless, as soon as it came in turn for a field to rest and lie fallow for a season, they were sure to show themselves again. And in the pasture-land, that was never ploughed, they sprang up plentifully among the grass and the clover.

In vain the farmer took out his scythe, searching for the places where they grew, and cutting them down with his own hands. There were some places that he did not reach, and some where the roots were hidden from sight; so that every summer they continued to mar the prospect around him. And, as time went on, instead of getting used to them, it seemed as if he worried over them more and more.

At length, after he had been worrying thus from year to year, he went out one gloomy autumn afternoon to walk alone, and, seeing patches of the hated weeds here and there all over his farm, he grew very despondent. He turned, and came back with a heavy step to his cottage. His wife, having gotten through the rest of her work, was sitting by the window mending his well-worn coat.

“You know,” said he as soon as he came in the door, “how I’ve tried to get rid of these weeds. I’ve worked early and late, in season and out of season, and yet there’s not a field that has not got some of them in it. And down in the low-lying land back of the meeting-house—I’ve just been there—it seems to me they’re thicker than ever. I’m discouraged. I feel like throwing up my lease and giving up the farm, and fighting against them no longer.”

“Well, now,” said his wife as she threaded her needle and sewed away at his patched coat, “I think you’re looking only on one side. You haven’t worked all these years for nothing. You’ve had pretty good crops, I think, and it seems to me, the way I look at it, that this is a very good farm, after all, the way farms go. As for getting rid of the weeds, they were here when you came. It’s a weedy country. I don’t believe you’ll ever be able to get them clean out of the land. But then you’ve succeeded in keeping them under. I reckon that if we work hard, with the help of a kind Providence this farm will do till we get a better. For you know we hope to move to a better country some of these days, and to get new land that hasn’t any weeds in it.”

“I declare, wife,” said the farmer, brightening up, “I do believe there’s something in what you tell me. I never looked at it so before. I’ve been looking at the weeds, and nothing else. We ought to look at the crops too, no doubt since they’ve been given us in spite of the weeds. We must put up with something, I reckon, wherever we go; so I think we’ll just do as you say, and stay where we are, trying nevertheless, to get the weeds out, harder and harder. I’m glad I came straight to you. You always were a good, sensible wife, and now I admire you more, and set greater store by you than ever.”

We must not despair because evil is still present with us, but rather take courage from whatever growth in good our past lives may show.