A MAN who had an ugly limp in his gait, but was nevertheless a good walker, sat down on a bench by the wayside one day, saying, impatiently:

“This lameness embitters my life. I cannot for a moment lose sight of it. I go limping along, my legs are unlike, my steps are uneven, and, though I do not suffer positive pain, I very often experience discomfort. Beside all this, I fear, as I grow older, my halt will increase upon me, so that I shall be even more of a cripple then than I am now. How I wish I could change places with yonder cheerful-looking man who is coming this way with such an even, measured tread!”

As he ceased speaking the man he referred to suddenly turned toward the bench on which the speaker was resting and took a seat at his side, but rather closer than was needful, as they two had it alone.

“Excuse me,” said the new comer as he felt himself crowding his neighbor; “I am blind, and, although I know this path so well that I can walk along it without a guide, I could not see that another was seated here before me.”

“I am sorry for you,” said the lame man, feelingly. “Surely, no one would suspect you were blind from your firm step and your cheerful countenance. May I ask how it is you preserve so happy an aspect under so great a misfortune?”

“By looking at what I have, and not at what I have lost,” replied the blind man. “Though I cannot see, I can hear the voice of my friends, the sound of music, the singing of birds. I can taste three good meals, and enjoy them, every day. I can smell a rose in bloom farther than you can, for all my senses that remain are keener for the absence of the one that is gone. My health, too,[321]
[322] is good, and I have learned to work so skilfully at basket-making that, with a little I have beside, I am able to pay my own way without being a burden to others. Thus, in the apportioning of my lot, so much more has been given than taken, that I consider life’s bargain a good one for me.”

Having thus spoken, the blind man, after a few moments’ rest, bade his new acquaintance “Good-bye,” and, rising from the bench, felt his way cautiously, counting each step, until he reached the middle of the sidewalk, when he wheeled around and proceeded on his way with the same measured tread that had first attracted his companion’s attention. As he disappeared the latter said:

“What is my limp, which still permits me to walk wherever I will, to his blindness, which shuts out every ray of light? Yet he is the happier of the two! After all, blind as he is, I was doing myself no unkindness in wishing I could take his place.”

How often does he who has the most go poor because he is unconscious of it! while he who has the least is made rich by being able to appreciate what he has.