So we have come to a second settlement of Coraltown: first the polyps;
then the men, women, and children. Do you see how the good Father
teaches all his creatures to help each other? Here the tiny polyps have
built an island for people who are so much larger and stronger than
themselves, and the seeming destruction of their upper walls was only a
better preparation for the reception of these distinguished visitors.
The birds, too, are helping them to food, for every little cave and
shelf in the rock is full of eggs. And now should you like to see how
little May Warner helps them in even a better way?
Did you ever fall asleep on the floor, and, waking, find yourself aching
and stiff because it was so hard? Then you know, in part, what hard beds
rocks make. And in a hot, sunny day, haven't you often been glad to keep
under the trees, or even to stay in the house for shade? Then you can
understand a little how hot it must have been on Roncador Island, where
there were no trees nor houses. And haven't you sometimes, when you were
very hot and tired and hungry, and had, perhaps, also been kept waiting
a long hour for somebody who didn't come,--haven't you felt a little
cross and fretful and impatient, so that nothing seemed pleasant to you,
and you seemed pleasant to nobody? Now, shouldn't you think there was
great danger that these people on the island, in the hot sun, tired,
hungry, and waiting, waiting, day and night, for some vessel to come and
take them to their homes again, and not feeling at all sure that any
such vessel would ever come,--shouldn't you think there was danger of
their becoming cross and fretful and impatient? And if one begins to
say, "Oh, how tired I am, and how hard the rocks are, and how little
dinner I have had, and how hot the sun is, and what shall we ever do
waiting here so long, and how shall we ever get home again!" don't you
see that all would begin to be discouraged? And sometimes on this island
it did happen just so: first one would be discouraged, and then another;
and as soon as you begin to feel in this way, you know at once every
thing grows even worse than it was before,--the sun feels hotter, the
rocks harder, the water tastes more disagreeably, and the crab's claws
less palatable.
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