United States or Egypt ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Wife, what did you say to him yesterday, to make him so good-humored this morning?" "I never even spoke to him," said his wife, dryly. "You know how whimsical he is." "I wish he may remain in his present mind!" said the vinedresser; and thereupon he went off to the ale-house, to talk with his neighbors of the best shots of the preceding day.
Mark read, and when he came to that part of the tract, in which the Bible is mentioned, the vinedresser looked up to a high shelf on the wall, where were some old books, and said, "wife, had we not once a Bible?" "Fifteen years ago," she answered, "you exchanged it for a pistol." The vinedresser blushed, and listened with out farther interruption until Mark had done reading.
"Oh! wife, wife," said the vinedresser, much vexed, "when will you help me to do what is right?" "Yes, my child," he added, kissing Josephine's cheek, "I will buy you one to-morrow. Do you think there are any to be had at the pastor's house?" "Oh! yes, plenty," cried Josephine, "and very large ones too!"
And so the one thing the branch that desires to abide in Christ and bring forth much fruit, and to be able to ask whatsoever it will, must do, is to trust in and yield itself to this Divine cleansing. What is it that the vinedresser cuts away with his pruning-knife? Nothing but the wood that the branch has produced true, honest wood, with the true vine nature in it. This must be cut away. And why?
And of all fruitbearing plants there is none that is so ready to run into wild wood, and for which pruning and cleansing are so indispensable. The one great work that a vinedresser has to do for the branch every year is to prune it. Other plants can for a time dispense with it, and yet bear fruit: the vine must have it.
"For we'll make a thorough-paced sportsman of you yet, Sir Richard," he said, "God bless you danged if we don't." Which assertion Mr. Chifney repeated at frequent intervals over his grog that evening, as he sat, not in the smart dining-room hung round with portraits of Vinedresser and Sahara and other equine notabilities, but in the snug, little, back parlour looking out on to the yard. Mrs.
William grew up to be a young man, and was finally apprenticed to a tailor at Pavia, but his knavish master set him to work as a vinedresser, suspecting that Cardan cared little what happened so long as the young man was kept out of his sight. William seems to have been a merry, good-tempered fellow; but his life was a short one, for he took fever, and died in his twenty-second year.
The copiousness of this rural repertory may be guessed from the numerous titles of that nature, such as "the Cow," "the Ass," "the Kid," "the Sow," "the Swine," "the Sick Boar," "the Farmer," "the Countryman," "Harlequin Countryman," "the Cattle-herd," "the Vinedresser," "the Fig- gatherer," "Woodcutting," "Pruning," "the Poultry-yard."
More fruit is what the Father seeks; more fruit is what the Father will Himself provide. It is for this that He, as the Vinedresser, cleanses the branches. Just think a moment what this means. It is said that of all fruitbearing plants on earth there is none that produces fruit so full of spirit, from which spirit can be so abundantly distilled, as the vine.
Some good people who set themselves up as judges in such matters, full of worldly prudence said that I was making myself too common, and bringing the holy function of preaching into contempt. This came to the ears of our Blessed Father, and he, despising such poor earthly wisdom, observed, that to blame a husbandman or vinedresser for cultivating his land too well was really to praise him.
Word Of The Day