Kind Hearts

"Sweet are the uses of adversity."

-William Shakespeare

Man With An Axe

(Larry Dixon Splitting Wood)

A painting by Tom Thomson

(1915)

Officially winter is over and spring is here.

For most of us, it has been a hard winter despite the

fact that the weather has been pleasant the greater part of the time.

There are things other than zero weather and heavy snow falls

that make hard winters.

But we know all about those things, and so I'll tell you of something else-

something as warming to the heart as a good fire on the hearth is to

a chilled body on a cold day.

I have often thought that we are a little old-fashioned here in the Ozark hills;

now I know we are, because we had a "working" in our neighborhood this winter.

That is a blessed, old-fashioned way of helping out a neighbor.

While the winter was warm, still it has been much too cold to be without

firewood; and this neighbor, badly crippled with rheumatism, was not able to

get up his winter's wood. With what little wood he could manage to chop,

the family scarcely kept comfortable.

So the men of the neighborhood gathered together one morning and

dropped in on him. With cross-cut saws and axes, they took possession of

his wood lot. At noon a wood saw was brought in, and it sawed briskly all

the afternoon. By night there was enough wood ready for the stove to

last the rest of the winter.

The women did their part, too. All morning they kept arriving with

well-filled baskets, and at noon a long table was filled with a country

neighborhood dinner. After the hungry men had eaten and gone back to work,

the women and children gathered at the second table, fully as well supplied as

the first, and chatted pleasant neighborhood gossip while they leisurely enjoyed

the good things. Then when the dishes were washed, they sewed, knit, crocheted,

and talked for the rest of the afternoon.

It was a regular old-fashioned good time, and we all went home with the

feeling expressed by a newcomer when he said, "Don't you know I'm proud to

live in a neighborhood like this where they turn out and help one another

when it's needed."

"Sweet are the uses of adversity" when it shows us the kindness

in our neighbors' hearts.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

(1867-1957)

"Kind Hearts"

By Laura Ingalls Wilder

Written in March, 1922