Supposing a steam-engine is to be built. The pattern must be drafted,
the iron brought, the parts cast, fitted, polished, tried,--
it will take months to complete it, and then you may consider it
SPEEDILY executed. So, when we ask God to do something for us,
he may see a good deal of preparation to be necessary,--
obstacles are to be removed, stepping-stones to be laid,--
in the words of the Bible, the rough places are to be made plain,
and the crooked ways straight, before the way of the Lord is prepared,
and he can come directly with the thing we have asked."
It was thus with Tidy. She kept praying all the time to be free,
but the Lord, who meant to give her a larger and better freedom
than she asked, led her through such rough and crooked paths that she
was quite discouraged, and nearly gave up all for lost.
This was her painful condition when she was driven, for the first time
in her life, with a gang of men and women to work in the cotton-field.
CHAPTER XV.
COTTON.
LET us look into a cotton-field; we will take this one of a hundred acres.
The cotton is planted in rows, and requires incessant tillage to secure
a good crop. The weeds and long grass grow so rankly in this warm
climate that great watchfulness and care are required to keep them down.
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