drew her attention downward and she smiled. He was down there at play
with friends whose parents lived in the houses of the row. She laughed
as those victorious cries reached the upper air. Leaning forward, she
pressed her face against the window-pane and peered over and watched
the group of them. Sometimes she could see them and sometimes not as
they struggled from one side of the street to the other. No one, whether
younger or older, stronger or weaker, was ever defeated down there;
everybody at some time got worsted; no one was ever defeated. All the
whipped remained conquerors. Unconquerable childhood! She said to
herself that she must learn a lesson from it once more--to have always
within herself the will and spirit of victory.

With her face still against the glass she caught sight of something
approaching carefully up the street. It was the car of a physician who
had a patient in one of the houses near by. This was his hour to make
his call. He guided the car himself, and the great mass of tons in
weight responded to his guidance as if it possessed intelligence, as if
it entered into his foresight and caution: it became to her, as she
watched it, almost conscious, almost human. She thought of it as being
like some great characters in human life which need so little to make
them go easily and make them go right. A wise touch, and their enormous
influence is sent whither it should be sent by a pressure that would not
bruise a leaf.

She chid herself once more that in a world where so often the great is
the good she had too often been hard and bitter; that many a time she
had found pleasure in setting the empty cup of her life out under its
clouds and catching the showers of nature as though they were drops of
gall.