came a young woman leading a little boy. They came after me, the boy
gazing at the red and gold and green of the sunset sky. As they
passed me, the child said--

"Auntie, I think I should like to be a painter."

"Why?" returned his companion.

"Because, then," answered the child, "I could help God to paint the
sky."

What his aunt replied I do not know; for they were presently beyond
my hearing. But I went on answering him myself all the way home. Did
God care to paint the sky of an evening, that a few of His children
might see it, and get just a hope, just an aspiration, out of its
passing green, and gold, and purple, and red? and should I think my
day's labour lost, if it wrought no visible salvation in the earth?

But was the child's aspiration in vain? Could I tell him God did not
want his help to paint the sky? True, he could mount no scaffold
against the infinite of the glowing west. But might he not with his
little palette and brush, when the time came, show his brothers and
sisters what he had seen there, and make them see it too? Might he
not thus come, after long trying, to help God to paint this glory of
vapour and light inside the minds of His children? Ah! if any man's
work is not WITH God, its results shall be burned, ruthlessly
burned, because poor and bad.

"So, for my part," I said to myself, as I walked home, "if I can put
one touch of a rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman of my