OPPORTUNITY.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, 17 September 1898, Page 7

OPPORTUNITY.

Geeat Thoughts.

Once upon a time, in a lonely spot beside tho liver Danube, there stood an flld moss-grown castle with grey stone tuvretted walls. Here there lived a strange, weirdlooking old man. His name was <3ount yon Hurfcz. —He was seldom seen outside the old castle, but sometimes the peasant children, nutting in the woods, or fishing in the shallows of the river, would draw aside to,, let him pass, his gaunt figure, with its shaggy beard, apd peircing eyes shiningfrom under heavy brows, being an object of fear to them. One day three little boys named Martin, Frederic, and Pierre, on a holiday ramble, met old Count yon Hurtz. He stopped to talk to them, and., pleased with their fearless answers, he told them that if they would come next day, and stand on the river bank under the castle wall, he would, between the hours of twelye and five, throw three gold pieces to them from the castle tower. Early the next morning, the three little boys set off, and took their stand on the bank, their eyes fixed expectantly on the old tower. But the minutes went by, and more jthan an hour went by, and still there was

no sign of the old Count, or of the gold pieces. Martin grew tired very soon, watching. The day was hot; they had had a long walk ,* he rolled himself over on the grassy bank to rest, and called on his companions to do the same. What was the good of waiting ? The old Count was pnly mak> tng fools of them. After a little while, Frederic, too, turned away, and, sauntering to the edge of the river, amused himself by throwing stones into it. Pierre waited patiently on the upper bank, his eyes fixed steadily on the tower. The others laughed at him, but he only shook his head at their arguments, and never moved. Just as the clock, which was fixed high np in the tower, struck four, a little nirrov/ window under it opened, and the old Count appeared. He instantly flung a gold piece, and Pierre, with a quick spring, caught it fast in his hands. Frederic turned from his play, and, as another coin came spinning through the air, he made a hesitating step to meet it. Too late, it flashed past him, and fell, like the glint of a sunbeam, in the blue waters of the river. A third followed, but Martin, lazily stretched on the warm, grassy bank, did not even lift his eyes to see it as it passed over him. Another little whirling circle of quivering ripples on the still surface of the water, marked the fact that something was lost for ever in its depths. Frederic grumbled, as the three boj~s trudged homeward at the end oi the day, that he had not been jready to catch his gold piece. Martin ''didn't much care about it," he said, " it was not worth while." But Pierre smiled, as he clasped his gold piece tight in his clenched fist. The gold pieces are pictures of the opportunities which come to us all. Opportunities for the happiness of others and of ourselves, day by day, Opportunities of great things now and again — of gaining knowledge, honour. Of doing some noble, some brave thing. Of forgetting self, and living for others. They will come any time, every time, all through our life ; we know not when. Let us only be watching for them always, like Pierre ; not wilfully careless, like Frederic ; not indifferent, like Martin.