As a work of art grows slowly from confusion and lack of form to
coherence and symmetry to the moral joy of its maker, so her
experience in human plastic enterprise filled the heart of Miss Willis
with a vital happiness. For two years--day in and day out--she never
flagged in her task of giving sight to the eyes and ears to the mind
of the unshaped clay which fate had put into her hands for making or
marring. How patient she had to be! How ingenious, vigilant, and
sympathetic! Through working upon the souls of Jimmy's father and
mother by pathetic appeal she obtained permission to keep him an hour
after school each day and drill him step by step, inch by inch. She
brought her midday meal and shared it with him. In the evening she
framed cunning devices to lure his budding intelligence. And from the
very first she beheld her figure of human ignorance respond to her
gentle moulding. Jimmy's soul was first of all a hot-spring of
ambition; the evidences of which, when once recognized, were ever
paramount. But how blocked and intricate were the passages through
which this yearning for fame sought to express itself! Sometimes it
seemed even to her as though she would never dissipate the fog-bank
which tortured his intelligence. But Jimmy was patient, too, and his
bull-dog features were but the reflex of a grim tenacity of purpose.
At the end of the first year she reported that he was unfit to be
promoted, in order that she need not lose him just when he needed her
most. She was able to make clear to Jimmy that this was not a
disgrace, but a sign of progress. But when the end of the second year
came she passed him on with only the qualm of love parting with its
own. Her task was done. The dull, clouded brow was clear with the
light of eager reason; the still struggling faculties had begun to
understand that in slowness there was the compensation of power, and
were resolute with hope.