"
"It is a lovely idea," said Christopher. "One of my hopes is to build a
small hospital for children in some lovely place, near some sad ugly
one. But perhaps I cannot do it till I am old, for when I do, I must
live among them and have them and their nurses within a moment's reach."
"Is it not delightful to know that you can start anything when you
please?"
"Anybody with leisure can do that who is willing to begin where
everything ought to be begun--that is, at the beginning. Nothing worth
calling good can or ever will be started full grown. The essential of
any good is life, and the very body of created life, and essential to
it, being its self operant, is growth. The larger start you make, the
less room you leave for life to extend itself. You fill with the dead
matter of your construction the places where assimilation ought to have
its perfect work, building by a life-process, self-extending, and
subserving the whole. Small beginnings with slow growings have time to
root themselves thoroughly--I do not mean in place nor yet in social
regard, but in wisdom. Such even prosper by failures, for their failures
are not too great to be rectified without injury to the original idea.
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