Failure | Thanks

RARE THANKS
One day the late W. L. Stidger told about a teacher he had while in school. She had gone out of her way to get him interested in the poet Tennyson. Since he was in the practice of writing persons each Thanksgiving who had an influence on him, he wrote her a letter of Thanksgiving. The letter was forwarded from town to town until it reached her. One day Dr. Stidger received a reply: My Dear Willie: I am an old lady in my eighties. I am ill and I cannot leave my room. Your letter came like a ray of bright sun, illuminating my dark day and my even darker life. You will be interested to know that, after fifty years of teaching, yours was the first letter of thanks I ever received from a former student. You lifted the clouds for me. William Stidger, More Sermons in Stories (New York, Abingdon Cokesbury Press, 1954), pp. 117-118, as reported in Christian…