Featherstone in General Conference, excerpted from "The Gospel of Jesus
Christ Is The Golden Door" (October 1973):
I am indebted to a good friend
of mine, Aldin Porter, for a story and I
would like to share it with you. He shared it with me about
two years ago.
"No one in our Utah town knew where
the Countess had come from; her
carefully precise English indicated that she was not a native American.
From
the size of her house and staff we knew that she must be wealthy,
but she
never entertained and she made it clear that when she was at home
she was
completely inaccessible. Only when she stepped outdoors did
she become at
all a public figure--and then chiefly to the small fry of the town,
who lived in
awe of her.
"The countess always carried a cane
not only for support, but as a
means of chastising any youngster she thought needed disciplining.
And at
one time or another most of the kids in our neighborhood seemed
to display
that need. By running fast and staying alert, I had managed
to keep out of
her reach. But one day when I was about thirteen, as I was
short-cutting
through her hedge, she got close enough to rap my head with her
stick.
"'Ouch!' I yelled, jumping a couple of feet.
"'Young man, I want to talk to you,'
she said. I was expecting a
lecture on the evils of trespassing, but as she looked at me, half
smiling,
she seemed to change her mind.
"'Don't you live in that green house
with the willow trees in the next
block?'
"'Yes, ma'am.' . . .
"'Good. I've lost my gardener. Be
at my house Thursday morning at
seven, and don't tell me you have something else to do; I've seen
you
slouching around on Thursdays.'
"When the Countess gave an order, it was
carried out. I didn't dare not
come on that next Thursday. I went over the whole lawn three
times with a
mower before she was satisfied and then she had me down on all fours
looking
for weeds until my knees were as green as the grass. She finally
called me
up to the porch.
"'Well, young man, how much do you want for your day's work?'
"'I don't know. Fifty cents, maybe.'
"'Is that what you figure you're worth?"
"'Yes'm. About that.'
"'Very well. Here's the
fifty cents you say you're worth and here's the
dollar and a half more that I've earned for you by pushing you.
Now I'm
going to tell you something about how you and I are going to work
together.
There are as many ways of mowing a lawn as there are people, and
they may be
worth anywhere from a penny to five dollars. Let's say that
a three-dollar
job would be just what you have done today, except that you'd have
to be
something of a fool to spend that much time on a lawn. A five-dollar
lawn is
well, it's impossible, so we'll forget about that. Now then,
each week I'm
going to pay you according to your own evaluation of your work.'
"I left with my two dollars, richer
than I remembered being in my whole
life, and determined that I would get four dollars out of her the
next week.
But I failed to reach even the three dollar mark. My will
began to falter
the second time around her yard.
"'Two dollars again, eh? That kind of job
puts you right on the edge of
being dismissed, young man.'
"'Yes'm. But I'll do better next week.'
"And somehow I did. The last
time around the lawn I was exhausted, but
I found I could spur myself on. In the exhilaration of that
new feeling, I
had no hesitation in asking the Countess for three dollars.
"Each Thursday for the next four or
five weeks, I varied between a
three-and a three-and-a-half dollar job. The more I became
more acquainted
with her lawn, places where the ground was a little high or a little
low,
places where it needed to be clipped short or left long on the edges
to make
a more satisfying curve along the garden, the more I became aware
of just
what a four-dollar lawn would consist of. And each week I
would resolve to
do just that kind of a job. But by the time I had made my
three dollar or
three and-a-half dollar mark I was too tired to remember even having
had the
ambition to go beyond that.
"'You look like a good consistent
$3.50 man,' she would say as she
handed me the money.
"'I guess so' I would say, too
happy at the sight of the money to
remember that I had shot for something higher.
"'Well don't feel too bad,'
she would comfort me. 'After all, there are
only a handful of people in the world who could do a four-dollar
job.'
"And her words were a comfort at first,
but then, without my noticing
what was happening, her comfort became an irritant that made me
resolve to
do that four-dollar job, even if it killed me. In the fever
of my resolve, I
could see myself expiring on her lawn, with the Countess leaning
over me,
handing me the four dollars with a tear in her eye, begging my forgiveness
for having thought I couldn't do it.
"It was in the middle of such a fever,
one Thursday night when I was
trying to forget the day's defeat and get some sleep, that the truth
hit me
so hard that I sat upright, half choking in my excitement.
It was the
five-dollar job I had to do, not the four-dollar one! I had
to do the job
that no one could do because it was impossible.
"I was well acquainted with the difficulties
ahead. I had the problem,
for example, of doing something about the worm mounds in the lawn.
The
Countess might not even have noticed them yet, they were so small;
but in my
bare feet I knew about them and I had to do something about them.
And I
could go on trimming the garden edges with shears, but I knew that
a
five-dollar lawn demanded that I line up each edge exactly with
a yard stick
and then trim it precisely with the edger. And there were
other problems
that only I and my bare feet knew about.
"I started the next Thursday
by ironing out the worm mounds with a
heavy roller. After two hours of that I was ready to give
up for the day.
Nine o'clock in the morning, and my will was already gone!
It was only by
accident that I discovered how to regain it. Sitting under
a walnut tree for
a few minutes after finishing the rolling, I fell asleep.
When I woke up
minutes later, the lawn looked so good and felt so good under my
feet, I was
anxious to get on with the job.
"I followed this secret for
the rest of the day, dozing for a few
minutes every hour to regain my perspective and replenish my strength.
Between naps, I mowed four times, two times lengthwise, two times
across,
until the lawn looked like a green velvet checkerboard. Then
I dug around
every tree, crumbling the big clods and smoothing the soil with
my hands,
then finished with the edger, meticulously lining up each stroke
so that the
effect would be perfectly symmetrical. And I carefully trimmed
the grass
between the flagstones of the front walk. The shears wore
my fingers raw,
but the walk never looked better.
"Finally about eight o'clock
that evening it was all completed. I was
so proud I didn't even feel tired when I went up to her door.
"'Well, what is it today?' she asked.
"'Five dollars,' I said, trying for a little calm and sophistication.
"'Five dollars?
You mean four dollars, don't you? I told you that a
five-dollar lawn job isn't possible.'
"'Yes it is. I just did it.'
"'Well, young man, the
first five-dollar lawn in history certainly
deserves some looking around.'
"We walked about the lawn together
in the light of evening, and even I
was quite overcome by the impossibility of what I had done.
"'Young man, she said, putting her
hand on my shoulder, 'what on earth
made you do such a crazy, wonderful thing?'
"I didn't know why, but even if I
had, I could not have explained it in
the excitement of hearing that I had done it.
"'I think I know,' she continued,
'how you felt when this idea first
came to you of caring for a lawn that I told you was impossible.
It made you
very happy when it first came, then a little frightened. Am
I right?'
"She could see she was right by the startled look on my face.
"'I know how you felt, because the same thing
happens to almost
everyone. They feel this sudden burst in them of wanting to
do some great
thing. They feel a wonderful happiness but then it passes
because they have
said, "No, I can't do that. It's impossible."
Whenever something in you
says, "It's impossible," remember to take a careful
look and see if it isn't
really God asking you to grow an inch, or a foot, or a mile, that
you may
come to a fuller life.'
"Since that time, some 25 years
ago, when I have felt myself at an end
with nothing before me, suddenly, with the appearance of that word,
'impossible,' I have experienced the unexpected lift, the
leap inside me,
and known that the only possible way lay through the very middle
of
impossible."
(Richard Thurman, "The Countess
and the Impossible," Reader's Digest, June 1958.)