Little Foxes

Mrs. Stowe’s Writings.
——— LITTLE FOXES. One Volume. ——— HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS. One Volume. ——— THE PEARL OF ORR’S ISLAND. One Volume. ——— AGNES OF SORRENTO. One Volume. ——— UNCLE TOM’S CABIN. One Volume. ——— THE MINISTER’S WOOING. One Volume. ——— OLDTOWN FOLKS. One Volume. ——— James R. Osgood, & Co., Publishers.
BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD, AUTHOR OF “HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.”
BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 1875. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., Cambridge.

“PAPA, what are you going to give us this winter for our evening readings?” said Jennie.
“I am thinking, for one thing,” I replied, “of preaching a course of household sermons from a very odd text prefixed to a discourse which I found at the bottom of the pamphlet-barrel in the garret.”
“Don’t say sermon, Papa,—it has such a dreadful sound; and on winter evenings one wants something entertaining.”
“Well, treatise, then,” said I, “or discourse, or essay, or prelection; I’m not particular as to words.”
“But what is the queer text that you found at the bottom of the pamphlet-barrel?”
“It was one preached upon by your mother’s great-great-grandfather, the very savory and much-respected Simeon Shuttleworth, ‘on the occasion of the melancholy defections and divisions among the godly in the town of West Dofield’; and it runs thus,—‘ Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes. ’”
“It’s a curious text enough; but I can’t imagine what you are going to make of it.”