LESSON XXX.
The same subject, concluded.
1. On the fifth day, she summoned courage enough to persevere, and actually performed every task with attention.
2. In the afternoon, Betty took her out to walk, and Anna coaxed her into a visit to Mrs. Wilson's cottage. What was her indignation, as she approached the house, to see the children again playing on the margin of the duck-pond!
3. As soon as they saw her, they ran to hide themselves, but not until she had observed that their new frocks were as dirty, and almost as ragged, as the old ones. Betty did not fail to make Anna fully sensible of her own superior wisdom.
4. "I told you so, child," said she; "I told you it was all nonsense to try to dress up those dirty creatures; much good you have done, to be sure!" Anna almost cried with vexation, as she thought of all the time and labor she had wasted upon her benevolent task, and she walked home with a heavy heart.
5. The next morning, she had scarcely risen from the breakfast-table, when Kitty came to show her a beautiful little ship, which, her brother, who was a sailor, had made for her, as a token of remembrance.
6. Anna was delighted with it; nothing could be more beautiful than its graceful form, its delicate rigging and snowy sails. She begged to have it set on her table, that she might see it while she was studying, and the good-natured Kitty left it with her.
7. But in vain the heedless child tried to study; her eyes and thoughts wandered perpetually to the pretty toy before her. "How I should like to see it sail!" said she to herself. The more she looked at it, the more anxious she became to see it in the water.
8. At length, taking it carefully up, she stole down stairs, and hurried across the garden to a little brook in the adjacent field. Here she launched her tiny bark; but it had scarcely touched the water, when it turned over on its side. She then recollected that she had once heard her father speak of the manner of ballasting a ship; so she hastened to gather a quantity of small stones, with which she filled the little cabin.
9. Again she intrusted her ship to the crystal streamlet; but, alas! the weight of the stones carried it straight to the bottom. There it lay in the pebbly channel, with the clear waters rippling above it, and the little girl stood aghast upon the brink.
10. She bared her arm, and attempted to reach it, but without success. At length, while making a desperate effort to regain it, she lost her balance, and fell into the water.
11. Fortunately, the water was not deep, and she soon scrambled out again; but she was thoroughly wet, and, having been very warm before the accident, she was now chilled to the heart.
12. Grasping the little ship, the cause of all the mischief, she hurried home, and creeping softly into the kitchen, sought her friend Kitty, to screen her from Betty's anger. By this time she was shivering with a violent ague, and Kitty carried her immediately to Betty.
13. Poor Anna! she was now obliged to be put to bed, and to take some of Betty's bitter herb tea, seasoned too with scolding, and all kinds of evil predictions. She felt very unhappy, and cried sadly; but repentance, in this case, came too late.
14. Her head began to ache dreadfully; her skin was parched with fever, and before the next morning she was very ill. She had taken a violent cold, which brought on an attack of scarlet fever; and when Mrs. Elmore returned, she found her little daughter stretched on a bed of sickness.
15. How did that fond mother tremble, as she watched by the bedside of her darling child, uncertain whether she would ever again lift up her head from her uneasy pillow!
16. Anna did not know her mother in the delirium of fever, and her melancholy cry of "Mother! mother! come back!—I will never be so bad again!" wrung Mrs. Elmore's heart.
17. For three weeks Anna lay between life and death; and when she was at length pronounced out of danger, she was as helpless as an infant.
18. One day, as she sat propped up by pillows, she told her mother all that had passed during her absence, and awaited her decision respecting the use she had made of her time.
19. "My dear child," said Mrs. Elinore, "I trust the past will afford a lesson you will never forget. So far from having made good use of your time, you have done harm in everything you have undertaken.
20. "Your attempts at study, instead of affording you any real instruction, have only given you habits of inattention, which you will find very difficult to overcome; for your eyes have wandered over the page, while your thoughts have been with the fool's, to the ends of the earth.
21. "Your irregular care of my plants, which you thought would serve instead of habitual attention, has been the means of destroying them as effectually as if you had allowed them to perish from total neglect.
22. "Your injudicious benevolence to the Wilsons served only to make the children envious of each other, without giving them habits of neatness, which are essential to the well-being of such a family; while it had a worse effect upon yourself, because it not only wasted your precious time, but excited in you a feeling of vanity, on account of what you considered a good action.
23. "If, instead of trusting so boldly to your good resolutions, you had entered upon your duties with an humble mind, and resolved to try to do right,—if you had apportioned your time with some degree of regularity,—you might have performed all that was required of you, enjoyed all your amusements, and gratified every kindly feeling, without a single self-reproach.
24. "As it is, you feel sensible of having failed in everything,—of having exposed yourself to great peril, and subjected your mother to great anxiety, simply from your disposition to loiter, when you should labor.
25. "I trust that, in the solitude of your sick chamber, 'the still small voice' of your many wasted hours has made itself heard, and that hereafter you will not so utterly fail to make good use of your time."
