COME TO SUPPER.
ONE pleasant summer day Jamie’s mamma said they would have tea out under the trees, because it was papa’s birthday.
THE NAUGHTY ROOSTER.
She spread a pink cloth on the table, and brought out some pretty dishes. Jamie thought it was fine fun.
He helped to carry out the biscuits and strawberries, and he put the knives and spoons by the side of the plates.
They had to hurry, because pretty soon the five o’clock train would come in, and papa would be on it.
When mamma went into the house to make the tea she gave Jamie a piece of cake and told him to sit down on the grass and rest his tired little feet.
Jamie liked to sit in that pretty spot. There were green grass and daisies and buttercups all about him, and oh! how good the cake tasted.
Pretty soon the old rooster saw that Jamie was alone, and that he had something good to eat.
So he called to his family: “Come quick! come to supper.”
Then the gray hen and the yellow hen and the speckled hen and the white banties came running as fast as they could run to get some of Jamie’s cake.
Old Speckle got the first bite, a great big one, and carried it off to eat it. Then Old Yellow came up one side and the rooster came the other side, and one took a bite, and the other took a bite.
Jamie began to cry. Mamma heard him. She came out, and said: “Shoo! shoo!”
JAMIE BEGAN TO CRY.
And away went the chickabiddies as fast as they could fly, and no more supper for them that night.
Mrs. C. M. Livingston.
OUT in the garden, wee Elsie
Was gathering flowers for me;
“O, mamma!” she cried, “hurry, hurry,
Here’s something I want you to see.”
I went to the window; before her
A velvet-winged butterfly flew,
And the pansies themselves were not brighter
Than the beautiful creature in hue.
“Oh! isn’t it pretty?” cried Elsie,
With eager and wondering eyes,
As she watched it soar lazily upward
Against the soft blue of the skies.
“I know what it is, don’t you, mamma?”
Oh! the wisdom of these little things
When the soul of a poet is in them.
“It’s a pansy—a pansy with wings.”
—Selected.
THE HARD TEXT.
(Matt. xiii. 12.)
NO, it does not seem fair at all to give to him that has something, and to refuse it to one that hasn’t anything scarcely, and even to take away what little that one has! Just think of giving a rich Pansy five hundred dollars more, and then snatching away the last penny from a poor Pansy!
Surely you don’t suppose the loving, gentle, merciful Lord Jesus meant any such thing? Of course he didn’t.
“What did He mean?” Why, simply this, my dear; that one who makes good use of his gifts will have more gifts. He will grow wiser and better, and go up higher all the time, just like a tree that uses well the good ground and good air and good dew around it. And the tree, that for some reason won’t send its roots down and this way and that and set every one of its leaves to breathing, such a lazy tree will lose all its life and die, the first wide-awake tree sucking up that very life.
It may be just so with two Pansies. One is good, true, active, the other one isn’t; how one will go up and the other down; how one will increase and the other decrease until one seems to have all the good, even the little the other started out with.
You borrow from a bank one hundred dollars and pay it back with interest when your note is due, and quite likely the bank will loan you two hundred dollars then, if you want it, and so on, increasing it just as you are faithful. But if you don’t pay as you promised, because you were lazy, your one hundred dollars will be taken from you and loaned to one who may have ten thousand dollars, because he makes good use of it. We are all on trial. How happy we should be to be trusted by the Lord! It’s a fearful thing when he will not loan us any more.
L.
Good temper, like a sunny day, sheds brightness over everything. It is the sweetener of toil and the soother of disquietude.