SAM'S LITTLE DOG.
"Mother," cried Sam, raising his tousled head up from his no less tousled pillow, "I had the funniest dream you ever heard."
"Well," said mother, drawing the comb through her long brown hair, "I'll give you just five minutes to tell it in; then you must jump up quickly and run over to the bathroom."
"It seems to me I was dreaming it all night," said Sam, "but I believe I can tell it in less than five minutes: I thought I was going along, and a little black dog was following me. As long as I kept walking on straight ahead he trotted on behind me like a lamb, but every time I got out of the path, and tried to cross the fields, he barked and snapped at me till I came back to the path.
"I got tired staying in the path, so I dashed out on one side presently, but the doggie barked so furiously that I got scared and climbed a little tree. Just as I got to the top, the tree broke off at the roots and 'down came Sammy, tree top and all.' The fall woke me, and I found I had rolled out of bed. Wasn't that a funny dream?"
"Sam," said his mother, who had been much interested in his dream, "don't you wish you had a little dog to go around with you and bark when you went out of the right way?"
"I don't know, mother," answered Sam, doubtfully; "maybe I don't."
"I hoped you would say you did," said mother, looking disappointed, "and I was going to tell you that conscience was that very little dog, and if you tried to get away from conscience's barks, either up a tree or elsewhere, you would certainly fall and come to grief. Time's up, little boy; hie off to the bathroom."
—Selected.
