“What do you want of your papa?” asked the lady.
“I want to kiss him.”
Just then a sister of the child came along looking for her and led her away. From subsequent inquiries, it appeared that the little one’s papa, whom she was so earnestly in search of, had recently died. In her lonesomeness and love for him, she tired of waiting for him to come home, and had gone to find him and greet him with the accustomed kiss.
THE PENALTY OF HARSHNESS.
It seems a hard and cruel thing to make the affections of a child its means of punishment for slight juvenile offences. A sad occurrence may be quoted as evidence in point.
A little girl, who, although an affectionate little creature as ever lived, was very volatile and light-hearted, could not always remember to mind her mother. At the close of a winter day she had gone into the street, contrary to her mother’s injunction, to play with one of her little companions; when she came in, and was prepared to go to bed, she approached her mother for her good-night kiss.
“I cannot kiss you to-night, Mary,” said the mother; “you have been a very naughty little girl, and have disobeyed me. I cannot kiss you to-night.”
The little girl, her face streaming with tears, again begged her mother to kiss her; but she was a “strong-minded woman,” and was inexorable.
It was a sad lesson that she learned, for on that very night the child died of croup. She had asked her mother, the last thing as she went up to her little bed, if she would kiss her in the morning; but in the morning her innocent lips were cold.