One great beauty of the lessons which our school readers taught was the directness and certainty and promptness of the payment that came as a reward of good conduct. Then, too, the recompense was in no way uncertain or ethereal, but was always paid in cash, or something just as material and good. Neither was any combination of circumstances too remote or troublesome or impossible to be brought about. Everything in the universe seemed always ready to conspire to reward virtue and punish vice.
I well remember one story which thus clearly proved that good deeds must be rewarded, and that however great the trouble the payment would not be postponed even for a day.
It seems that a good boy named Henry—I believe the book did not give his other name—started out one morning to walk about five miles away to do an errand for his sick father. I think it was his father, though it may possibly have been his mother or grandmother. Well, Henry had only got fairly started on his journey when he met a half-starved dog; and thereupon the boy shared with the dog the dinner that he was carrying in his little basket. Of course I know now that, however great his kindness, he could not have relieved the dog unless he had happened to be carrying his dinner in a little basket; but my childish mind was not subtle enough to comprehend it then. After relieving the dog, Henry went on his way with a lighter heart and a lighter basket. Soon he came upon a sick horse lying upon the ground. Henry feared that if he stayed to doctor the horse he would not get home until after dark; but this made no sort of difference to him, so he pulled some grass and took it to the horse, and then went to the river and got some water in his hat (it must have been a Panama) and gave this to the horse to drink, and having done his duty went on his way. He had gone only a short distance farther when he saw a blind man standing in a pond of water. (How the blind man got into the pond of water the story does not tell,—the business of the story was not getting him in but getting him out.) Thereupon little Henry waded into the pond and led the blind man to the shore. Any other boy would simply have called out to the man, and let him come ashore himself. Of course, if Henry had been a bad boy, and his name had been Tom, he would have been found leading the blind man into the pond instead of out, and then of course he (Tom) would have taken pneumonia and died.
But Henry’s adventures did not end here. He had gone only a little way farther when he met a poor cripple, who had been fighting in some war and who was therefore a hero, and this cripple was very hungry. Henry promptly gave him all the dinner he had saved from his interview with the dog; and having finished this further act of charity, he at last hurried on to do his errand. But he had worked so long in the Good Samaritan business that by the time he started home it began to get dark. Then, of course, he soon reached a great forest, which added to his troubles. After wandering about for a long time in the darkness and the woods, he sat down in hunger and despair. Thereupon his old friend the dog came into the wood and up to the tree where Henry sat, and he found that the dog carried some bread and meat nicely pinned up in a napkin in payment for the breakfast given him in the morning. How the dog had managed to pin the napkin, the story does not tell. After eating his supper, Henry got up and wandered farther into the woods. He was just despairing a second time, when by the light of the moon he saw the horse that he had fed in the morning. The horse took him on his back and carried him out of the wood; but the poor boy’s troubles were not yet done. He was passing along a lane, when two robbers seized him and began stripping off his clothes; then the dog came up and bit one robber, who thereupon left Henry and ran after the dog (presumably so that he might get bitten again), and just then some one shouted from the hedge and scared the other robber off. Henry looked toward the hedge in the darkness, and, behold! there was the crippled soldier riding on the back of the blind man,—and in this way they had all come together to save Henry and pay him for being such a good little boy.
When such efforts as these could be put forth for the instant reward of virtue, where was there a possible inducement left to tempt the most wayward child to sin?
Not only good conduct, but religion, was taught to us children in the same direct and simple way. Nothing seemed to pay better than Sabbath observance, according to the strict rules that obtained when I was young.
I remember the story of a barber who was doing a “thriving business” in an English city. He was obliged to shave his customers on Sunday morning (possibly in order that they might look well at church). However, one Sunday the barber went to church himself; and, as it so happened, the minister that day preached a sermon about Sabbath observance. This made so deep an impression on the barber’s mind that he straightway refused to do any more shaving on Sunday. Thereupon he was obliged to close his shop in the aristocratic neighborhood where he had lived, and rent a basement amongst the working people who did not go to church and hence had no need of a Sunday shave.
One Saturday night a “pious lawyer” came to town and inquired in great haste where he could find a barber-shop, and was directed to this basement for a shave. The “pious lawyer” told the barber that he must have his work done that night, as he would not be shaved on the Sabbath day. This at once impressed the barber, who was then so poor that he was obliged to borrow a halfpenny from his customer for a candle before he could give him the shave. When the “pious lawyer” learned of the barber’s straits, and what had been the cause, he was so deeply moved that he gave him a half-crown, and asked his name. The barber promptly answered that it was William Reed. At this the lawyer opened his eyes,—doubtless through professional instinct,—and asked from what part of the country the barber had come. When he answered, from Kingston, near Taunton, the lawyer’s eyes were opened wider still. Then he asked the name of the barber’s father, and if he had other relatives. The barber told his father’s name, and said that he once had an “Uncle James,” who had gone to India many years before and had not been heard from since. Then the “pious lawyer” answered: “If this is true, I have glorious news for you. Your uncle is dead, and he has left a fortune which comes to you.” It is needless to add that the barber got the money,—and of course the death of the uncle and the good luck of the nephew were entirely due to the fact that the barber would not shave a customer on the Sabbath day.
Well, those were marvellous tales on which our young minds fed. I wonder now which is the more real,—the world outside as it seemed to us in our young school-days, or that same enchanted land our childhood knew, as we look back upon the scene through the gathering haze that the fleeting years have left before our eyes!