LITTLE FOXES.
I.
FAULT-FINDING.
“PAPA, what are you going to give us this winter for our evening readings?” said Jennie.
“I am thinking, for one thing,” I replied, “of preaching a course of household sermons from a very odd text prefixed to a discourse which I found at the bottom of the pamphlet-barrel in the garret.”
“Don’t say sermon, Papa,—it has such a dreadful sound; and on winter evenings one wants something entertaining.”
“Well, treatise, then,” said I, “or discourse, or essay, or prelection; I’m not particular as to words.”
“But what is the queer text that you found at the bottom of the pamphlet-barrel?”
“It was one preached upon by your mother’s great-great-grandfather, the very savory and much-respected Simeon Shuttleworth, ‘on the occasion of the melancholy defections and divisions among the godly in the town of West Dofield’; and it runs thus,—‘Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.’”
“It’s a curious text enough; but I can’t imagine what you are going to make of it.”