No. 43. A teacher in one of our Sabbath-schools, who had quite a reputation for accommodating his lesson to the understanding of children, said to a little bit of a thing, one day, with whom she had been laboring for a long while, "If a naughty girl should strike you, my dear, you would forgive her, wouldn't you?" "Yeth, marm—if I couldn't catch her," was the reply—only to be matched by the dying Highlander, who called out to a neighboring chief, whom he had just been reconciled to, "But mark ye, lairdee—mind now—if I get abroad agen, all this goes for naethin'."
No. 44. Another little chap, just verging upon three, but of a thoughtful, prying disposition far beyond his years, sat watching his mother while she was making biscuit for tea—though her husband was an Orthodox clergyman of Pittsfield, Mass.—and asked her if it was not wicked to work on Sunday. "Certainly," said she. "O my!" said he, clapping his little hands, "won't 'oo catch it, when 'oo gets to heaven!"
No. 45. And then, too, how knowing the little wretches are sometimes. A young gentleman of about five summers was travelling in a crowded stage-coach, and had been taken into the lap of a passenger. On the way, some stories were told about pickpockets and their adroitness, and the conversation at last became general. "Ah, my fine fellow," said the gentleman who had the little one upon his knee, "how easy I could pick your pocket"—as it lay gaping near his hand. "No you couldn't, neither," said the boy, "'cause I've been looking out for you all the way."
No. 46. And how wise beyond their years, and how full of resource in danger, sometimes. As three children, Peter Mitchell, Louis Leach, and Ann I. Lindsay, aged eight, five and four—I give their names, that they be remembered, and the facts verified—were playing about the premises of Mr. Horace Balcomb, in the town of Sudbury, Mass., Leach tumbled into a hogs-head of rain-water set in the earth, five feet deep. As soon as he fell in, the boy Mitchell ran away to find his mother, who lived a long way off; but the little girl—only four, you will remember—managed to get hold of the drowning boy by the shoulders, and keep his head above the water, till the neighbors came to her help, and pulled him out in safety.
No. 47. In a Boston Sunday-school—where, of course, impertinent, puzzling questions are never allowed—the teacher asked, "Where was Jesus taken, when he was arrested in the garden?" A bright little thing answered immediately, "To the station-house." Whereupon the teacher observed that there were no station-houses at that time; and the poor child instantly corrected herself by saying, "I meant the State's Prison." Teachers, beware!
No. 48. A naughty little boy, being told by his mother that God would not forgive him, if he did something, answered, "Yes He would too—God likes to forgive little boys—that's what He's for." Of course that boy was a Universalist from the shell, and had about as clear a notion of what God was for, as many a profound theologian, or metaphysician.
No. 49. But we have Grace Darlings, Florence Nightingales, and many other self-denying, self-sacrificing heroines in miniature. We have only to look about us, and have our ears open, and see, and hear, and remember for ourselves, that female wonders are of all ages and every age, and that God never measures them by feet or inches, nor counts their years, nor weighs them in any other than the scales with which He weighed the earth itself, at the beginning.
A long train of cars, fourteen or fifteen at least, were hurrying through the Alleghanies. They were crowded with passengers. As they went headlong down the inclined plane, they came to a short, narrow curve, hewed through the living rock, with a high, steep wall on each side. Suddenly a steam-whistle was heard through the gorge, screaming, Put on the brakes! put on the brakes! Every window flew up, and scores of heads were thrust out, and all the passengers sprang to their feet, while the cars went thundering on, with a continually increasing speed. As the engine approached the curve, the engineer had caught a glimpse of a little girl playing on the track with her baby-brother. One moment! and the cars would be tearing over them. The scream of the whistle startled the little girl, and her marvellous readiness and self-possession, like a flash. Seizing her baby-brother, she crowded him into a crevice made by blasting, and just about large enough to admit the little fellow; and the next moment, while the passengers were holding their breath, and expecting to see the poor girl crushed against the steep wall, they heard a clear, sweet, childish voice, like one crying in the wilderness, "Cling close to the rock, Johnny! cling close to the rock!" and saw the baby cuddling up close to the rough wall, as to the bosom of its mother, while the ponderous cars whirled past him like a tornado. Careless for herself, or at the worst, not thinking at all of herself, the poor little barefooted sister stood for a moment like her brother's guardian-angel, between the living and the dead.
No. 50. But just read the following, which is undoubtedly true—true in every particular. Three children belonging to New Brunswick got lost in the woods. It was a dreary, wild region; a dark storm was brewing; it was near nightfall. The eldest, only six, having satisfied herself that there was no hope of their being found, nor of their finding their way out before the next day, put the little ones into a sheltered nook, stripped off most of her own clothes to wrap them in, and went away in search of dry sea-weed and brush, to cover them with. The next day the little ones were found all warm and breathing, with the sea-grass and brush heaped up about them, and the dear little six-year-old mother lying dead and stiff on the shore, alongside of the last pile of brush she had gathered, but wanted the strength to carry off.
No. 51. Three little girls were playing among the poppies and sage-brush of the back-yard. Two of them were making believe keep house, a little way apart, as near neighbors might. At last one of them was overheard saying to the youngest of the lot, "There now, Nellie, you go over to Sarah's house and stop there a little while, and talk as fast as ever you can, and then you come back and tell me what she says about me, and then I'll talk about her; and then you go and tell her all I say, and then we'll get mad as hornets, and won't speak when we meet, just as our mothers do, you know; and that'll be such fun—won't it?" Hadn't these little mischiefs lived to some purpose? and were they not close observers, and apt scholars, charmingly trained for the chief business of life in a small neighborhood?