No. 225. Retribution.—"Tell you what 'tis, I won't pray for you when I say my prayers, Willie," said a little thing to her playfellow in the next house; "and Jesus won't bless you, and"—after a little hesitation—"and—He shan't redeem you, neither!"
No. 226. A young Poet.—A little four-year-old, laboring to impress a sister with the prodigious quantity of something he had promised to give her, said, "You just turn the sky over and I'll fill it full—chock-full."
No. 227. Literalness.—"I know!" said a little boy to whom his mother was reading that passage where the Lord is said to be walking in the garden in the cool of the day; "I know! Just as papa does, with his hands behind him, and an old coat on."
No. 228. Letting the delicious Secret out.—Soon after his mother's second marriage, a little shaver reached out his hand for another piece of sponge-cake. Step-father shakes his head, and says No, after a fashion that seems to admit of no appeal. "Well," says the boy, "I don't care—only we're sorry we ever married you;" and then, as if concentrating all the bitterness he felt, in a withering outburst, he added, "And mother says so too!"
No. 229. Their Notions of another World.—"Well then," said a little girl, throwing down her book, "I don't want to die and go to heaven that way; but if God would just let down a big basket, and draw me up with a rope, I do think I should like it."
No. 230. Another little girl, after being made to understand what a post mortem examination was, declared that she would never consent to be so dealt with, after death.
"What! when it would be such a help to the living, my dear?"
"Fiddle-de-dee! how would I look going to heaven all cut to pieces?"
No. 231. Another.—Lottie, lying sick with a fever, having lost a dear little cousin not long before, was unwilling to take her medicine, till she was promised a pair of ear-rings. By and by, when she was believed to be sound asleep, her mother was suddenly startled by a burst of loud laughter. Being asked what was the matter, Lottie said, "O, it tickles me so to think how cousin Hiram will laugh, when he sees me come trottin' into heaven with my new ear-rings!"
No. 232. A Justification.—"Golly!—Gosh!—Gracious!" shouted a funny little chap, at something he saw.