How Mr. Wesley settled a school-boys' quarrel.—Dr. Watts and little birds.—Mr. Wesley, loved and honoured.—A holiday for the children.
ERE is a story of how Mr. Wesley settled a dispute between two quarrelsome school-boys. When he was an old man, seventy-three, he was staying with one of his local preachers, a Mr. Bush, who had a boarding-school. One day Mrs. Bush brought to him two boys who had been fighting.
"Boys! boys!" said Mr. Wesley:
"'Birds in their little nests agree,
And 'tis a shameful sight,
When children of one family
Fall out, and chide, and fight!'
You must make it up. Come now, shake hands with each other."
Mr. Wesley, with his long white hair and beautiful face, looked and spoke so lovingly, that the boys did at once what he asked them.
"Now," he said, "put your arms round each other's necks, and kiss each other."
And the little boys did this too. He was just having his tea when Mrs. Bush brought in the culprits, and now taking two pieces of bread and butter, he folded them together and told each boy to break a piece off. Then he gave each of them a drink of tea out of his own cup.
"Now," he added, "you have broken bread together, and you have drunk out of the same cup, now you must be friends." Then he put his hands on the boys' heads and blessed them. The next morning at family prayer he sought out the boys and blessed them again.