LESSON XXXVIII.
Obedience and Disobedience.—Child's Companion.
1. You have never disobeyed your parents, or your teachers, or any who have been placed in authority over you, without being uncomfortable and unhappy! Obedience, in a child, is one of the most necessary qualities; for it protects him from all the evils of his want of experience, and gives him the benefit of the experience of others.
2. One fine summer's day, I went to spend an afternoon at a house in the country, where some young people were enjoying a holiday.
3. They were running cheerfully up and down a meadow, covered over with yellow crocuses, and other flowers; and I looked on them with delight, while they gamboled and made posies, as they felt disposed.
| "Here sister with sister roamed over the mead, |
| And brother plucked flow'rets with brother; |
| And playmates with playmates ran on with such speed |
| That the one tumbled over the other." |
4. Now, they all had been told to keep away from the ditch at the bottom of the field; but, notwithstanding this injunction, one little urchin, of the name of Jarvis, seeing a flower in the hedge on the opposite bank, which he wished to gather, crept nearer and nearer to the ditch.
5. The closer he got to the flower, the more beautiful it appeared to be, and the stronger the temptation became to pluck it.
6. Now, what right had he to put himself in the way of temptation? The field, as I said before, was covered over with flowers; and that in the hedge was no better than the rest, only it was a forbidden flower, and when anything is forbidden it becomes, on that very account, a greater temptation to a disobedient heart.