[NOTHING BEATS TRYING BUT DOING.]
"SHE'S as good as she is pretty, and as pretty as she is good." This was the opinion of Oakvale people respecting the minister's youngest daughter, Amy Fleming. Very bright and lovable she must have been, or the cottage children would not have thrown down toys, abandoned games, and rushed in her direction as soon as the flutter of Miss Amy's garment could be discerned in the distance.
When on a visiting expedition she was sure to be surrounded by a motley bodyguard, each member of which was desirous that the dwelling of his or her parents should have the honour of a first call from their favourite.
It was sometimes rather inconvenient to be so much liked, for the owners of dirty little faces insisted on being kissed, and small hands, equally removed from cleanliness, stroked down Miss Amy's dresses without the previous ceremony of washing the sticky fingers.
Amongst all her acquaintance, however, Bob Marsh was perhaps the most devoted, and in many ways the most unfortunate. His doings and misdoings were the cause of more talk, censure, and head-shakings than those of all the other Oakvale boys put together.
Bob was the only son of a widowed mother, and the only brother of four small girls, all much younger than himself. A fine, well-grown, handsome lad, who ought to have been the comfort of his parent, but unfortunately he was always in some scrape or other. If he took up a stone and threw it, he was sure to break a window. If he climbed a tree he came down at one step and hurt himself, or else tore his garments to ribbons, and had to retire into private life—namely, to bed—until they were mended.
But who can go through the list? Other lads seemed to do the same thing, play the same pranks, and come off scot-free, while Bob was always in trouble. Mother watered Bob's rags with nightly tears, as she sat up to mend them for the morrow. Granny said lads were never like that in her young days, and was sure he would come to a bad end. The village gossips talked at him as he slunk home wet, out of the ditch he had jumped into instead of over, and pitied his poor mother for having such a son.
To tell a person, young or old, that he is on the high road to ruin, hopelessly bad, a plague to everybody, and of no use or comfort to anybody, is not the way to mend him. On the contrary, it is pretty sure to give him a push in the wrong direction.