"Which state," I asked, "should you prefer, if it were left to your choice—prosperity or adversity?"
"Why," said Josiah, "I would rather let my heavenly Father choose for me, than venture to choose for myself, because He cannot err; but I may. Prosperity, without His blessing, would be a snare; adversity, with it, would be a comfort."
We were interrupted in our conversation by the sudden entrance of the eldest boy, a lad about five years of age, who exclaimed, "I have said my hymn! and,"——before he saw me.
"Come," said the mother, "go and speak to the gentleman."
"Yes," added the father, "and say your hymn to him."
The boy approached with a modest blush, and immediately repeated the following verses, with ease and propriety:—
"I thank the goodness and the grace,
Which on my birth have smil'd,
And made me, in these Christian days,
A happy English child.
"I was not born, as thousands are,
Where God was never known,
And taught to pray a useless pray'r
To blocks of wood and stone.
"I was not born a little slave,
To labour in the sun,
And wish I were but in the grave,
And all my labour done.
"I was not born without a home,
Or in some broken shed,
A gipsy baby, taught to roam
And steal my daily bread.