In the preaching of the gospel she took great delight, and never but once, during our nine or ten months among that people, do I remember her being absent from our meetings on the Sabbath. It was in the female prayer-meeting that Dinah was invaluable. Here all her tenderness of conscience, her desire for instruction, her delicacy and tact in eliciting it, not only for herself but for the benefit of others whose spiritual wants she had made her study, and above all, her meek and earnest supplications, rendered her a helper never to be forgotten, and I loved her for the image of my Master shining in her face.
"NO-ACCOUNT JOHNNY."
BY M. E. SANGSTER.
"No-Account Johnny" had had a hard time all his life. He was a poor boy, so homely, and dirty, and ragged, so nearly idiotic, that few people would look at him twice. He lived with a French dyer, who had taught him how to stir the vats at a certain time every day, and who gave him in return enough corn-bread and bacon to keep him alive. A damp, ill-smelling cellar was the place where he spent his days, and his nights were passed in an equally repulsive attic. To dodge a blow, to tell a lie, to eat, to sleep, to be glad in a vague sort of way when the sun shone on him warmly, these were all the accomplishments of poor "No-Account Johnny" Long.
Christmas, with its green boughs and its gifts, went by, and brought no gift to him. He did wish, as he heard the other boys tooting away on their tin horns, that he had one; but as he could not get one by wishing, he contented himself with turning somersaults on the pavement. By an unfortunate miscalculation, he lay bruised and unconscious at the foot of the cellar-steps.
Aunt Lizzie, the washerwoman, at the end of the court, took him home to her poor little house, and took care of him till he was well again, for in the fall he had broken his arm. Her children went to Sunday-school, and one of them brought his teacher to see Johnny.
"Well, my poor little fellow," said the gentleman, looking with pity on the thin face, clean now, through Aunt Lizzie's care, "I see you are sick; what's your name?"
"No-Account Johnny!"
"Johnny! well, Johnny, do you know that Jesus loves you?"