“O, yes, mother, I remember that I said, just as George did just now, that it wasn’t as necessary for me to work as the bee, for I had kind parents who provided everything for me. And then you told me that I had been made very different from the bee; that the bee had not a mind as I had; and, therefore, that it only required food to supply the natural wants of its body, which food it industriously obtained and stored up in the season when it could be found. You then told me that I had a spiritual body as well as a natural body, and that my spiritual body required food as well as my natural body; that to learn about everything that my parents and teachers wished me to learn about, was the way to store up food for this spiritual body, which would require more and more food, the older I grew; and that, at last, when I became very old—when the winter of life came, I would not be able to store up food as in early life, but would have to live upon that already laid by.”
By this time the mother and her children had extended their morning walk as far as was intended, and then they turned their steps towards home. In passing the sweet-briar bush, the bee and the butterfly were recalled to the minds of the children; and George said, that whenever he passed that bush he should remember that his fingers were too rough for a butterfly’s wings; and that, like the bee, he must diligently store up food for the mind, in early years, that he might have a full supply when the winter of old age should come upon him.
At the breakfast table they met their father, and George told him all about what they had seen, and what their mother had said to them, and how determined he was to be like the diligent bee.
