“Isn’t it a pity to waste such nice things, mother? Why not give them to some poor child in the street?” asked the little girl one day, as she watched, with longing eyes, a paper full of the tempting poison, which her mother was quietly emptying into the grate.
Mrs. Carlton did not disdain to reason with her child—
“That would be worse than wasted, dear. It would be cruel to give to another what I refuse to you on account of its unwholesomeness.”
But Harriet had now been for a long time out of the spinster’s books—as the saying is—and this misfortune occurred as follows—
One morning, when she was about six years old, the child came into her mother’s room from her aunt’s, where she had been alternately pelted, scolded, and teased, till she was weary, and, seating herself in a corner, remained for some time absorbed in thought. She had been reading to her mother that morning, and one sentence, of which she had asked an explanation, had made a deep impression upon her. It was this—“God sends us trials and troubles to strengthen and purify our hearts.” She now sat in her corner, without speaking or stirring, until her mother’s voice startled her from her reverie.
“Of what are you now thinking, Harriet?”
“Mother, did God send Aunt Eloise to strengthen and purify my heart?”
“What do you mean, my child?”
“Why, the book says he sends trials for that, and she is the greatest trial I have, you know.”
The indignant maiden was just entering the room as this dialogue began, and hearing her own name, she had stopped, unseen, to listen. Speechless with rage, she returned to her chamber, and was never heard to call Harriet an angel child again.