Is it your habit, dear child, to read a few verses or a chapter of the best of books every day, perhaps before you leave your room in the morning, or before you go to bed at night? Have you your very own Bible, and do you keep it in your room, and just where you can easily put your hand upon it? Each of us should have her own Bible, for this is not a book to share with others. If we are studying a foreign language we should have, in addition to our English Bible, a French or German or Italian Bible, a Bible in the language we are trying to learn, and by reading in it every day we will greatly add to our vocabulary, and find ourselves rapidly growing used to the looks and sounds of the most familiar words.
No single book in the world has so many interesting features as the Bible, partly because it is a library or collection of books in itself, written by many different authors, in different periods of the world. The Old Testament, which some people neglect, is full of the most exciting and beautiful stories. There is the story of Job, one of the very oldest in literature, telling how this "man in the land of Uz had seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and a very great household, and was the greatest of all the men of the East." By a series of calamities, robbers, fires, earthquakes, and cyclones, Job lost all his wealth, in the twinkling of an eye; and then follow a wonderful series of chapters in which he and his three friends and the Lord God, "out of a whirlwind," discuss the situation. There are the stories of David and Saul, of David and Goliath, of David and Jonathan, of David and Absalom; indeed the whole history of David is a succession of amazing stories most splendidly told. Coming down from David are the stories of Solomon and the great temple he built, "a mountain of snow and gold"; and then we have the narratives of Nehemiah and Ezra; of Daniel and his wonderful life; of the three friends who were thrown into a fiery furnace, but stepped out unhurt; of many others whom I cannot mention here. Long before David's days we find the beautiful story of Ruth; and we have the story of little Samuel, and of Samuel grown to be a man and a prophet. We have in the old Testament the histories of Elijah and of Elisha, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
I simply cannot endure the thought that any of my girls are to be ignorant of the charm of the Old Testament. I want them to feel as I do about the "mountains of Gilboa," and the "dew of Hermon," and the fastnesses of Moab; I want them to know Edom and Philistia and Salem and Tyre and Sidon and the cedars of Lebanon. And I don't want them ever to go fumbling and stumbling around through the Bible, not knowing where to find their places, peering about after Second Kings in Deuteronomy, and looking for the Psalms and the Proverbs away over in Malachi. Learn the order of the books, my dears, and fix it in your minds by often reading the Bible, just as you would read any other book, only with the feeling that it will give you an amount of pleasure and profit that no other book can. There are, of course, many books based upon the Bible, and among them are such volumes as Bible Stories for the Young, published by Harper & Brothers, a very attractive little book to lie beside your Bible.
A GOOD CHILD
is usually healthy, and both conditions are developed by use of proper food. The Gail Borden Eagle Brand Condensed Milk is the best infant's food; so easily prepared that improper feeding is inexcusable and unnecessary.—[Adv.]