Honesty the best Policy. A little girl was once passing a garden, in which were some pretty flowers. She wished much to have some of them; she could have put her hand between the rails, and picked some, and perhaps nobody would have seen her. But she knew this would be very wicked; it would be stealing. So, after thinking a little while, she resolved what she would do. She went to the mistress of the garden, and asked her very prettily to give her some of those nice flowers. The lady told her she had done right not to take them, and then showed her another garden full of plants and flowers, and gathered her a fine large nosegay.
Now, if this little girl had taken the flowers without leave, she would have been very unhappy; and if her mother had asked her how she came by them, she would most likely have told a lie to hide her first fault. And how uncomfortable she would have been at night, when she lay down and prayed to that great Being who has said, “Thieves shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Dr. Watts when a Child. When Dr. Watts was very young, and before he could speak plain, he would say to his mother, when any money was given to him, “A book, a book, buy me a book.” He began to learn Latin at four years of age. When about seven or eight years old, his mother desired him to write her some lines, as was the custom with the other boys, after the school hours were over, for which she used to reward them with a farthing. Isaac obeyed, and presented her with the following couplet:
I write not for a farthing, but to try
If I your farthing writers can outvie.
Obedience. A Polish prince was accustomed to carry the picture of his father always in his bosom; and on particular occasions, he would take it out and say, “Let me do nothing unbecoming so excellent a father.”
The Art of Love. Dr. Doddridge one day asked his little daughter how it was that everybody loved her. “I do not know,” said she, “unless it be that I love everybody.”