"Look there!" he exclaimed, holding up the knife. "I took it from Sandy Williams, with the promise that it should be returned in the evening, and I have let him go home without it. I must carry it to him at once."
"Never mind, man! Let it stand till morning," urged Mrs. Ross, the motherly woman with whom he boarded.
"I cannot do that," replied Garfield; "the little fellow will think I am a thief."
"No danger of that, James," insisted the well-meaning woman. "He will know that you forgot it, and all will be well in the morning."
"But, you see, I promised, Mrs. Ross, and a promise is always binding. I must go tonight, and carry it to him," urged the young man, drawing on his coat.
"It is all of two miles to his father's, and just look how dark it is, and raining, too," said the woman, opening the door to convince her boarder that things were as bad as she had represented them.
"I am young and strong, and can make my way quite easily," insisted Garfield. "It is always better to right a wrong as soon as you discover it, and I would rather walk the four miles in the mud and rain than disappoint one of my scholars. Sometimes example is more powerful than precept, and if I am not careful to live an honest life before my pupils, they will not give much heed to what I say on such subjects. There is no rule like the golden rule, but he who teaches it must also live it, if he expects others to follow his teaching."
Mrs. Ross said no more, and James went on, as he had proposed; and before the little boy went to sleep, he was happy again in the possession of his treasure, over which he had been lamenting all the evening. The young teacher declined the hospitality of the family for the night, and walked back in the darkness to his boarding-house, and, as he afterward said, felt all the better for standing up to his principles.—Selected.
A SPELLING-BEE
"I am going to have a spelling-bee tonight," said Uncle John, "and I will give a pair of skates to the the boy who can spell man best."