CHILDREN’S PAGE.
HOW TO MAKE MONEY FOR THE MISSIONARIES.
An original Essay written by a Girl eleven years old,
and read by her at a Woman’s Foreign Missionary Meeting in Indiana.
I should think that everyone could think of ways for themselves, but I suppose we can help each other. Some ways that I may suggest might not be thought of by others, while others in turn might think of many ways that I would not.
The first way that enters my mind is what I found to be a very good plan at one time; have your grandfather get sick so that your father will have to go and see him, and on his return your grandmother will send you a present of one dollar. With it buy a pig in partnership with someone else who has the same amount, and after feeding it with your father’s corn for a year, sell it for twenty dollars, you of course getting one half of it.
Another way is to have a little garden and sell vegetables out of it; and another way is to have a hen and sell eggs, or raise chickens and sell them. One way that I found to be a good one, is to make tidies and sell them. And those of us who are fortunate enough to have a baby brother or sister, attend it two or three hours for a penny an hour. And I think another good way is to be a great talker, and have your mother give you five cents to be still. We may also relieve our mothers very much by watering the house plants, and may be she will give us a little bit.
And I have often thought it would be a good plan to have pay for washing dishes, and may be some of your mothers would; just mention it to them; but mine won’t, for I have tried it! And when your mother sends you to pick berries, just mention the missionaries to her. And if you live in the country, gather apples, churn, kill potato bugs and dig potatoes. And then have a penny a dozen for finding pins; and the best place in the world to find pins is in the oldest sister’s room.
And another way of getting money for our school in Persia is to save a part of the money we spend in candies. But I hope that in our dividing between ourselves and missions, none of us may be like the little boy that I heard of not long ago. His uncle gave him two bright new nickels. They were a little fortune to him, and as he looked upon them, he said, “One of these must go for the heathen and the other for candy.” After this decision he put them away, and every few minutes he would go to see if his fortune was safe. But once, after having them out, one of them was missing. What should he do? and which piece was lost, the missionary or the candy money? His little eyes rested upon the shining piece in his hand, and after many minutes of hard struggle with selfishness and benevolence, he said to his mother, “It was the missionary money that I lost!” But then I guess that bigger folks than children often have their business plans, which they think cannot be broken into by missionaries.
(“Children’s Work for Children.”)