No one can be a member of this society until he has promised not to drink beer, nor egg-nog, nor anything that has alcohol in it, and he must say he will not use tobacco, nor swear, nor say bad words of any kind.
The way he began was, one day a little boy came into the yard, I mean Ted’s father’s yard, to split wood. He was just a little fellow, not much larger, I believe, than Ted himself, and, if you can believe me, he was smoking!
Of course Ted was shocked, and he thought it must be stopped, so he talked to the little boy, and after some persuasion got him to promise not to touch tobacco again, and that was Ted’s society. Well, the little boy began to help Ted to persuade other little boys to join the society. And so they found plenty. You see there are ever so many people everywhere ready to be good and wise if they only had some one to show them how. So it came about that one after another the little boys went to Ted’s house to sign the pledge. Ted’s mother, who is one of those mothers that can be in many ways a great comfort to a boy, helped about getting cards for the children, and bits of blue ribbon to wear as a sign that they belonged to Ted’s society.
Well, little girls began to join too. Of course Ted’s little sister did so the first of all, for she does not like to be behind her brother in doing right things, and then other little girls came. Why, one evening I went to Ted’s house, and there were seven little people who had just been in to sign the pledge. Of course they carried a great deal of mud into the house. (It is a very muddy place where Ted lives. Oh, my! Sometimes I think there is more mud than anything else there.)
Ted, and his mother and father, were there, looking just as happy as if nothing could make them so glad as to have the carpet all covered with muddy prints of little shoes; but I do not think they were so very glad about the mud as they were to see that the small attempt to do good promised to become a great work, and that, with God’s blessing, Ted might be the means of helping those little boys and girls to become good men and women.
Ted has more than one hundred little people in his society now, and he still keeps working to get in more.
I think I forgot to tell you that Ted lives among the colored people in the South, and that his society consists of colored children; but, never mind, isn’t it just as good to know it now, as if I told you at first?
Yes, his father and mother are missionaries, and if it were not such a large name to give a little boy, I should say that Ted is a missionary too.