LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER I.

      THE WALK

      ONE fine Sunday morning two little girls, called Amy and Kitty Harrison, set out from their mother’s cottage to go to the Sunday school in the neighbouring village. The little hamlet where they lived was half a mile from the school. In fine weather it was a very pleasant walk, for the way lay by the side of a little chattering stream, which fed the roots of many pretty wild flowers; and then, leaving the valley, the path struck across some corn-fields, which were now quite yellow for harvest. And even in wet weather the little girls seldom missed the school; for their mother was a careful woman, and they themselves loved their teacher and their lessons. Mrs. Mordaunt, the wife of the clergyman, taught them on Sunday, for both Amy and Kitty were in the first class.

      Amy was tripping lightly along, enjoying the sunshine. Every now and then she bent down and gathered a wild flower,—the four-leaved yellow potentilla, or the meadow-sweet, or a spike of golden rod, or a handful of forget-me-nots, watered by the stream, to make a little nosegay for her teacher; for Mrs. Mordaunt loved flowers and would sometimes take the lesson for the day from them. And she loved better still the affectionate remembrances of her children.

      Kitty, meanwhile, was walking very soberly along, reading her hymn-book. Perhaps from this you may think that Kitty was the more industrious and thoughtful of the two; but it was not so. Amy had risen early that morning, and got her lessons all ready, and so she could enjoy the pleasant walk freely; for you know, or if you do not know I hope you will learn, that it is always those who are busiest at their work that can be merriest in their hours of leisure. Nothing gives us such an appetite for enjoyment as hearty work. So Amy tripped on, humming a cheerful hymn, while poor Kitty kept on saying over and over again the words of her hymn, and vainly trying to stop her ears from hearing and her eyes from seeing all the pleasant sights and sounds around her. But the birds were so busy singing, and the fish kept springing up from the stream, and every now and then a bright butterfly would flit across, or a little bird perch on a spray close to her, and everything around seemed trying so mischievously to take her attention from her book, so that they had reached the gate at the end of the wood before Kitty had learned two verses of her hymn.

      You see, these two little girls were not quite like each other, although they had the same home, and the same lessons, and the same plays. If you sow two seeds of the same plant in the same soil, you know they will grow up exactly like each other. The flowers will be of the same colour, the same smell, the same shape; the roots will suck up the same nourishment from the soil, and the little vessels of the stems and leaves will cook it into the very same sweet, or sour, or bitter juices. But with little children it is quite different. You may often see two children of one family, with the same friends, the same teaching, the same means of improvement, as different in temper and character from each other as if they had been brought up on opposite sides of the world. Indeed, it is as strange for children of one family to be alike, as for flowers to be unlike. Why is this? Among other reasons one great one is, that God has given to children a will—a power of choosing good or evil. Flowers have no will; they cannot help being beautiful, and being what God meant them to be. The earth feeds them, and the rains water them and make them grow without any choice or will of theirs; but with you, children, it is quite otherwise. God has given you wills; and it is in your own power to choose whether you will be good and happy children, and a blessing to all around you, and turning everything around you into a blessing, every year growing wiser and better; or whether you will yield to the evil within and around you, and turn health, and time, and Christian teaching, and all the good things God sends to feed your souls, into food for your selfish and idle natures, and so grow every year worse and worse. You must do one of these two things,—you may do the best. Remember I do not say you can do them for or by yourselves, but you can do them. God has said so. The flowers cannot choose or ask for food, and so God chooses for them and gives without asking. You are higher creatures than they, and can choose and ask, and so God will wait for you to ask before he gives; but he is only waiting for this, and he is always ready to hear.

      Mrs. Mordaunt had told the children something of this last Sunday, and Amy thought of it as she walked, and did ask God to bless her teacher’s words to her that day.

      Now you have seen how Amy and Kitty Harrison used their power of choice. The sun had beamed into the room for Kitty as well as for Amy that morning. God had given them both the pleasant morning hours of his day to use as they liked best. Kitty had chosen to spend them in dozing lazily in bed, while Amy had jumped out of bed and dressed quickly, and gone out to her favourite seat under an old cherry tree to learn her lessons.

      So the little girls reached the gate at the end of the wood. Outside was a road, across which lay the corn-fields leading to the church, and beside it stood a cottage where Amy and Kitty used to stop to call for little Jane Hutton, one of their school-fellows. Jane’s father was a blacksmith; and the Huttons were richer than the Harrisons, so that Jane had gayer bonnets and smarter dresses than Kitty and Amy. This morning she had such beautiful new ribbons that Kitty’s attention was quite caught by them. And Jane too was not a little proud of them; her mother had given a shilling a yard for them at the next town. If Kitty had found it difficult to learn her lessons before, she now found it quite impossible; for in the midst of every line she could not help reckoning how many weeks’ halfpence it would take, and how many times she would have to open the gate for travellers who came to see the waterfall near the cottage, before she could buy a ribbon like that.

      CHAPTER II.

      AT SCHOOL

      AT length the children reached the school before the hymn was learned, and Kitty felt very much ashamed when, after stammering through three verses, Mrs. Mordaunt gave her back the book, saying, “I would rather have no lesson from you, Kitty, than one learned so carelessly as this.” However, it was too late to repair the fault, so Kitty resolved to give her very best attention to the chapter they were going to read. It was the parable of the sower and the seed, in the thirteenth of St. Matthew. I cannot tell you all that Mrs. Mordaunt said about it, but it was something of this kind:—

      “The Saviour was sitting on a little strip of level land by the side of the Sea of Galilee. Behind him were high mountains, towering one above another to the clouds; before him, the waves came rippling quietly against the low shore. Around him were crowds of people gathered together from the villages and towns many miles around to listen unto him. Had all these people come to Jesus for the same thing, do you think, Jane Hutton?”

      Jane Hutton started at the question. She had been playing with her new parasol, and her thoughts were very far from the Sea of Galilee. Mrs. Mordaunt repeated the question in another way. “Do you think all the people who came to Jesus came because they loved him, and wanted to be his disciples?”

      “No; there were the Pharisees,” said Kitty.

      “Yes; they came to try to find fault with him.”

      “And the sick,” said Amy timidly, “who came to be healed.”

      “True,” said Mrs. Mordaunt. “And then there were very many, doubtless, who came from mere curiosity, because they had heard their friends talk of his wonderful power of healing, or the new, wise, and strange words of him who seemed to them only the son of a poor carpenter of Nazareth. But were there any who gathered close around him, and loved his words for their own sake, not because they were new or interesting, but because they were true and God’s words, because they had sins to be forgiven and Jesus could forgive, and sick souls which only Jesus could heal?”

      “Yes; there were the disciples.”

      “What do you mean by disciples?”

      “Does it not mean those who love Jesus?” asked Amy.

      “No; don’t you remember it means scholars?” said Kitty, who was quicker than her sister, and rather proud of her better memory.

      “You are both

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