A CONTRAST TO THE FORMER CHAPTER.
* * * * * little children, endeavoring
to gather amusement from the very dust, and
straws and pebbles of squalid alleys, shut out
from the glorious countenance of nature.
WILLIAM HOWITT.
WHEN little Alfred returned home, on a Saturday afternoon, from one of
the delightful visits to the woods of which I have told you, his mamma
lifted him up on the sofa beside her, and said,
“How good our heavenly Father is to my little Alfred! He has given him a
kind papa, who loves him dearly. Little boys cannot be thankful enough
to God for that great blessing. There are many little children who have
very unkind fathers. Some of them are wicked enough to spend all their
money for rum, and do not get anything for their poor little children to
eat.”
Alfred’s little sister Flora had run up to her mamma, to listen to her
as she talked with Alfred. She was a tender-hearted little girl, and her
lip quivered, and the tears came into her eyes, when she heard about the
children who had such naughty fathers.
Then Mrs. Penrose took little Flora upon her lap, and went on talking to
Alfred. She said,
“And my little Alfred’s papa takes him in the pleasant woods, and in the
fields, and lets him gather the sweet flowers which grow there. And he
and little Flora can hear the happy birds sing all day long. Now, there
are some little children who never see a flower grow, or hear a bird
sing, and they scarcely even see the pretty blue sky which is over their
heads.”
“O, mamma!” said Alfred, “are they blind and deaf?”
“No, my love, but they live in dark and crowded places in the city. Some
live in garrets, and some in cellars, where the houses are high and the
streets very narrow. So the beautiful things which God has given us to
make us glad are quite shut out from them. When I lived in the city I
went one day to see a poor family who lived in a cellar, in a dark and
dirty court. The father of this family was a drunkard. He had even sold,
for rum, the bed on which his sick wife lay. When I went to her, the
poor woman had only some straw, in a corner of the cellar, to lie upon.
The children had very little fire, although the weather was cold, and
nothing to eat, except what people carried them from day to day.
“Among the children was one pale, sickly-looking little boy, named
Johnny. He was only eight years old; but his mother told me that she did
not know what she should have done without little Johnny. He did
everything that he could for her during the day; and when she coughed or
moved at night, the little boy would run up to her and ask her if she
would have some water, or if he should raise her head higher.
“In a corner, Johnny had a faded rose planted in some dirt which he had
scooped from the cellar, and put in an old tin cup.
“The rose had been, one day, dropped by a lady, who was walking before
Johnny, in Broadway. Johnny was an honest boy. He ran up to the lady,
and offered her the rose which she had dropped. The lady smiled, and
said, ‘You can keep it, my little boy. I do not want it.’
“The rose was then fresh and beautiful. Johnny thought that if he
planted it, it might perhaps live. It did take root even in that poor
soil, but it could not grow any.
“He looked up into my face, on the day that I first went to see his
mother, and said,
“‘O, ma’am! do you think that my rose will live? I have kept it in the
warmest place, and watered it every day.’
“‘Yes,’ said his mother, ‘however hungry and cold poor Johnny has been,
he never forgot his rose.’
“I saw when he asked me the question that his rose was nearly dead. The
tears came into his eyes when I told him this.
“Poor little boy! The flower was like himself, withering away for want
of light and air.
“Just think, Alfred, how happy little Johnny would have been, running
with his bare feet through the fields, looking at the golden and
speckled butterflies, filling his cap with wild-flowers, and listening
to the song of the birds, and the busy hum of the honey-bee!
“One day I took Johnny to my house, and showed him a stand of flowers.
He was delighted. He clapped his hands, and his eyes sparkled. He smelt
the heliotropes and the roses, and he looked at the rich flowers of the
cactus. When I gave him a bouquet to carry to his own miserable home, he
seemed perfectly happy.
“The next time I went to that dark, gloomy cellar, there the flowers
stood in the old tin cup from which the poor rose had been taken.”
Alfred and Flora felt sorry for poor Johnny; but they were glad to hear
that his mother got well, and that little Johnny had been put with a
farmer, where he could hear the birds sing, and see the brooks and the
trees, and pick wild-flowers in the fields.
When they went to bed they thanked God for many mercies which they had
not thought of before.
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