The Pearl Box. Unknown
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she knew her children were as liable to fall into bad habits as any others. There were a few vicious boys in the village where she lived who always took delight in teasing and vexing the other children, and sometimes these boys would try some method to break up the children's play.
One afternoon, there being no school, Mrs. Jones gave her little children permission to go into the lower back-room and spend awhile in play. Away they jumped and skipped along down stairs to the play room, with merry hearts and smiling faces. They had not been there a long time before they heard a very singular noise, which they did not know what to make of. But they soon forgot it, and continued playing with the same cheerfulness; very soon again they heard the same noise, which sounded like somebody's voice. The children began to be a little frightened, and while little Susy stretches her hand out to take hold of the post, and is in the act of running away. Melly and Anna put their fingers to their lips, and listened again to know what the noise could mean. Soon the noise was repeated, and away they flew to heir mother's arms in such a tremor that she felt at the moment alarmed herself. They told their mother what had happened, and all that night the children could not sleep.
It was ascertained the next day that one of the bad boys crept along in the back part of the yard where the children were playing, and by an unnatural sound of his voice made the noise that so alarmed the three little children. Susy, who was the youngest, did not forget it for some time; and all of them were afraid to go alone into the lower room for many weeks.
This was very wrong in the bad boy; he might have injured the children at play so they would never have recovered from it. I have known young children to be so frightened as never to forget the impression all their life-time. How much better for the boy to have been like these good children, and joined with them in their pleasant pastimes. Never do any thing that will give sorrow and pain to others, but live and act towards each other while in youth, so as to enable you to review your life with pleasure, and to meet with the approbation of your Heavenly Father.
ARTHUR AND HIS APPLE TREE
One summer day little William was sitting in the garden chair beside his mother, under the shade of a large cherry tree which stood on the grass plot in front of the house. He was reading in a little book. After he had been reading some time, he looked, up to his mother and said:
"Mother, will you tell me what is the meaning of 'you must return good for evil?'"
His mother replied: "I will tell you a story that will explain it.
"I knew a little boy," she said, "whose name was Arthur Scott; he lived with his grandmamma, who loved him very much, and who wished that he might grow up to be a good man. Little Arthur had a garden of his own, and in it grew an apple tree, which was then very small, but to his great joy had upon it two fine rosy-cheeked apples, the first ones it had produced. Arthur wished to taste of them very much to know if they were sweet or sour; but he was not a selfish boy, and he says to his grandmother one morning:
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