‘i wish, i wish, i wish,’ said a little boy, who awoke early one morning, and lay in bed thinking; ‘i wish i was grown up, so as to do some good. if i was governor, i’d make good laws; or i’d be a missionary; or i’d get rich, and give away so much to poor people; but i am only a little boy, and it will take me plenty of years to grow up.’ was he going to put off doing good till then? ‘well,’ he said to himself while he was dressing, ‘i know what i can do. i can be good; that’s left to little boys.’ therefore, when he was dressed, he knelt and asked god to help him to be good, and try to serve him all day with all his heart, and not forget.[57] then he went down stairs to finish his lessons.
no sooner was he seated with his clean slate before him, than his mother called him to run into the wood-house for his little brother. he did not want to leave his lesson, yet he cheerfully said, ‘i’ll go, mother;’ and away he ran. and how do you think he found ‘bubby?’ with a sharp axe in his hand. ‘i chop,’ he said; and quite likely the next moment he would have chopped off his little toes. the little boy only thought of minding his mother; but who can tell if his ready obedience did not save his baby brother from being a cripple for life?
as he was going on an errand for his mother, he saw a poor woman whose foot had slipped on the newly-made ice, and she fell; and in falling she had spilled her bag of beans and basket of apples, and some wicked boys were snatching up her apples and running off with them. the little boy stopped and said, ‘let me help you to pick up your beans and apples,’[58] and his nimble fingers quickly helped her out of her mishap. he only thought of being kind; he did not know how his kind act comforted the poor woman long after she got home, and how she prayed god to bless him.
at dinner, as his father and mother were talking, his father said roughly, ‘i shan’t do anything for that man’s son; the old man always did his best to injure me.’ ‘but, father,’ said the little boy, looking up into his father’s face, ‘does not the bible say we must return good for evil?’ the little boy did not know that his father thought of what his son had said all the afternoon, and said within himself, ‘my boy is more of a christian than i am; i must be a better man.’
when he came home from school at night, he went to the cage and found his dear canary-bird dead. ‘oh, mother! and i tended birdie so, and i loved him so, and he sang so sweetly;’ and the little boy burst into tears over his poor favourite. ‘who gave birdie’s life, and who took it again?’ asked his mother, stroking[59] his head. ‘god,’ he answered through his tears, ‘and he knows best;’ and he tried to hush himself.
a lady sat in a dark corner in the room. she had lost her two birdies; and though she hoped they had taken angels’ wings and gone to nestle in the heavenly land, she would rather have her little sons back to her nest again. but when she beheld the little boy’s patience and submission to his father in heaven, she said, ‘i too will trust him, like this little child.’ her heart was touched, and she went home with a little spring of healing gushing up there, and she became henceforth a better mother to the children yet left to her.
when the little boy lay on his pillow that night, he thought, ‘i am too small to do any good; but oh, i do want to be good, and to love the saviour who came down from heaven to die for me. i do want to become one of the heavenly father’s dear children.’
the heavenly father’s children are sometimes called children of light; and does it not[60] seem as if beams of light shone from this little child, warming, blessing everybody that came in his way? who will say he did not do good?
