Newspaper Page Text
August 11, 1915] THE
years to help you up! and already your mother
is beginning to lean on you.
Doesn't that sober you, twenty-one?
Your father has done pretty well, but you
iin do better. You may not think so, but he
iitm's. lie has given you a better eliance than
lie had. In many ways you ean begin where
lie left off. lie expects a good deal from you,
;11111 that is why he has tried to make a man of
on. Don't flinch, boy!
The world will try you out. It will put to
tost every liber in you; but you are made of
good stuff. Once the load is fairly strapped
01 your young shoulders, you will carry it and
source!y feel it?if only there be the willing
.iimI cheerful mind. All hail to you 011 the
i hreshold!
It's high time you are beginning to pay the
freight and your back debts to your father
and mother. You will pay them up, won't you,
l.oy?
How shall you pay them?
By being always and everywhere a man!?
Selected.
WHOSE PENNY??A TRUE STORY.
'Here it is!" shouted dark-eyed Stuart,
making a dart at what proved to be only a
brown ring in the pattern of the linoleum with
w hich the dining-room was bordered.
'Where can it have got to?" questioned
Willie, the owner of the lost penny, for the
twentieth time in as many minutes.
"Pennies roll so, it may he under the sideboard,
or anywhere else by now," remarked
bet tie by way of encouragement, as she rose
from her knees and shook the hair from her
ryos.
Little George, tlie youngest of the three hoys,
had by this time got tired of creeping about on
;ill fours, over the carpet which covered the
middle of the room, and on which he had been,
in his own small fashion, as busy as his brothers
looking for the refractory coin.
" I wonder which penny it was that was lost,
Willie," inquired his mother, as he in his turn
held up his rosy face for her good-night kiss.
The warm, chubby hand opened slowly, disclosing
one penny lying there. But half an
hour ago there had been two; and one of them
was, he had said, for the missionary box, the
<<ther for himself. And then he had been playing
on the floor with them, and one or the
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lost.
"Is it the missionary penny or your own
penny that is gone, Willie?" repeated his mother
quietly.
The little fellow was silent, slowly turning
i lie remaining penny over and over in his open
palm as if he were looking for some mark which
might settle its ownership.
"I think this one is mine, mother," came at
last, as Willie saw in imagination a certain lit'
le shop at the other end of the village, kept by
'lie children's special friend, the "Bead-woman."
lie did so want a penny worth of those
fining beads like Lettie's.
"Very well, dear," answered his mother,
'aking no apparent notice of the slight emphas|*
on the think; "then it is God's penny that
ls gone. Good-night, dear." And presently
?i.~ .... i -
Miirtiy legs were mounting the long stair1
:is<- to the nursery. Lagging steps they sound"1
to the wise mother downstairs?unlike the
"siuil joyous scamper of her happy-tempered
little son.
Hod is teaching my boy a lesson to-night,"
s,'e thought, "and I will not interfere with
Him."
An hour later, and two out of the three
'" others were fast Asleen rtrA?mirn? n4i?Vi?no
r, ? "ai
naby owls which dwelt, with their parents,
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE SC
in a big hole half way up one of the tall elms
standing in front of the house.
"117:112-. 1 J ^ '
uui t? iniu uuuiu not go to sleep somehow,
though he was generally the first to do so, and
although he had only to put his hand under his
pillow to feel his precious penny reposing there
safely within his reach; and when he shut his
eyes up very tight, lie could almost sec the tall
old "Bead-woman," filling up the great brass
thimble which she used to measure out the
beads to her customers, with the lovely blue
beads he had longed so much to buy, ever since
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...... IIUU1C JUJIO.
"Tu whitt, tu whoo," hooted the baby owls,
for they were getting hungry, and papa owl
was such a long time bringing them their supper
of a nice young mouse or little bird. "Tu
whitt, tu whoo-o-o."
Willie sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes,
which were beginning to get drowsy at last.
"Tu whitt, tu whoo-o-o," what did they say
about "two pennies," or was it "whose penny,
whose?" they said.
And then there came back to his memory (he
had forgotten it all this time somehow) the sorrowful
story his mother had told them that
evening of the poor little children far away
who wanted to learn about Jesus, only there
was no money to send them a teacher.
"It was my penny that was lost," whispered
the child presently with a happy smile, and
glad at heart he shut his eyes once more.
"Whose penny? whose?" called the owls
again. "Whose?" "Tu whitt, tu whoo-o."
"God's penny," murmured the sleepy voice in
reply.
Two bare feet pattered down the nursery
stairs in the winter's dusk the following morning,
and two small fists hammered vigorously
at mother's bedroom door, to her great, sur
prise, for she was not expecting sueh an early
visitor.
"What, is it, dear? come in," she said, as she
recognized Willie's voice.
"I wanted .to tell you that I know now,
mother; it's my penny that is lost, and this is
God's."
With a loving kiss on the earnest little face,
his mother answered: "I am glad my Willie
has found that out. It will be so nice to help
the little children to hear about the dear Lord
Jesus, won't it, darling?"
"Better than beads, lots better," responded
the little fellow heartily, as he squeezed his
mother's hand, and tip-toed up to her for another
kiss.
So when the missionary box took its accustomed
place on the Sunday breakfast table,
"God'8 penny" was reverently dropped in by
Willie's eager little fingers.
Then cook came in with the toast and eggs,
and lo, and behold, on the tray beside them lay
a penny!
"I found it on the floor under the curtains
this morning, ma'am," she explained, as she
laid it down by her mistress.
"I am glad that it was not the missionary
penny that was lost, all the same," said Willie's
father, who had heard the story by this time.
"God first and self after," always brings the
best happiness to big people and little."
*******
Just twenty-six years later, a sorrowful band
of missionaries stood with bowed heads round
an open grave beneath the tropical sun of Central
Africa. There they had but now laid to
rest their beloved leader whom you, my readers,
know as "Willie," the rosy-cheeked child
of five, who lost his penny on that long ago
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elm trees.
Many families of owls had come and gone,
and long since the trees themselves had been
IUTH. (545) 7
cut down, branch by branch, as succeeding
winter's storms had rent and torn their huge
limbs.
From a child, Willie had grown into a schoolboy,
and then into a broad-shouldered.
man, noble and good; but all through his life
he never forgot that night of his childhood,
when he and the owls held eouvcrse about his
lost penny. I
It was the real commencement of his missionary
training, that decision between self and
God, and God was his choice. Years after, when
having offered himself definitely for foreign
missionary work, he was asked what had first
led him to think of it, he repeated this story of
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iiiv buu |/uiiiuca.
There were many delays ere Willie obtained
the desire of his heart, and came as pioneer
missionary to West Central Afriea; and
thought none could so guess, it was then only to
labor there for a brief eighteen months, and to
lay down his earthly life for the sake of the
perishing heathen.
Just eighteen months lie struggled against
repeated attacks of fever, and then having
"chosen that good part" it was "not taken
from him," but he heard his Master's voice
bidding him "come up higher," and "he was
not, for God took him." |
Few lives were ever more full to the brim
with human love and happiness than was his.
and yet. having left, all for Christ's sake, he
could write again and again to one and another
of his dear ones: "Oh, if 1 could get you to
understand the joy of a missionary's life! There
is nothing on earth that 1 know of to compare
to it."
This is a true story, which was written by
Willie's own sister, who now lives in South
Africa.?Mission Studies.
A GENTLEMAN.
I knew him for ji ..
By signs that never fail;
His coat was rough and rather worn,
His cheeks were thin and pale?
A lad who had his way to make,
With little time for play?
I knew him for a gentleman
By certain signs to-day.
He met his mother on the street;
Off came his little cap.
My door was shut: he waited there
Until I heard his rap.
He took the bundle from my hand:
And when I dropped my pen,
He sprang to pick it up for me,
This gentleman of ten.
He does not push and crowd along;
His voice is gently pitched:
lie does not fling his books about
As if he were bewitched.
Pie stands aside to let you pass;
He always shuts the door;
He runs on errands willingly
To farm and mill and store.
He thinks of you before himself;
He serves you if he can;
For In whatever company
The manners make the man.
At ten or forty 'tis the same.
The manners tell the tale.
And I discern the gentleman
By signs that never fail.
T-Tnmor'fl Vnnnor
TRUE POLITENESS.
A little boy whs sitting at dinner at a
friend's house. He was too small to eiit the
meat for himself and his mother was at the
other end of the table, hut a lady sitting next
to him offered her help.
"Let me cut vour steak for von " i
v -w- J " ^ ,7,,v nwnl?
"that is, if I can cut it the way you, want it."
"Thank you," answered the little boy, "I
shall like it the way you cut it, even if you do
not cut it the way T like it."?Apples of Gold.