Part 8 (1/2)

”Have you forgotten the book?”

”Oh, no! Sometimes I think I will buy the book. Indeed, I don't know what to buy.”

In this undecided state of mind, Emma started with her mother to see her aunt. They had not gone far before they met a poor woman, with some very pretty bunches of flowers for sale. She carried them on a tray. She stopped before Mrs Lee and her little girl, and asked if they would not buy some flowers.

”How much are they a bunch?” asked Emma.

”Sixpence,” replied the woman.

”Mother! I'll tell you what I will do with my sixpence,” said Emma, her face brightening with the thought that came into her mind. ”I will buy a bunch of flowers for Aunt Mary. You know how she loves flowers. Can't I do it, mother?”

”Oh, yes, dear! Do it, by all means, if you think you can give up the nice cream candy, or the picture book, for the sake of gratifying your aunt.”

Emma did not hesitate a moment, but selected a very handsome bunch of flowers, and paid her sixpence to the woman with a feeling of real pleasure.

Aunt Mary was very much pleased with the bouquet Emma brought her.

”The sight of these flowers, and their delightful perfume, really makes me feel better,” she said, after she had held them in her hand for a little while; ”I am very much obliged to my niece, for thinking of me.”

That evening, Emma looked up from a book which her mother had bought her as they returned home from Aunt Mary's, and with which she had been much entertained, and said--

”I think the spending of my sixpence gave me a double pleasure.”

”How so, dear?” asked Mrs Lee.

”I made aunt happy, and the flower woman too. Didn't you notice how pleased the flower woman looked? I wouldn't wonder if she had little children at home, and thought about the bread that sixpence would buy them when I paid it to her. Don't you think she did?”

”I cannot tell that, Emma,” replied her mother; ”but I shouldn't at all wonder if it were as you suppose. And so it gives you pleasure to think you have made others happy?”

”Indeed it does.”

”Acts of kindness,” replied Emma's mother, ”always produce a feeling of pleasure. This every one may know. And it is the purest and truest pleasure we experience in this world. Try and remember this little incident of the flowers as long as you live, my child; and let the thought of it remind you that every act of self-denial brings to the one who makes it a sweet delight.”

UNCLE RODERICK'S STORIES.

Uncle Roderick was an old bachelor--as thorough going an old bachelor as any one need wish to see. Some folks said he had a great many droll whims in his head. I don't know how that was; but this I know, that he loved every body, and almost every body loved him. He had evidently seen better days, when, in my boyhood, I first made his acquaintance; or rather, he had been ”better off in the world,” as the phrase goes. Whether he had been happier, may admit of a question; for the wealthiest man is not always the happiest. There were marks about him which seemed to show that he had been higher on the wheel of fortune, and that the change in his condition had had a chastening effect--just as some fruits become mellower and better after being bruised a little and frost-bitten. He was a great lover of children, and withal an inveterate story-teller.

His memory must have been pretty good, I think; for he would often tell stories to his little friends by the hour, about what happened to him when he was a boy. Some of these stories were funny enough; but the old gentleman usually managed to tack on some good moral to the end of them. By your leave, boys and girls, I will serve up two or three of these stories for an evening's entertainment. They will bear telling the second time, I guess, and I will repeat them, as nearly as my recollection will allow, in the good old bachelor's own words.

STORY FIRST.

HONESTY THE BEST POLICY.

A person is, on the whole, a great deal better off to be honest. Dishonesty is a losing game. A wise man was once asked what one gained by not telling the truth. The reply was, ”Not to be believed when he speaks the truth.” He was right. There are a great many other respects, too, in which a dishonest person suffers by his dishonesty. I must tell you what a lie once cost me.

I was about nine years old, perhaps. In justice to myself, I ought to say that I was not much addicted to this vice; but told a fib once in a great while, as I am afraid too many other little boys, pretty good on the whole, sometimes allow themselves to do. One very cool day in the spring of the year, my father, who was a farmer, was ploughing, and I was riding horse. I didn't relish the task very well, as I was rather cold, and old Silvertail was full of his mischief. It was a little more than I could do to manage him. Moreover, there was some rare sport going on at home.