Part 6 (1/2)

Suddenly a heht this mother to death's door

She had been, for a few years before her e, my pupil in my own house, and she used to say she owed to me all the happy views she had of God and Heaven, as well as of human life and death, and I was sent for in this extree she had lived in a city distant from me, and I had seen her but little Her child was so very timid I had made no acquaintance with him in transient interviews, and of me he had no impression but of one little story that I had told him six months before when I met him at the house of her husband's parents This story I had half invented to explain a picture in the ”Story without an end,” that I was showing to him (See Appendix)

When I came to the mother's bedside, she told me it was best for her to die, because she was utterly baffled in all her efforts to bring up her child She went on to describe her timid methods; she said she feared he was _non co s, he immediately broke them to pieces, and when she tried to prevent this, by endeavoring to make him understand their uses and construction, he would look drearily into her face and say, rather than ask, ”What for?” He seeh flowers seearden and told hiather them, he would stand still, and helplessly cry; and she had to co, even to play, before he would attempt it He acted like an automaton Moreover, he had no sensibility, and expressed no affection

Just at this point of her dismal story her chareat boy in her are brow and deep eyes, but with no speculation in theuid that the arms that had been about the nurse's neck, slowly lost their curve when she put him down on his feet But his look rested on esture, held out ent light, and with a cry of joy he sprang towards me, climbed up into my lap, clasped his ar up with a joyful expression of confidence said, ”Story--little boy--drop of water!” It was, as I have said, about half a year before, that I had lured hi to show him the picture where the child, in the ”Story without an end” is represented beside the brook, looking at a drop of water hanging fro the little boy a story,” as I said, to which he had answered ”Story!” and I had gone on and invented a free paraphrase of the story given in the book, adapted to his infantile capacity, and when I had finished, he said, ”Story again!” and I repeated it again and again, so iain said ”Story,” with a confiding pressure, as he leaned onme the conviction that he understood me It was really, as I found subsequently, the only rational words that had ever been addressed to the child's iination

”This does not look like want of sensibility, or _ like it before,” she said, all tears The ensuing silence was immediately broken by the child's imperative repetition of the word ”story!” I was too much affected by the mother's emotion to re day and the ere open The house stood on a bluff of the Merriht of the Rapids; and the sound of the rushi+ng waters came in upon our silence I said, cheerfully, ”Do you hear the water running?” to which he responded with a joyful ”yes! what does it run for?” ”Oh, because it is glad,” I replied, and again he responded with a joyful and satisfied ”yes,” and after ato?” ”Oh, into the ocean, where all the rest of the waters are!” and again an emphatic ”yes” expressed his satisfaction

Perhaps he remembered that in the story I had told hi off the leaf, and running aith its brothers and sisters, and falling into the ocean, out of which the sun had originally taken it At any rate, he not only repeated his yes with the ehtful I said, ”Do you ever look out of theand see the sun shi+ne on the water, and all the little sparkles of light in the water?” ”Yes,” said he, joyfully, ”what makes the sun shi+ne on the water?” ”Oh,” said I, ”it is because the sun loves the water” ”Yes,” said he, and began to eetic manner

It was too much for the poor mother, who absolutely wept aloud, whether with joy or sorrow she could not tell, as she afterwards said

The sound of her weeping attracted his attention, and he sat up in e eyes upon her as she lay in bed, and then upon me, with a look of concern and appeal ”See,” said I, ”poor mother She is sick and sorry She wants o into the nursery and let me tell dear mother a story to make her feel better? Then I will come to you and tell you one”

With a cheerful ”yes” he iot down and went into the nursery, but stopped at the door to say:--

”When you have told ht in and tell me one?”

I said to the mother, ”You see, h, and a moral nature He can understand and feel sympathy; feels the sy motive No fatal harm has been done after all by your delay, but he needs now to know he has a Heavenly Father, fully toYou ive him that name for the Love he feels within and without”

”Not quite yet,” said she, ”not until you come to stay, because he would ask me questions that I should not kno to answer Children ask such terrible questions I am afraid as soon as you nahtened Don't you know M D was afraid to stay in a room alone because of the oinable horror to her?”

”I do not wonder,” I replied ”Omnipresence of God! What was there in a child's experience to interpret this Latin abstraction? I think it would have been quite another thing, considering who her earthly father was, had she been told that our Heavenly Father was all about her though she could not see Hi her love and joy I cannot but wonder that anybody around her should have talked to her in such abstractions”

”I am so unready in expression,” she persisted, ”and can so poorly express s, I am sure I should only do mischief if I should try to answer his questions, and I a thean to talk to him How different was that 'yes' from the dreary 'what for?'

hich he always received the very best explanations that I could s he played with That 'what for?' was not an enquiry of intelligence, but an expression of utter want of perception, with no interest to hear a reply It is best for hiive hiht to have children but people of genius!”

”No, no,” said I; ”it does not require genius to talk with children, but only siained a response, not because of genius, for I have none, but because I believe in hi, and that God has created us to love and commune with one another and Him You have said yourself that he seeather them, and that he loved to hear the streetthat the waters run because they are glad, and the sun shi+nes on and s beautiful because he loves them, I put his own conscious life into the nized the lad and loving, whichthe love and joy of the Creator that shi+ne in those natural objects, because they are God'S oords of love addressed to His own ie of Him If we talk to children in instinctive faith, they understand us You have not done so because of your early misfortune that saddened your heart and took away your instinctive courage Faith is the proper act of the heart (courage, you know, is a synony in the process of life Without heart one can do no justice to children in talking with them; with it, aken their minds and nurture their souls, and all our e of setting their s forever speaking'”

”When you come to stay,” was her rejoinder, ”you can say to him what you please, for then you will be here to take care of his ain at that o to the child, who had several times opened the door and looked at me wistfully, with a silent appeal which was all the ence that he did not tease His own desire to have a story had interpreted to him hisa story, and to his de froeworth's first story of Frank, and began to read to hi a noise on the table and the conversation between him and his mother that ensued But this did not suit ht at seeing ination touched by the beautiful language of nature that I had ible to him He pulled the book away, and asked me to tell hied, I began: ”Once there was a little worer round than a big darning-needle This little worm lived in a little house that he had h to hold him, when he rolled hi out There were no s nor doors in his house, but one on top, which was his door to go in at, and histo look out of When he had made this house he was tired and crawled into it and curled hiht In thethe sun rose and spread his beaht sunbeams shone into theof the little worm's house and touched his eyes and waked him, and he popped up his head and looked out and saas very pleasant in the garden, and he thought he would go out He squirmed himself up out of his hole, and because he had no feet he crept along the garden path The warm beams of the sun put their arms all round his cold, little body and made it warm as could be, and the sunbeam went into his little s of the birds went into his little mites of ears and filled him all up with music, and the sweet smell of hundreds of floent up that little mite of a nose and filled him up with their perfulad as he could be that he was alive

”Now in the house that stood in that garden lived a little boy about four years old; and when the one into theof his nursery and waked him, and he ashed and dressed and had his breakfast of bread and milk, and then his mama took hiarden, and told hiood run to make himself warm So down he ran But now if that little boy should put his strong foot on that dear little worm, it would break him all to pieces--”

”Oh, he shall not, he must not!” cried the child in a spasm of distress

”Aunt Lizzie, don't let him break the dear little worm to pieces!”

”No indeed,” said I, ”that little boy would not not do such a cruel thing for the world! He saw the little worlad to be alive, and he ran on the other side of the path; and the little worrass, and drank a little dew for his breakfast, and then he felt tired, and went creeping back, full of good food, to the little hole that was his home, and curled himself up like a little ball and went to sleep”