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Stepping Heavenward

<h3 id="id00362" style="margin-top: 3em">Chapter 5</h3> <h5 id="id00363">V.</h5> <h5 id="id00364">APRIL 6.</h5> I have taken it at last. I would not take one before, because I knew I could not teach little children how to love God, unless I loved Him myself. My class is perfectly delightful. There are twelve dear little things in it, of all ages between eight and nine. Eleven are girls, and the one boy makes me more trouble than all of them put together. When I get them all about me, and their sweet innocent faces look up into mine, I am so happy that I can hardly help stopping every now and then to kiss them. They ask the very strangest questions I mean to spend a great deal of time in preparing the lesson, and in hunting up stories to illustrate it. Oh, I am so glad I was ever born into this beautiful world, where there will always be dear little children to love! APRIL 13.-Sunday has come again, and with it my darling little class! Dr. Cabot has preached delightfully all day, and I feel that I begin to understand his preaching better, and that it must do me good. I long, I truly long to please God; I long to feel as the best Christians feel, and to live as they live. APRIL 20.-Now that I have these twelve little ones to instruct, I am more than ever in earnest about setting them a good example through the week. It is true they do not, most of them, know how I spend my time, nor how I act. But I know, and whenever I am conscious of not practicing what I preach, I am bitterly ashamed and grieved. How much work, badly done, I am now having to undo. If I had begun in earnest to serve God when I was as young as these children are, how many wrong habits I should have avoided; habits that entangle me now, as in so many nets. I am trying to take each of these little gentle girls by the hand and to lead her to Christ. Poor Johnny Ross is not so docile as they are, and tries my patience to the last degree. APRIL 27.-This morning I had my little flock about me, and talked to them out of the very bottom of my heart about Jesus. They left their seats and got close to me in a circle, leaning on my lap and drinking in every word. All of a sudden I was aware, as by a magnetic influence, that a great lumbering man in the next seat was looking at me out of two of the blackest eyes I ever saw, and evidently listening to what I was saying. I was disconcerted at first, then angry. What impertinence. What rudeness! I am sure he must have seen my displeasure in my face, for he got up what I suppose he meant for a blush, that is he turned several shades darker than he was before, giving one the idea that he is full of black rather than red blood. I should not have remembered it, however-by it-I mean his impertinence—if he had not shortly after made a really excellent address to the children. Perhaps it was a little above their comprehension, but it showed a good deal of thought and earnestness. I meant to ask who he was, but forgot it. This has been a delightful Sunday. I have really feasted on Dr. Cabot's preaching. But I am satisfied that there is something in religion I do not yet comprehend. I do wish I positively knew that God had forgiven and accepted me. MAY 6.-Last evening Clara Ray had a little party and I was there. She has a great knack at getting the right sort of people together, and of making them enjoy themselves. I sang several songs, and so did Clara, but they all said my voice was finer and in better training than hers. It is delightful to be with cultivated, agreeable people. I could have stayed all night, but mother sent for me before any one else had thought of going. MAY 7.-I have been on a charming excursion to-day with Clara Ray and all her set. I was rather tired, but had an invitation to a concert this evening which I could not resist. JULY 21.-So much has been going on that I have not had time to write. There is no end to the picnics, drives, parties, etc., this summer. I am afraid I am not getting on at all. My prayers are dull and short, and full of wandering thoughts. I am brimful of vivacity and good humor in company, and as soon as I get home am stupid and peevish. I suppose this will always be so, as it always has been and I declare I would rather be so than such a vapid, flat creature as Mary Jones, or such a dull, heavy one as big Lucy Merrill. JULY 24.-Clara Ray says the girls think me reckless and imprudent in speech. I've a good mind not to go with her set any more. I am afraid I have been a good deal dazzled by the attentions I have received of late; and now comes this blow at my vanity. On the whole, I feel greatly out of sorts this evening. JULY 28.-People talk about happiness to be found in a Christian life. I wonder why I do not find more! On Sundays I am pretty good, and always seem to start afresh; but on week-days I am drawn along with those about me. All my pleasures are innocent ones; there is surely no harm in going to concerts, driving out, singing, and making little visits! But these things distract me; they absorb me; they make religious duties irksome. I almost wish I could shut myself up in a cell, and so get out of the reach of temptation. The truth is, the journey heavenward is all up hill I have to force myself to keep on. The wonder is that anybody gets there with so much to oppose—- so little to help one! JULY 29.-It is high time to stop and think. I have been like one running a race, and am stopping to take breath. I do not like the way in which things have been going on of late. I feel restless and ill at ease. I see that if I would be happy in God, I must give Him all. And there is a wicked reluctance to do that. I want Him-but I want to have my own way, too. I want to walk humbly and softly before Him, and I want to go where I shall be admired and applauded. To whom shall I yield? To God? Or to myself? JULY 30.-I met Dr. Cabot to-day, and could not, help asking the question: "Is it right for me to sing and play in company when all I do it for is to be admired?" "Are you sure it is all you do it for?" he returned. "Oh," I said, "I suppose there may be a sprinkling of desire to entertain and please, mixed with the love of display." "Do you suppose that your love of display, allowing you have it, would be forever slain by your merely refusing to sing in company?" "I thought that might give it a pretty hard blow," I said, "if not its death-blow." "Meanwhile, in, punishing yourself you punish your poor innocent friends," he said laughing. "No child, go on singing; God has given you this power of entertaining and, gratifying your friends. But, pray without ceasing, that you may sing from pure benevolence and not from pure self-love." "Why, do people pray about such things as that?" I cried. "Of course they do. Why, I would pray about my little finger, if my little finger went astray." I looked at his little finger, but saw no signs of its becoming schismatic. AUG. 3.-This morning I took great delight in praying for my little scholars, and went to Sunday-school as on wings. But on reaching my seat, what was my horror to find Maria Perry there! "Oh, your seat is changed," said she. "I am to have half your class, and I like this seat better than those higher up. I suppose you don't care?" "But I do care," I returned; "and you have taken my very best children-the very sweetest and the very prettiest. I shall speak to Mr. Williams about it directly." "At any rate, I would not fly into such a fury," she said. "It is just as pleasant to me to have pretty children to teach as it is to you. Mr. Williams said he had no doubt you would be glad to divide your class with me, as it is so large; and I doubt if you gain anything by speaking to him." There was no time for further discussion, as school was about to begin. I went to my new seat with great disgust, and found it very inconvenient. The children could not cluster around me as they did before, and I got on with the lesson very badly. I am sure Maria Perry has no gift at teaching little children, and I feel quite vexed and disappointed. This has not been a profitable Sunday, and I and now going to bed, cheerless and uneasy. AUG. 9.-Mr. Williams called this evening to say that I am to have my old seat and all the children again. All the mothers had been to see him, or had written him notes about it, and requested that I continue to teach them. Mr. Williams said he hoped I would go on teaching for twenty years, and that as fast as his little girls grew old enough to come to Sunday-school he should want me to take charge of them. I should have been greatly elated by these compliments, but for the display I made of myself to Maria Perry on Sunday. Oh, that I could learn to bridle my unlucky tongue! JAN. 15, 1835.-To-day I am twenty. That sounds very old, yet I feel pretty much as I did before. I have begun to visit some of mother's poor folks with her, and am astonished to see how they love her, how plainly they let her talk to them. As a general rule, I do not think poor people are very interesting, and they are always ungrateful. We went first to see old Jacob Stone. I have been there a good many times with the baskets of nice things mother takes such comfort in sending him, but never would go in. I was shocked to see how worn away he was. He seemed in great distress of mind, and begged mother to pray with him. I do not see how she could. I am perfectly sure that no earthly power could ever induce me to go round praying on bare floors, with people sitting, rocking and staring all the time, as the two Stone girls stared at mother. How tenderly she prayed for him! We then went to see Susan Green. She had made a carpet for her room by sewing together little bits of pieces given her, I suppose, by persons for whom she works, for she goes about fitting and making carpets. It looked bright and cheerful. She had a nice bed in the corner, covered with a white quilt, and some little ornaments were arranged about the room. Mother complimented her on her neatness, and said a queen might sleep in such a bed as that, and hoped she found it as comfortable as it looked. "Mercy on us!" she cried out, "it ain't to sleep in! I sleep up in the loft, that I climb to by a ladder every night." Mother looked a little amused, and then she sat and listened, patiently, to a long account of how the poor old thing had invested her money; how Mr. Jones did not pay the interest regularly, and how Mr. Stevens haggled about the percentage. After we came away, I asked mother how she could listen to such a rigmarole in patience, and what good she supposed she had done by her visit. "Why the poor creature likes to show off her bright carpet and nice bed, her chairs, her vases and her knick-knacks, and she likes to talk about her beloved money, and her bank stock. I may not have done her any good; but I have given her a pleasure, and so have you." "Why, I hardly spoke a word." "Yes, but your mere presence gratified her. And if she ever gets into trouble, she will feel kindly towards us for the sake of our sympathy with her pleasures, and will let us sympathize with her sorrows." I confess this did not seem a privilege to be coveted. She is not nice at all, and takes snuff. We went next to see Bridget Shannon. Mother had lost sight of her for some years, and had just heard that she was sick and in great want. We found her in bed; there was no furniture in the room, and three little half-naked children sat with their bare feet in some ashes where there had been a little fire. Three such disconsolate faces I never saw. Mother sent me to the nearest baker's for bread; I ran nearly all the way, and I hardly know which I enjoyed most, mother's eagerness in distributing, or the children's in clutching at and devouring it. I am going to cut up one or two old dresses to make the poor things something to cover them. One of them has lovely hair that would curl beautifully if it were only brushed out. I told her to come to see me to-morrow, she is so very pretty. Those few visits used up the very time I usually spend in drawing. But on the whole I am glad I went with mother, because it has gratified her. Besides, one must either stop reading the Bible altogether, or else leave off spending one's whole time in just doing easy pleasant things one likes to do. JAN. 20.-The little Shannon girl came, and I washed her face and hands, brushed out her hair and made it curl in lovely golden ringlets all round her sweet face, and carried her in great triumph to mother. "Look at the dear little thing, mother!" I cried; "doesn't she look like a line of poetry?" "You foolish, romantic child!" quoth mother. "She looks, to me, like a very ordinary line of prose. A slice of bread and butter and a piece of gingerbread mean more to her than these elaborate ringlets possibly can. They get in her eyes, and make her neck cold; see, they are dripping with water, and the child is all in a shiver." So saying, mother folded a towel round its neck, to catch the falling drops, and went for bread and butter, of which the child consumed a quantity that, was absolutely appalling. To crown all, the ungrateful little thing would not so much as look at me from that moment, but clung to mother, turning its back upon me in supreme contempt. Moral.-Mothers occasionally know more than their daughters do. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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