Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/184

 "You know we ort to give up our own wills and do what is pleasin' to the Lord in Lent, and I have the greatest trouble to make the children see the necessity of it as I do, and I am so particular to keep it," sez she.

Thinkses I, Tamer Ann Allen, if you should try to do the Lord's will through one day of Lent you wouldn't try to make your only girl live a lie the rest of her life, and let your oldest boy go to ruin down the path of dime novels and cigarettes. Why, every one of the troubles she had pinted out to me wuz nothin' bad in Jack at all, only the sins of ignorance which we read are winked at. But not a wink would Tamer give, not a wink. She had complained awful about his irreverence in prayer time and his utter refusal to give up pie and leave butter offen his bread durin' Lent. "Why," sez she, "when I asked him what he would give up he said apples, he guessed, he didn't love 'em, and he said he would give up bathin', too, and soap, and havin' his hair combed, the idee!"

"Did you explain it, Tamer Ann, what Lent wuz for, and why he should make his little sacrifices?"

"No, it is enough for me to tell Jack what to do; he has no right to inquire into my reasons."

"But," sez I, "didn't you inquire into what you called his irreverence at prayer time?"

"I inquired into it with a good switch, that's what I did, for I will not have irreverence and irreligion goin' on in my house."

Well, as I said, Jack come to me that night and laid his head against my shoulder, and I told him he must be a good boy, and I asked him why it wuz that he didn't want to say his prayers. He had been in real good