Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/24

 He felt lifted up and inspired. He would obey the Lord. He would do his duty regardless of his own feelings. He would sacrifice his best beloved.

That evenin' Tamer wuz settin' peaceful readin' "Lost Eudora of the Gulch; or, The Becalmed Elephant," when she heard a movement behind her and she looked round and there Jack wuz applyin' a match to a string that wuz tied round her belt and wuz trailin' along the carpet. He wuz jest as pale as death and wuz cryin', but looked resolved. He wuz settin' fire to his mother, sacrificin' his best beloved, according to the commandment of the B. B.

Well, Jack looked so woe-be-gone and agitated, and the string looped into the belt and layin' down on the floor like a train laid to a gunpowder plot looked so curous, that Jack wuz questioned, and it all came out. Well, I spoze that there never wuz a child whipped harder than that child wuz. He bore the marks for days and days. Tamer has got a dretful temper, everybody knows that, I hain't tellin' any news.

And for five days he wuz shet up in his room and kep' on bread and water, and not one word said to him in all that time of comfort and sympathy or enlightenment. But they whipped the idee of sacrifice entirely out of him, and faith. For the next time the subject of faith come up in the Sunday school, and the B. B. wuz holdin' forth all the beauties of faith, and the sureness of its rewards, Jack's little voice piped out:

"There hain't a word of truth in it; for my folks say so, and I know that there hain't, for I've tried it for myself."

Oh, the poor little creeter! not knowin' one word of the divine faith of which the story he heard wuz the