Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/291

 "Well, I'll let you know that Jack has got to think. I'll whip him jest as hard for not thinkin' as I will for anything else, what bizness has he not to think?"

Sez I, "Tamer Ann, do you and I always think before we do things?"

"I can't speak for you," sez she, "but as for me, I always do."

Sez I, "Is it always easy for you to decide right, Tamer, when two or three paths are in front of you to decide from? Do you always choose the right one?"

"I always have!" sez she severely.

"Well," sez I, "you're different from most folks; most of us git into the wrong paths time and agin, and go blunderin' along over rocks and sand and stun and weeds, etc., and we may count ourselves happy if we ever git back into the right road agin."

"Nell," sez Tamer, "Jack might have known he wuz goin' wrong, it wuzn't a blunder, he chose deliberate."

Sez I, "Jack said he thought he wuz goin' right, and I believe him. But even if he had chosen the wrong road deliberate, lots of us look back onto times when we had to choose different paths to walk in, and deliberately, though unbeknown to us, chose the wrong way. There is so many paths to choose from in this life, the roads branch out into so many different ways, why, if the compass had as many pints on it as the porcupine has quills it couldn't begin to pint to the different paths we have to choose from.

"Sometimes," sez I, growin' real eloquent, "they go down into the shadows with the pale shapes of Renunciation and Martyrdom, and a cross shinin' faint and far down in the gloom. Some through the garden of the gods, where the air is fine and clear, and music and