CONSCIENCE

BY

MRS. FOLLEN

Illustrated with engravings.

CONTENTS

CONSCIENCE
"IT IS ONLY A TRIFLE."

CONSCIENCE.

The short wintry days were beginning to lengthen, the sun rose earlier and staid up longer. Now and then a bluebird was heard twittering a welcome to the coming spring. As for the robins, they were as pert and busy as usual. The little streams were beginning to find their way out of their icy prison slowly and with trembling, as if they feared old winter might take a step and catch them, and pinch them all up again.

Frank and Harry were sorry to see their snow man growing smaller and smaller every day; from being a large, portly gentleman, he was shrunk into a thin, shabby, ugly-looking fellow. His strong arms were about falling to the ground; his fat nose had entirely disappeared, and his mouth had grown so big that you might look down his great throat, and see the place where one of the boys used to go in to make his snowship talk. Frank and Harry loved all their winter amusements, and were loath to give up skating, sliding, and coasting, and above all, snowballing. Yet the boys enjoyed the lengthening twilight—-the hour their mother devoted to them.

"Will you please to give me two cents, Mother?" said Frank, one day.

"For what?"

"To buy a piece of chalk."

"And two for me, Mother," said Harry, "for I want a piece as well as Frank."

"What are you both going to do with chalk?" asked their mother. They were silent. She asked again, but they made no reply. "I cannot give you the money till you tell me what you want of the chalk. Why are you not willing that I should know?"

The boys continued silent for a short time, and then Frank said, "I am afraid that, if you know what we are going to do with the chalk, you will not let us have the money."

"Then," replied their mother, "you think what you want to do is wrong. I, perhaps, ought to insist upon your telling me what you want of the chalk. I love to give you every innocent pleasure, and what is right for you to do I think I may know about. However, if you will assure me it is for nothing wrong that you want the chalk, I will ask no more questions, and give you the money."

"We do not mean to do any great harm with it," said Harry. "Still I am afraid you will not quite like to have us do it, mothers are so much more particular than boys, you know."

"Try and see if we disagree about this matter," said their mother.

"Shall I tell?" said Harry to Frank.

"Yes," he replied. "It is no such dreadful affair. Let's tell mother all about it. You know, she said the other day that she remembered when she was a boy."

They all laughed at this often quoted blunder, and Harry began: "You see, Mother, that yesterday John Green contrived, while we were in school, and engaged in doing our lessons, to make a great B on Frank's and my back, with a piece of chalk. John is a good hand at such things, and he did it so nicely, that the master did not see him, and neither of us saw the B on the other. When we went out to play, all the boys cried out, "B for blockhead, B for blunderbuss, B for booby," and so on, ever so many other names beginning with B, and kept pointing at us. At last, I saw Frank's mark, and he saw mine. I can tell you we were both angry enough. Now we want to be revenged on John Green, and have a capital plan. You see he will be on his guard, and we must be very cunning. To-morrow is exhibition day, and he will have on his best dark-green jacket, and Frank and I are to sit one on each side of him. You see he is really a dunce about every thing but playing tricks; and, when he is asked a question, he will be scared out of his senses, and not know what to say. Now Frank is going to pretend to help him, while I write Dunce in large letters on the stupid fellow's back. John will not know what I am doing, I am sure; and, as he is a real dunce, it will make a good laugh; every one will think he is well served, and the whole school will make fun of him."

"So," said Mrs. Chilton, "you acknowledge that you are planning a piece of revenge."

"Why, yes, Mother," replied Frank; "I suppose you would think it ought to be called revenge, but I don't see any great harm in it. Schoolboys always play such tricks, and no boy thinks the worse of another for such a thing."

"You think," said Mrs. Chilton, "that this schoolmate of yours will be so embarrassed at answering the questions that he will not know what he is about; you mean, one of you, to pretend to be his friend and help him, while the other makes him appear like a fool to the rest of the boys."

Frank and Harry looked a little troubled, and were silent a while. Then Frank said, "It is no more than what John would do; 'tis what he deserves, and it is true enough that he is a dunce."

"I will tell you, Frank, a better way of being revenged," replied his mother.

"What is it, Mother?"

"Sit by him, as you intended, and when he is troubled and perplexed, help him as well as you can, and be particularly kind to him."

"And so reward him for making fools of us," said Prank, pettishly. "No, Mother, what you say may be very good, but I don't want to do such a thing as that."

"If you were to treat him in the way I propose, do you think he would ever treat you unkindly again? Would he not feel deeply ashamed of his conduct if you thus returned him good for evil?"

The boys were silent, but it was evident that they did not quite relish their mother's advice, nor feel at all disposed to help John Green say his lessons.

"I will tell you a story," said Mrs. Chilton, of a man who overcame evil with good. A gentleman was once travelling alone in a gig through a very unfrequented road. There was no house, no sign of human existence there. It was so still that the hills and rocks and deep woods gave back the echo of his horse's hoofs; the song of a bird or the chirping of a cricket seemed to fill a great space, and fell on the ear with a strange and almost startling effect. He was observing or rather feeling this extreme solitude and stillness, when suddenly at a turn in the road he came upon a man who placed himself directly before the horse's head. The man had a dark, bad expression in his face, and fixed his eye upon the traveller in such a way as to convince him that the man meant to stop and rob him.

The gentleman immediately drew up his reins, and said kindly, "Friend, if you are going my way, step into my gig, and let me take you on."

The man hesitated, and then got in. My friend, who was a clergyman, began immediately to talk earnestly about many interesting things, and kept up a lively conversation. At last, he mentioned the uncommon loneliness of the road, and observed that it would be a good place for a robbery. He then went on to speak of robbers, and then of criminals in general, and of what he thought was the right way to treat them. He said that society should try to instruct and reform them; that putting them to death was wicked; that, by patient love and kindness, we should win them back to virtue, that we should show them the way to peace and honor. He expressed his belief, that there was something good in the heart of the very worst man, and said that he believed God had placed a witness of Himself in every human heart. "I am a non-resistant"—concluded the clergyman, "and I would rather die than take