“And now that you are making a new start in life’s journey, my child,” such were the aunt’s concluding words as she rose to depart, “give yourself anew to the best of Masters, the most tender of Friends. Ask His blessing upon all that you do: without that blessing our best works are but like building on sand, or writing on water—all end in vanity and vexation of spirit. The great lesson taught us by the history of ancient Israel is this: the path of obedience is the path of safety and happiness also. When God’s people followed where He led, and did what He commanded, then were their hearts filled with joy, and their harps tuned to glad songs of triumph; but when the Israelites turned aside to paths of disobedience, sorrow followed close upon sin; they hung their harps on the willows, and, exiles from their beautiful land, they wept when they remembered the blessings which would still have been theirs, had they not forsaken their God!”
[B] A. L. O. E. remembers attending, many years ago, exactly such an exhibition at the house of a friend, a model of the Tabernacle made by a lady and her children for some charitable purpose.
The birthday of the twins had arrived; but the sun rises late on the twenty-fourth of December, and Dora was up, dressing by candlelight, long before his first beams shone on the sheet of pure white snow which had fallen during the night. It might be supposed that Dora’s thoughts would be on the words of advice which she had heard on the previous night; but though these words had made some impression at the time, it was by no means upon them that the girl’s mind was running when she awoke in the morning. Dora was thinking of her embroidery work—that work of which she had been so proud, that work which had cost her so dear. Nothing that Miss Clare had said dwelt so much on the memory of her niece as the simple observation, “It wants a little more scarlet, I think.”
For on the mantelpiece of the room now occupied by Dora, there chanced to stand a glass bottle, corked and labelled; and by the light of her candle Dora had noticed that “SCARLET INK” was printed upon the label. The sight of that little bottle had roused in the mind of the girl new hopes, and again turned her energies into the channel of work.