No. 25. Little Maud, five years old, was sitting on the floor, and trying to stitch like her mother. Suddenly looking up, after a long silence, she said, like one familiar with the gossip of the tea-table and the quilting-frame, "Mamma, I was thinking God must be getting quite along in years!" Of course, the poor little thing had never been so far indoctrinated, as to understand that, with God, a thousand years are as one day, or a watch in the night, and one day as a thousand years, with no past, and no future, but one everlasting present.
No. 26. Another little woman, being asked by her Sunday-school teacher, "What did the Israelites do after passing through the Red Sea?" answered, "I don't know, ma'am, but I guess they dried themselves." And why not, pray? What would be more likely?
No. 27. And here we have one exceedingly jealous for the Lord. A little boy, who, whenever he went out to play, was plagued and pestered by a little girl somewhat older--who squinted awfully, and was, it must be acknowledged, absolutely frightful--on being asked why he was always so _ugly_ to Susie Bates, since God made Susie Bates as well as him, exclaimed, "O, Nurse Thompson, ain't you ashamed to talk in that way about the good Lord?"
Will you tell me that child did not reason? or that, _as_ a child, he was irreverent, because he would not charge God foolishly, nor hold the Great Workman answerable for such workmanship?
No. 28. And this brings to mind the following incident: Some years ago my own little boy went, with his brother Robert, on a trip to the Islands. After awhile, he was caught making the most horrible faces at another little boy, somewhat older, who sat in the stern of the boat a long way off, but fronting them. Brother Robert interfered, and asked what possessed my little fellow--a good-natured, pleasant boy, as ever lived. "Why, don't you see? He's making faces at me all the time," said Pepper-pot. Upon further inquiry, it turned out that the strange boy was epileptic, or troubled with St. Vitus' dance, and all the faces he had been making were involuntary. Of course, it never entered the head of our little one that the faces he saw were God's work, or he would have lowered his voice to a whisper, as he always did in the Sabbath-school, when he asked about God.