"Boys, your Superintendent tells me you went fishing last Sunday. All
but little JOHNNY, here."

"You didn't go, did you, JOHNNY?" I said.

"No, sir."

"That was right. Though this boy is the youngest among you," I
continued, "you will now learn from his lips words of good counsel,
which I hope you will profit by."

I lifted him up on the seat beside me, and smoothed his auburn ringlets.

"Now, JOHNNY, I want you to tell your teacher, and these wicked boys,
why you didn't go fishing with them last Sunday. Speak up loud, now. It
was because it was very wicked, and you had rather come to the Sunday
School. Wasn't it?"

"No, sir, it was 'cos I couldn't find no worms for bait."

Somehow or other these good boys always turn out humbugs.


It is hardly good taste to introduce anything of a pathetic nature in an
article intended to be humorous, but the following displays such
infinite depth of tenderness, fortified by strength of mind, that I
cannot forbear. Although it occurred when I was quite young, it is
firmly impressed on my memory:

The autumn winds sighed drearily through the leafless trees, as the