someone's pocket when the owner was not on his guard.

Poor little John!--such a favorite! so gifted, and yet so neglected! in
regard to high ideals and purposes in life, so ignorant! and so desirous
of that motherly love and interest that were ever denied him! He
endeavored to fill his life with other things; but in his day-dreams he
often pictured his mother, and wondered: "Was she like my aunt? Would
she take me and hold me in her arms while she smoothed my hair with her
hand? Would she bind my bruises? And would she sit by my bedside at
night and hold my hand in hers while telling me stories that she had
read?" "Oh, how would it all seem?" he would ask himself; and then,
remembering that such could never be, he would try to forget and be
happy. His mother was gone, he reasoned, and he must be content. It was
to his two little feathered friends alone that he confided his sorrows.

Had John's father remembered the determination that filled his soul on
the dark day of his wife's funeral, and had he continued to teach his
little son to pray and to serve God, how much better it might have been!
How much better might John have understood the difference between right
and wrong! In such a case, John's life's record might have been filled
with good and noble deeds, and his habits might have been clean and
wholesome.

As it was, because of his ignorance of right, he was laying a crumbling
foundation formed of evil motives and desires. And should he continue to
build, using similar material, his life's structure would be unsafe; it
would be momentarily in danger of falling. As Satan is ever waiting with
the needed supplies for a work of this kind, so he was ready to aid
little John. The card parties at which John and his father were often
present furnished John with much of his material.