much as he has, like little Eva, who taught Uncle Tom. Let him
remember that the selfish and the lazy cannot be truly happy; that
selfishness is its own punishment in the end; that no children and
no men are truly happy or truly good who do not obey the words of
the noble-minded Henry on his death-bed--

"Be useful, and love one another"




THE MIGHTY DEEDS OF ABC.

A LETTER TO A LITTLE BOY FROM HIS AUNT.


MY DEAR FRANK: I was much pleased with your writing me a letter. If
you were to take a piece of paper, and do up some sugar plums in it,
and send it to me, I should eat up the sugar plums, and then there
would be nothing left but the piece of white paper; but if you take
a piece of paper, and mark on it with a pen some crooked and some
straight, some round and some long strokes, they tell me, though
they make no noise, that you love me, and they seem just like little
messengers from you to me, all with something to tell me of my dear
little Frank.

Besides, after these messengers have spoken once, there they stand
ready to speak again as soon as I only look at them, and tell me the
same pleasant story the second time that they did the first.