impression upon my young heart. In Carroll County, Ohio, not far from where
she was raised, there lived two families by the name of Long. The fathers
were brothers. Two boys of the two families used to trap for mink and other
fur-bearing animals during the winter season. As the fur of the mink at
that time brought a good price, the boys were more anxious to catch mink
than any other animal. One of the boys once found a mink in his cousin's
trap. When he told his mother what he had seen, she said, "Go back, take
the mink out of your cousin's trap, set the trap just as it was before, put
the mink into your own trap, and tell your cousin that you have caught a
mink; he will never know the difference."

The boy did as his mother advised, and the cousin never learned of the
deception until many years later. The boy who had stolen the mink went from
bad to worse until, during the outbreak of the Mormons, I think, he was
implicated in the murder of Colonel Davenport of Iowa. While on the
scaffold, he confessed that his first step downward was in taking the mink
out of his cousin's trap and telling a falsehood about it. God's Word was
verified: "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."

Parents, be careful what example you set before your children. If you set a
wrong example, they may rise up and curse you: but if you teach them the
good and right way, they will "rise up and call you blessed." If when
parents see one of their children entering upon his first temptation to
take things that do not belong to him, they would do their duty, there
would be more honest children today. "Train up a child in the way he
should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."

From my earliest childhood I liked poetry and could readily commit it to
memory. I often learned poems that were quite difficult for one of my age.
The beautiful poems I learned were like rays of sunshine on my pathway and