and next, all the buttons would be missing from the week's washing,
and the teacher was pretty sure to find that her own pupils were the
thieves. Miss Rice tells of one, amply supplied with every thing by
her parents, yet noted for her thefts. Indeed, sons and daughters
were alike trained to such practices. In 1843, Miss Fiske could not
keep a pin in her pin-cushion; little fingers took them as often as
she turned away, and lest she should tempt them to lie, she avoided
questioning them, unless her own eye had seen the theft. No wonder
she wrote, "I feel very weak, and were it not that Christ has loved
these souls, I should be discouraged; but he has loved them, and he
loves them still." If the pins were found with the pupils, the
answer was ready--"We found them," or, "You gave them to us;" and
nothing could be proved. But one summer evening, just before the
pupils were to pass through her room to their beds on the flat roof,
knowing that none of that color could be obtained elsewhere, the
teacher put six black pins in her cushion, and stepped out till they
had passed. As soon as they were gone, she found the pins gone too,
and at once called them back. She told them of her loss, but none
knew any thing about it. She showed them that no one else had been
there, and therefore they must know. Six pairs of little hands were
lifted up, as they said, "God knows we have not got them;" but this
only called forth the reply, "I think that God knows you have got
them," and she searched each one carefully, without finding them.
She then proposed to kneel down where they stood, and ask God to
show where they were, adding, "He may not see it best to show me
now, but he will do it some time." She laid the matter before the
Lord, and, just as they rose from their knees, remembered that she
had not examined their cloth caps. She now proposed to examine them,
and one pair of hands went right up to her cap. Of course she was
searched first, and there were the six pins, so nicely concealed in