One great beauty of the lessons which our school readers taught was the directness and certainty and promptness of the payment that came as a reward of good conduct. Then, too, the recompense was in no way uncertain or ethereal, but was always paid in cash, or something just as material and good. Neither was any combination of circumstances too remote or troublesome or impossible to be brought about. Everything in the universe seemed always ready to conspire to reward virtue and punish vice. I well remember one story which thus clearly proved that good deeds must be rewarded, and that however great the trouble the payment would not be postponed even for a day. It seems that a good boy named Henry—I believe the book did not give his other name—started out one morning to walk about five miles away to do an errand for his sick father. I think it was his father, though it may possibly have been his mother or grandmother. Well, Henry had only got fairly started on his journey when he met a half-starved dog; and thereupon the boy shared with the dog the dinner that he was carrying in his little basket. Of course I know now that, however great his kindness, he could not have relieved the dog unless he had happened to be carrying his dinner in a little basket; but my childish mind was not subtle enough to comprehend it then. After relieving the dog, Henry went on his way with a lighter heart and a lighter basket. Soon he came upon a sick horse lying upon the ground. Henry feared that if he stayed to doctor the horse he would not get home until after dark; but this made no sort of difference to him, so he pulled some grass and took it to the horse, and then went to the river and got some water in his hat (it must have been a Panama) and gave this to the horse to drink, and having done his duty went on his way. He had gone only a short distance farther when he saw a blind man standing in a pond of water. (How the blind man got into the pond of water the story does not tell,—the business of the story was not getting him in but getting him out.) Thereupon little Henry waded into the pond and led the blind man to the shore. Any other boy would simply have called out to the man, and let him come ashore himself. Of course, if Henry had been a bad boy, and his name had been Tom, he would have been found leading the blind man into the pond instead of out, and then of course he (Tom) would have taken pneumonia and died.