But there is something far worse than this. When the mother bird has made her nest, and sat long days and nights on her eggs, and heard the little ones chirp within, and helped them to break the thin shell, and felt their little warm bodies cuddling themselves among her soft feathers, and seen their yellow beaks open to ask her for the food that it gives such joy to her affectionate heart to put into them; oh, THEN, can you turn all her honest happiness into misery and mourning, and kill those baby-birds with a miserable death, by cold and hunger, if not by other tortures. If ever you have done this, pray to the Lord God to forgive your sin, for Jesus Christ's sake. Do you think He will forgive you? Yes, you say, because he is very merciful. Indeed he is and for that very reason he hates cruelty: but while you look to the Lord's mercy for pardon, you must steadily resolve to offend no more by doing what he hates; else you only mock him. I do not myself understand how anybody can bear to hurt little birds, they are such endearing creatures; but I have seen it with my own eyes, and am obliged to believe it. Bad example will go a great way. Boys, and men too, will do what they see others do, without stopping to think of the great truth that God sees them too. But, then, good example goes far also; and the person who is careful not to do wrong has the comfort of knowing that he is showing others the right way. While I write this little book, I am praying to the Lord to make it the means of persuading many young readers to be merciful; and that their good example will persuade many more, who may not see the book; and so good will be done, greater than you now think.