African Americans -- Education -- Juvenile fiction; Sunday school literature
So Jimmy, nothing loth, started with Tom, and brought him round the
corner of the house to where the wagon from the station was just
depositing its load.
“Ah, Tom,” said Mr. Sutherland as he came up, “I was just about sending
for you. You are getting to be of considerable importance. There’s
a great heavy bundle addressed to you, which came by express this
morning, and here I have a letter which appears to belong to it.”
“It’s books, Tom, I know,” said Jimmy, pounding the bundle with his
hand; “unfasten it, won’t you?”
“Wait a minute,” replied Tom, “until I see what Miss Mason says.”
So carefully cutting the end of the envelope (Miss Mason’s letters were
never roughly handled), he drew the letter out and glanced over the
contents.
“Jimmy,” he said, as he finished and turned toward the boy with a
very touched face, “I think you must read this letter to pay you for
bringing me such good news.” So he gave him the precious words.
Jimmy knew what a treat that was, and that there was not another person
on the place to whom Tom would have shown it, so he thanked him
earnestly as he took it.
“My dear Tom,” she wrote, “I am about sending you a bundle of books
for your Sunday-school; so I thought I would forward a letter with
them, for fear you would be too much surprised. I wrote, not long
ago, to some of my Northern friends, and among other things I told
them of your work for Jesus on the Sutherland Plantation. In answer
to my letter the books I send you came. How gladly I forward them you
can easily imagine. I have been thinking for a long time how much
you needed them, and how I should like to send you a bundle. Well,
here they are then, and I feel sure you will not forget to thank ‘the
Giver of every good and perfect gift,’ for it is he who sent them.
“I opened the bundle to put in two or three lesson-books, and I
have marked in the arithmetic and grammar the lessons of your class
for the next month. I hope Jimmy is well, and that your work is
progressing. Martha says, ‘Oh, Miss Mason, I am so glad for Tom!’ and
I can tell you there is another one who is glad, and that is Tom’s
old teacher,
“R. MASON.”
“Now, Jimmy,” said Tom as the boy finished and handed him back the
letter with a pleased smile, “come with me and we will unpack it.”
“You don’t want me, Tom, I am sure,” replied Jimmy, holding back
reluctantly.
“Don’t want my old school-mate to help me unpack Miss Mason’s present!
Of course I do! Come, I am in a hurry to see those precious books.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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