Boys are funny sometimes, but girls are more dignified for their age.
Boys are rude, but girls are polite and lady-like. It is a pity boys
are not lady-like too. Once I knew a boy, a very little boy, and he
had a pair of boots. Real boots,--the first he ever had. One night
when his father came home, he found Jimmy sitting on the stairs in the
hall. The boots were outside the parlor door,--against the wall. "What
are you doing here, Giant Grimm?" said his father. (His father called
him "Giant Grimm," sometimes; for fun, I suppose.) "I'm seein' how my
boots 'ud look if they was stood outside the door at a hotel to be
cleaned," said Jimmy. He could not speak very plain, so I have not
written it plain.
GRACE EVANS MORRIS.'"
"Very good, little girl," said Aunt Faith, drawing her youngest child
to her side, and signing to Hugh to go on in order to divert attention
from her; "I didn't know you could write so well."
"THE OHIO CAPTAIN,"
read Hugh.
"When the war for the Union broke out, I had just completed my studies
and entered the ministry. My intention had been to enter upon my new
duties in a little village not far from my home, but as the excitement
spread through the country, and the young men left their fields, their
workshops, and their homes, to join the army, I could not overcome my
desire to go with them. I could not sleep, through many exciting
weeks; in imagination I saw this one, and that one, friends that I
knew, cold in death, or lying wounded alone in the night. I seemed to
walk through crowded hospitals and to hear the 'ping' of the balls; I
felt that if ever there was a place where the gospel words were
needed, it was after the battle, when men were left with the awful
shadow of death hanging over them. My youth and inexperience would be
obstacles in the well-regulated quiet village, but in the army might
they not be overlooked, if accompanied by willing hands and heart? In
the great haste, in the great excitement, in the great agony, might
not the great tidings be delivered acceptably even by an inexperienced
messenger? Thus I thought, and soon after the battle of Bull Run, I
obtained an appointment as chaplain, joined the army, and remained
with it until the close of the war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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