“Are you sure it is not mere gossip?” “Quite sure. To be gossip, a thing must go through two mouths at least, and I had it first-mouth. I tell it you because I think it worth your knowing.” The next Sunday morning, there lay the lady as usual, only her novel was a red one. When the parson went into the pulpit, he cast one glance on the gallery to his right, then spoke thus:-- “My friends, I will follow the example of our Lord, and speak to you to-day in a parable. The Lord said there are things better spoken in parables, because of the eyes that will not see, and the ears that will not hear. “There was once a mother left alone with her little boy--the only creature in the world or out of it that she cared for. She was a good mother to him, as good a mother as you can think, never overbearing or unkind. She never thought of herself, but always of the desire of her heart, the apple of her eye, her son born of her own body. It was not because of any return he could make her that she loved him. It was not to make him feel how good she was, that she did everything for him. It was not to give him reasons for loving _her_, but because she loved _him_, and because he needed her. He was a delicate child, requiring every care she could lavish upon him, and she did lavish it. Oh, how she loved him! She would sit with the child on her lap from morning till night, gazing on him; she always went to sleep with him in her bosom--as close to her as ever he could lie. When she woke in the dark night, her first movement was to strain him closer, her next to listen if he was breathing--for he might have died and been lost! When he looked up at her with eyes of satisfaction, she felt all her care repaid. “The years went on, and the child grew, and the mother loved him more and more. But he did not love her as she loved him. He soon began to care for the things she gave him, but he did not learn to love the mother who gave them. Now the whole good of things is to be the messengers of love--to carry love from the one heart to the other heart; and when these messengers are fetched instead of sent, grasped at, that is, by a greedy, ungiving hand, they never reach the heart, but block up the path of love, and divide heart from heart; so that the greedy heart forgets the love of the giving heart more and more, and all by the things it gives. That is the way generosity fares with the ungenerous. The boy would be very pleasant to his mother so long as he thought to get something from her; but when he had got what he wanted, he would forget her until he wanted something more.