"Some of you are thinking with yourselves now, '_We_ wouldn't do
like that! _We_ should be only too glad to get somebody that would
make us comfortable without any trouble on our parts!' Ah, there's the
rub! These children that won't go in, they're just like you: they won't
take any trouble about it. Why now here I am, sent to you with the very
message! and you fancy I am only talking, as you do so often, without
meaning anything! I am one of those who have been into the house, and
have found my father--oh, so grand! and so good to me! And I am come out
again to tell you it is so, and that if you will go in, you will have
the same kindness I have had. All the servants of the house even will
rejoice over you with music and dancing--so glad that you are come home.
Is it possible you will not take the trouble to go! There are certain
things required of you when you go: perhaps you are too lazy or too
dirty in your habits, to like doing them! I have known some refuse to
scrape their shoes, or rub them on the door-mat when they went in, and
then complain loudly that they were refused admittance. A fine house
would such make to their father, were they allowed to run in and out as
they pleased! such a house, in fact, as would very soon drive their
father himself out of it! for they would make it unfit for any decent
person to live in. A few months and they would have the grand beautiful
house as wretched and mean and dirty as the houses they live in now.
Such persons are those that keep grumbling that they are not rich. They
want to loaf about, and drink, and be a nuisance to everybody, like some
of the rich ones. They think it hard they should not be able to do just
as they please with everything that takes their fancy, when they would
do nothing but break and spoil it, and make it no good to anybody. Their
father, who can do whatever he sees fit, is not one to let such
disagreeable children work what mischief they like! He is a better
father than that would come to! A father who lets them be dirty and rude
just as they like, is one of the worst enemies of his children. And the
day is coming when, if he can't get them to mind him any other way, he
will put them where they will be ten times more miserable than ever they
were at the worst time of their lives, and make them mind. Out of the
same door whence came the messengers to ask them in, he will send dogs
and bears and lions and tigers and wild cats out upon them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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