to give great gifts
to the poor and hungry, who has been found at home miserably deficient
in domestic virtues. Dear children, cultivate these. You have, very few
of you, opportunities for great sacrifices. They occur rarely in real
life, and it would be well if the relations of fictitious life abounded
less in them; but you may, all of you, find occasions to speak a gentle
word, to give a kind smile, to resign a pursuit which annoys or vexes
another, to cure a bad habit, to give up a desired pleasure. You may,
all of you, practice the injunction, to live not unto yourselves. Fred,
I say, found it a hard matter to carry out Emilie's plan towards Joe
White, who came back from home more evilly disposed than ever, and all
the boys agreed he was a perfect nuisance.

"I would try and make him loveable." Those words of Emilie's often
recurred to Fred as he heard the boys say how they disliked Joe White
worse and worse. So Fred tried first by going up to him very gravely one
day, and saying how they all disliked him, and how he hoped he would
mend; but that did not do at all. Fred found the twine of his kite all
entangled next day, and John said he saw White playing with it soon
after Fred had spoken to him.

"I'd go and serve him out; just you go and tangle his twine, and see how
he likes it," said John.

"I will--but no! I won't," Bald Fred, "that's evil for evil, and that is
what I am not going to do. I mean to leave that plan off."

An opportunity soon occurred for returning good for evil Miss Barton had
a donkey, and this donkey, whose proper abode was the paddock, sometimes
broke bounds, and regaled itself on the plants in the young gentlemen's
gardens, in a manner highly provoking to those who had any taste for
flowers. If Joe White had any love for anything, it was for flowers.
Now, there is something so pure and beautiful in flowers; called by that
good philanthropist Wilberforce, the "smiles of God," that I think there
must be a little tender spot in that heart which truly loves flowers.
Joe tended his as a parent would a child. His garden was his child, and
certainly it did his culture credit. Fred liked a garden too, and these
boys' gardens were side by side. They were the admiration of the whole
family, so neatly raked, so free from stones or weeds, so gay with
flowers of the best kind. They were rival gardens, but undoubtedly
White's was in the best order. John and Fred always went home on a
Saturday, as Mr.