r
thoughts, and she began at once to consider what she should do to amuse
the child. It had been a primary principle with those who constructed
this female educator, that the chief end of a primary teacher was to
amuse the children placed under her charge.

This precept had been drilled into Miss Stone, and nothing less than a
charge of dynamite could have dislodged it.

She was taught that it was little less than wicked to impose tasks upon
young shoulders; that the "pretty little birdies" (this always said
with a smile) "enjoyed themselves, hopping about in God's blessed
sunlight, and that it was Nature's way to have her children happy."

"Happiness," in this case, seemed to mean doing nothing, but simply
being amused--a definition that finds general recognition among many,
there being those who dream of heaven as a place where they can be as
everlastingly lazy as they choose, through all eternity, with the
celestial choirs forever tooting soft music in the distance, and
streams of milk and honey flowing perpetually to their lips, all for
their amusement and delectation. Perhaps this last is the correct
idea. It might as well be confessed that on this point we are not well
posted in this world, though many profess to be. The Father will show
us this some day, as he will all else, but till then we can wait.

But, be the employment or enjoyment of heaven what it may, it is
evident that in this world a man or a child has something to do besides
being amused. We are all born destined for work, rich and poor alike.
It is our reasonable service, and the best thing we can do is to fit
ourselves for the task, from the very first. Not that our work shall
be mere drudgery, though it may be that and nothing more, and, even so,
be better than idleness or being amused; but it is the fate of every
soul born on earth to be called upon constantly to do things which it
had rather not do, just then, anyhow, and whenever such a condition
exists, work is the word that describes what has to be done. It is the
business of life to work. The Book has it that, "The Father worketh
hitherto." Even the new version has failed to reveal the phrase, "The
Father is amused," and the Master, when a boy, declared that he must
attend to the "business" that lay waiting for him.

But the pedagogic preceptors of Miss Stone did not draw their system of
education from so old a book as the one just referred to. It is
perhaps true, also, that Ge