to be very sober and attentive; and
so she went and put on her garden bonnet, and came out.

The garden was not large, it extended back to some high rocky
precipices, where the boys used sometimes to climb up for play.

"I am afraid," said Madam Rachel, as she sauntered along the walk, the
children around her, "that you will not like the verse that I am going
to talk with you about this evening, very well, when you first hear it."

"What is it mother?" said Dwight.

"'And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.'"

"What does _quickened_ mean?" asked David.

"Made alive, or brought to life. _Quick_ means _alive_, sometimes; as
for instance, the quick and the dead, means the living and the dead. And
so we say, 'cut to the quick,' that is, cut to the living flesh, where
it can feel."

"Once I read in a fable," said David, "of a horse being stung to the
quick."

"What, by a hornet?" said Dwight.

"No," said David, "by something the ass said."

"O, yes," said Madam Rachel, "that means it hurt his feelings. If a bee
should sting any body so that the sting should only go into the skin, it
would not hurt much; but if it should go in deep, so as to give great
pain, we should say it stung to the quick, that is, to the part which
has life and feeling. So I suppose that something that the ass said,
hurt the horse's feelings."

"What was it, David, that the ass said?" asked Dwight.

"Why--he said, I believe that the horse was proud, or something like
that."

"No matter about that fable now," said their mother; "you understand the
meaning of the verse. It was written to good men; it says that God gave
them life and feeling, when they _were_ dead in trespasses and sins. But
I must first tell you what _dead_ means."

"O, we know what '_dead_' means, well enough," said Dwight.

"Perhaps not exactly what it means here," said Madam Rachel.

"_Dead_ means here _insensible_."

"But I don't know what _insensible_ means," said Caleb.

"I will explain it to you," said she. "Once there were two boys who
quarreled in the recess at school; and the teacher decided that for
their punishment they should be publicly reproved before all the
scholars. So, after school, they were required to stand up in their
places, and listen to the reprimand. While they were standing, and the
teacher was telling them that they had done very wrong,--had indulged
bad passions, and displeased God, and destroyed their own happin