nday school, her influence cannot be for the best if her everyday
life is wasted in society and unworthy amusements. The father's praise
of the Bible loses its gilt edge when the boy sees him bound up in the
Sunday paper for two hours, without ever finding time to read the
Scriptures.

"Let us all, therefore, look at this whole matter seriously. We may
each have a part in this training, this cultivating, this producing of
better minds, better hands and cleaner lives, but after all, mothers,
the great responsibility is yours, for it is into your hands that God
has placed the children, these innocent little ones who are a type of
heaven itself."

THE HOLLOW TREE
--Decision Day
--Honesty

A Figure of the Deceitful Life--The True Test of Character.

THE LESSON--That stability or weakness of character are revealed
when the supreme test comes.

This lesson from nature is planned to impress the truth that we must
be worthy "through and through" if we are to endure the test of
character which comes to every life.

~~The Talk.~~

"I want every one of you to stop looking at me and to take a good look
at the wood out of which the pew ahead of you is made. [If necessary,
revise the following sentences to meet your immediate conditions.]
You will notice that the pew is made up of a good many pieces of oak
fastened together so nicely that you can hardly tell where they are
joined. And so it is with all this other furniture, and with the
tables and the chairs and the bookcases in your homes and everywhere
else. A great many fine trees must be cut down every day to furnish
the wood from which all the things are made. The furniture
manufacturers buy the wood in the form of heavy lumber. The companies
which sell this lumber to the furniture factories send their expert
tree buyers into the forests to pick out the trees which will make the
best lumber. These tree experts go into the forests and select the
trees that they want, and leave all the others standing.

"One day a tree buyer, after examining an oak grove, told the owner
that he would pay him a certain amount of money for a specified number
of trees, and at the same time he pointed out the trees which he
wanted.

"'But,' said the owner of the forest, 'you have overlooked one of the
nicest-looking trees of them all. Don't you want this one?' [Draw
outlines of tree, Fig. 114.]

[Illustration: Fig. 114]

"'No,' replied the buyer, 'I can't use that tree.