he could not come again to her.

"O!" said the child, "I am not crying because he has gone to heaven, but
because I told that lie about him; because he got the punishment which
belonged to me."

For a long time she refused to be comforted.

Several years have passed. Bessie is now of woman's size; but the
remembrance of that lie yet stings her soul to the quick. It took less
than one minute to utter, but many years have not effaced the sorrow and
shame which followed it.

* * * * *

A mother sat with her youngest daughter, a sprightly child, five years
of age, enjoying an afternoon chit-chat with a few friends, when a
little girl, a playmate of the daughter of Mrs. P., came running into
the sitting-room, and cried,--

"Where is Jane? I've got something for her."

"She is out," said the mother.

"What have you got? Show it to me," eagerly exclaimed Hannah, the
mother's favourite. "I'll give it to her."

The little girl handed Hannah a bouquet of flowers, which she had
gathered for Jane, and returned home with the faith that her kindness
had not been misapplied. She had scarcely left the room, when Hannah,
standing by her mother's chair, talking to herself, said, loud enough to
be heard across the room,--

"I like flowers--she often calls me Jane--she thinks I am Jane--I'm
going to keep this bouquet."

The mother made no objection to the soliloquy, and Hannah immediately
began to pick the leaves from the handsome rose, for the purpose of
making rose water. She had not completed her task when Jane bounded into
the room, and seeing Hannah with flowers, exclaimed,--

"I'm going to have a bouquet pretty soon. Sally Johnson said she would
bring me one this afternoon."

"But she won't," said Hannah.

"I'll go and see," returned Jane, tripping as she spoke towards the
front door.

"Here, Jane," said the mother, "Sally brought this bouquet for you, but
you were not in, and she gave it to Hannah."

The tears started in Jane's eyes. She felt that she had been robbed, and
she knew that Hannah had been preferred to her. Hannah had been
encouraged in a deliberate falsehood and in deception towards her
sister. Many a time since has that mother felt herself obliged to punish
her daughter for prevarications, and often has she been heard to say
that she wondered where so small a child learned so much deceit.

This is a small affair at best, some may say; but do not

"Large streams