ool girl.
The unaffected schoolgirl. Story of the proud girl. Moral courage.
The duellist. The three school-boys. George persuaded to throw the
snow-ball. What would have been real moral courage. The boy leaving
home, His mother's provisions for his comfort. The parting. His
father's counsel. His reflections in the stage-coach. He consecrates
himself to his Maker. . .347

THE CHILD AT HOME

CHAPTER I.

RESPONSIBILITY.

In large cities there are so many persons guilty of crimes, that it
is necessary to have a court sit every day to try those who are
accused of breaking the laws. This court is called the Police Court.
If you should go into the room where it is held, you would see the
constables bringing in one after another of miserable and wicked
creatures, and, after stating and proving their crimes, the judge
would command them to be led away to prison. They would look so
wretched that you would be shocked in seeing them.

One morning a poor woman came into the Police Court in Boston. Her
eyes were red with weeping, and she seemed to be borne down with
sorrow. Behind her followed two men, leading in her daughter.

"Here, sir," said a man to the judge, "is a girl who conducts so
badly that her mother cannot live with her, and she must be sent to
the House of Correction."

"My good woman," said the judge, "what is it that your daughter does
which renders it so uncomfortable to live with her?"

"Oh, sir," she replied, "it is hard for a mother to accuse her own
daughter, and to be the means of sending her to the prison. But she
conducts so as to destroy all the peace of my life. She has such a
temper, that she sometimes threatens to kill me, and does every thing
to make my life wretched."

The unhappy woman could say no more. Her heart seemed bursting with
grief, and she wept aloud. The heart of the judge was moved with pity,
and the bystanders could hardly refrain from weeping with this
afflicted mother. But there stood the hard-hearted girl, unmoved. She
looked upon the sorrows of her parent in sullen silence. She was so
hardened in sin, that she seemed perfectly insensible to pity or
affection. And yet she was miserable. Her countenance showed that
passion and malignity filled her heart, and that the fear of the
prison, to which she knew she must go, filled her with rage.

The judge turned from the afflicted mother, whose sobs filled the
room, and, asking a few questions of the witn