am Hale! Come on, William, we're
going to have a ride on the Circular Railway. Come with us?" "Yes, if my
mother is willing. I will run and ask her," replied William. "O, O! so
you must run and ask your _ma_. Great baby, run along to your ma! Ain't
you ashamed? I didn't ask my mother." "Nor I." "Nor I," added half a
dozen voices. "Be a man, William," cried the first voice,--"come along
with us, if you don't want to be called a coward as long as you live.
Don't you see we are all waiting?"

William was standing with one foot advanced, and his hand firmly
clenched, in the midst of the group, with flushed brow, flashing eye,
compressed lip, and changing cheek, all showing how the epithet _coward_
rankled in his breast. It was doubted, for a moment, whether he would
have the true bravery to be called a coward rather than do wrong. But,
with a voice trembling with emotion, he replied, "I _will not_ go
without I ask my mother; and I am no coward either. I promised her I
would not go from the house without permission, and I _should_ be a
base coward, if I were to tell her a wicked lie."

In the evening, William was walking in the parlor, among the crowd, with
his mother, a Southern lady, of gentle, polished manners, who looked
with pride on her graceful boy, whose fine face was fairly radiant with
animation and intelligence. Well might she be proud of such a son, who
could dare to do right, when all were tempting him to do wrong.

_Cheerful Obedience, Sullen Obedience, and Disobedience._

When children are away from home, they are bound to obey those to whose
care their parents have entrusted them. Three boys, Robert, George, and
Alfred, went to spend a week with a gentleman, who took them to be
agreeable, well-behaved boys. There was a great pond near his house,
with a flood-gate, where the water ran out. It was cold weather, and the
pond was frozen over; but the gentleman knew that the ice was very thin
near the flood-gate. The first morning after they came, he told them
they might go and slide on the pond, if they would not go near the
flood-gate. Soon after they were gone, he followed them to see that they
were safe. When he got there, he found Robert sliding in the very place
where he had told him not to go. This was disobedience outright. George
was walking sullenly by the side of the pond, not so much as sliding at
all, because he had been forbidden to venture on the dangerous part.
This was _sullen obedience_; which