. Ten years after the sister sat weeping
again by that boy's side. He was in chains, sentenced to be hanged for
shooting a farmer who was hunting in a neighbor's field. They were
waiting for the awful procession to knock at the cell door. "Sister," he
said, "do you remember the nest of rabbits ten years ago; how you begged
and prayed, and how I ridiculed? I verily believe that from that day God
forsook me, and left me to follow my own inclinations. If I had yielded
to your tears then, you and I would not be weeping these bitter tears
now."

You see how it is that boys who have no regard for the suffering, or the
preservation of the life of animals are likely to inflict pain and even
to take the lives of people.

But I want to call your attention to another respect in which we are
like the animals, or perhaps, more correctly, in which the animals are
like us. The forms of most all animals have some resemblance to each
other, and all are somewhat in form like man. If you take the bird, his
wings correspond to our arms, his legs and feet are somewhat like ours,
only his toes are longer, and the nails are slightly different in form.
If you will take the horse you will see that his neck is longer than
ours, that his front legs correspond to our arms, and if you take your
fingers and press them together you will see how, if you were to study
the anatomy of the horse's foot carefully, it resembles the bones in
our hands, and the bony foot of the horse corresponds to the nails on
the ends of our fingers, only that in the case of the horse the nails
are all in one, forming the hoof, to which the blacksmith nails the
shoe. The horse's hoof, however, is not solid as you might think, but
only a shell, the same as the nails on the ends of our fingers.

[Illustration: Birds.]

Now if you were to take the turtle that lives in this shell or house you
would find that he also has four legs, the front legs corresponding to
our arms, and his hind legs corresponding to our legs and feet. On the
end of each of his feet he has nails, the same as you and I have at the
extremities of our hands and feet. But I am sure you would say that the
turtle was very much unlike us, in that he has such a hard shell of a
house which he carries about with him. But if you will feel of your
hands you will discover that you have bones inside of your hands. So you
have bones in your arms and all through your body. These bones of your
body are covered with fl