r. If
you were to take a piece of paper, and do up some sugar plums in it,
and send it to me, I should eat up the sugar plums, and then there
would be nothing left but the piece of white paper; but if you take
a piece of paper, and mark on it with a pen some crooked and some
straight, some round and some long strokes, they tell me, though
they make no noise, that you love me, and they seem just like little
messengers from you to me, all with something to tell me of my dear
little Frank.

Besides, after these messengers have spoken once, there they stand
ready to speak again as soon as I only look at them, and tell me the
same pleasant story the second time that they did the first.

If I were to put them away in a safe place for forty years, and then
look at them, when you were beginning to be an old man, these
crooked scratches of your pen would still talk to me of little
Frank, as he was when I held him in my lap, and we used to laugh,
and talk, and tell stories together.

Think, then, my dear Frank, how much better it is to be able to fill
a letter with these curious strokes to send to a friend than to have
bushels of sugar plums to send him.

Did you ever think what curious things these little letters are? You
know the great Bible that you love to look at so much, and to hear
father read from. All the wonderful things related in it are told by
twenty-six little letters.

It is they that tell you of the creation of the world, of the
beautiful garden called Eden in which Adam and Eve lived; they tell
you the sad story of their disobedience to God, and of their being
turned out of paradise.

Then they tell you all about the Israelites, or Jews, as we call
them. In the same book, these twenty-six letters place themselves a
little differently, and tell you the story of Joseph and his
brethren that you were so much pleased with when your father read it
to you, and that of David and Goliath, that you like so much.

Then these same wonderful story tellers relate to you the beautiful
history of Daniel; of that courageous, good man who chose rather to
be torn to pieces by wild beasts than not to pray every day to God,
and thank Him for His goodness; and how God preserved him in the
lion's den.

The wonderful story of Elijah they also tell you, and many others.

But last and most interesting and wonderful of all, my dear little
Frank, is the story of Jesus Christ and his friends called the
apostles.

These little