Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/212

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

should, I spoze we should act like fools and lunaticks more'n half the time judged by Jupiter standards. Delight has everything to learn, you teach her that God is her best friend, more than father and mother, is with her all the time, and yet she musn't speak of Him only for a few minutes night and morning. Delight can't understand that, Tirzah Ann. And I can't, nuther," sez I, in a milder voice, for I see she looked mad. "Why," sez I, "when Thomas J. wuz little he used to talk to the Lord by the hour, tell Him all his little troubles and sorrows. I would hear him, but never interfered, thinkin' He wuz a better, safer friend than any other could be."

Sez Tamer, "It is a bad habit for a child to git into, talkin' so familiar with the Deity, and it should be stopped, in my opinion."

Sez I, "You let Cicero fill his mind with burglars and pirates all day long. Isn't the Divine One a better inmate for the soul than them pirates and enchanted elephants, Tamer Ann?"

She quailed quite a good deal, and I sez, "Jack is inclined to be devout, Tamer, if it isn't whipped out of him, he has got a religious mind."

"Religious mind!" sez she, laughin' in a onbelievin' way. "Hear that! that sounds religious, don't it?" Jack wuz yellin' pretty middlin' loud, I'll confess, out under the maples. But I sez, "I don't see anything aginst it in that, Tamer. I presume David yelled full as loud, or louder, when he wuz a child, and Job, too. I dare presume to say old Miss Job had her hands full with him, and let him go out and yell, and encouraged him in it to git him out of the tent, so she could rest her head and ears. Yellin' hain't nothin' criminal,