"My lads," quoth the father, "come forth to the garden, and merrily work in the glow of the sun; to loiter about is a crime beyond pardon, when there's so much hoeing that has to be done! It pains me to mark that you'd fain be retreating away from the hoes and such weapons as these; you're diligent, though, when the time comes for eating the turnips and lettuce and cabbage and peas." 

 "Alas," sigh the boys, "that our father must work us like galley slaves, thus, at the hoe and the spade! More fortunate lads all have gone to the circus, they revel in peanuts and pink lemonade! Oh, what is the profit of pruning and trimming, and sowing the radish, and planting the yam, when everyone knows there is excellent swimming two miles up the creek at the foot of the dam? 

 "Sail in!" cries the parent, "the daytime is speeding, the night will be here in the space of three shakes! Oh, this is the season for digging and seeding, for doing great deeds with the long-handled rakes! Consider the maxims of Franklin, the printer, the rede of the prophets, of poets who sing; in comfort they live through the stress of the winter, who toil like the ants or the bees in the spring!" 

 "For maxims and proverbs it's little we're wishing," the boys mutter low, as they wearily delve; "the neighbor boy says there is elegant fishing—he went after catfish and came home with twelve. We have to stay here doing labors that cramp us, while others are pulling out fish by the pound! They're playing baseball every day on the campus, and down in the grove there's a merry-go-round!" 

 Alack! If the parents could see with the vision of boys and if boys used the eyes of their sires, then fun would be labor, with rapture elysian, and toil would be play, to the music of lyres! 

 

 

 SUNDAY 

 Now the day is fading slowly and the week is near its close; comes the Sabbath, calm and holy, with its quiet and repose; then the wheels no more are driven, and the noise no longer swells and like whisperings of heaven, sound the far-off Sabbath bells. Are we striving, are we reaching, for the life serene and sweet? Not by platitudes and preaching, not by praying on the street, but by doing deeds of kindness, comforting some heart that's sore, helping those who grope in blindness, giving something from our store. If it be our strong endeavor to make others' lives less hard, then forever and forever Sunday brings a rich reward. 

 Prev. P 57/60 next