CHILDREN’S PAGE.

“TESSIE.”

BY A. WESTON W.

“Dunno, miss.”

“But, Tessie, you must know where you got it.”

“’Deed, miss, I dunno no more’n de dade. I nebber tuk it none: it jes’ comed.”

“Just came! O Tessie, Tessie! are you never going to be good?”

“I is good, miss,” said the little colored girl, who could not seem to learn how very wicked it is to take other people’s property, and who had never been taught it is wrong to tell an untruth.

“Yes, Tessie, you are good about some things,” I said; “but you are not good when you take things out of my room, as you did last night.”

“Deed, miss, I nebber tuk it none: it jes’ comed.”

“Tessie,” I said solemnly, “what will you do when God asks you about this.”

“I jes’ say I dunno nuffin’ ’tall ’bout it.”

“But you can’t tell a lie about it to God, for he saw you take it.”

“Reckon ye’re out dar, ’cause it were dark as Egyp,” said Tessie, grinning at me, and showing a row of white teeth and a pair of large black eyes.

“But, Tessie,” I said, “that makes no difference; God sees you all the time, and knows what you do in the dark, just as well as what you do when it is light.”

The girl’s expression changed, and she looked about her stealthily, as though in some dark corner she expected to see some one looking at her. Failing in that, she looked back at me, and said:

“’Tain’t wurth while ter vex ’im.”

“No, Tessie,” I said, “it’s not right to vex any one who has been kind to us; and God does more for us than any earthly friends we have.”

“Reckon ef I puts it back in de dark agin, he’ll see it?”

“Yes, Tessie, God will see you, whether you put it back at night, or in the day.”

“Den it’ll be all right?”

“If you make up your mind never to take again what does not belong to you.”

“S’posen His head’s turned round the wrong way, an’ He don’t see me?”

“God’s head is never turned round, Tessie; it is always towards us.”

That evening I watched Tessie to see the effect of our conversation, and soon after dark I discovered her on her way to my room, with the little thermometer she had taken from it the night before.

After that, there seemed to be a decided change in Tessie, which pleased me very much; but I was even more pleased when, one day, I found her with a bottle of cologne in her hand, and heard what she was saying.

“I reckon it smells kind o’ good, an’ I reckon I’d like ter hab it; but de good God’s a-lookin’ on, an’ he moight ax ’bout it some day.”

My little friends, would it not be well if we could take that as a sort of watch-word—“He might ask about it some day”? Do we not all do little things quietly, in a kind of slurring way, as if they wouldn’t count? And yet we would be ashamed to be asked about them. Remember that everything counts, and that “He might ask about it some day.”—Well-Spring.