Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

The scale of

meet and escort the luckless caravan. fortune was at once turned. The robbers were overpowered; many of them were killed, and the rest were taken prisoners. These last were securely bound with cords, and carried to Acre to be given as presents to the pacha.*

Among the Arabs who had escaped death was a man named Hassan. He had been wounded during the fight by a bullet in the arm; but as his wound was not mortal, the Turks placed him upon the back of a camel, and carried him away with the others. Hassan was the possessor of a very fine horse, which also fell into the hands of the conquerors.

The evening before they expected to reach Acre, the Turks and their prisoners were encamped in a hilly country. Hassan lay by the side of one of the tents, his feet bound together by a leathern thong. Kept awake by the pain of his wound, he heard the neighing of his horse; which, as is the custom in the East, passed the night in the open air, near the tents, with his legs fastened together, so that he could not move. He recognised the voice of his faithful companion, and, unable to resist the desire to see and caress him once more, he slowly and painfully crawled along upon his hands and knees, till he reached the spot were the horse stood.

My poor friend," said he, "what will become of you in the hands of the Turks? They will shut you up in close and unwholesome stables with the horses of a pacha. My wife and children will no longer bring you camels' milk to drink, or give you barley to eat in the hollow of their hands. You will no

Pronounced pa-shaw'.

longer skim over the desert with the fleetness of the wind. You will no longer bathe in the refreshing waters of the Jordan, the foam of which is not whiter than thy silken skin. Go back to the tent of thy master. Tell my wife that she will never see her husband more; and lick the hands of my children with your tongue in token of a father's love."

While thus speaking, Hassan had gnawed away with his teeth the thong of goat-skin with which the legs of his horse had been fastened together, and the noble animal stood free. But the faithful and intelligent creature, seeing his master wounded and motionless at his feet, seemed instinctively to comprehend what no language could have communicated to him. He stooped his head, and grasping with his teeth the leathern girdle which encircled his master's waist, ran off with him in his mouth at full gallop. He thus bore him over many a weary league of mountain and plain, until his desert home was reached. Then, gently depositing his beloved master by the side of his wondering wife and children, he fell himself, and died from exhaustion.

All the tribe to which Hassan belonged wept over the body of the faithful steed; and more than one Arab poet has commemorated in song his sagacity and his self-sacrificing devotion.

GOLD DUST.

FIRST, I am going to write to my mother," said Thomas, with his eye on the clock, parcelling out Wednesday afternoon; "next, I'll have two hours'

play; then I'll come in and study my algebra lesson; after supper, I'll go and hear that man lecture on Africa." Did he do all this? for boys as well as men make capital plans, which they do not always execute.

No sooner said than Tom took his writing materials, and sat down to write. There was a great hurrah in the street, but he never got up to look out. He went for the Dictionary to learn how a word was spelled. "Why need you care, when you are only writing home?" asked one of Tom's cousins, who was waiting for him. "I always care," answered Tom. The letter was finished, well done for a boy of his age, in about three-quarters of an hour, and he was ready to be off. And so the afternoon was filled up as promptly as that letter was filled up. That is a specimen of Tom.

"That boy knows how to take care of his gold dust," said his uncle often to himself, and sometimes aloud.

Tom went to college, and every account they heard of him stated that he was going on, laying a solid foundation for the future.

[ocr errors]

Certainly," said his uncle, "certainly. That boy, I tell you, knows how to take care of his gold dust."

"Gold dust!" where did Tom get gold dust? He was a poor boy. He never was a miner. Where did he get gold dust? Ah he had the seconds and the minutes, and these are the gold dust of time -specks and particles of time, which boys, and girls, and grown-up people are so apt to waste and throw

away.

Tom knew their value. His deceased father,

a poor minister, had taught him that every speck and particle of time was worth more than gold; and his son took care of them, as if they were. He never spent them foolishly.

It is a mistake to suppose that the miners and the mints have all the gold dust. You, my young friends, have some, some of infinitely greater value than the richest mines can yield. God does not give it to you in gold bars, a day, a month, a year long,nobody can be trusted with so much time all at once; but he wisely deals it out in seconds and minutes, so that you can make the most of it. If you are robbed of one, or lose it, the loss is comparatively small. It can never, to be sure, be made up,-the whole world cannot make up for a minute lost; but if it teach you to be thoughtful and careful of the rest, you will by-and-by be rich with the golden years of a useful and happy life.

Reader! take care of your "gold dust."

THE THREE STEPS.

"IF I do right, it is nobody's business how I feel," said Arthur.

"But you ought to think right," said his brother; thinking wrong is just as bad as doing wrong."

[ocr errors]

No, no," cried Arthur; "shooting a man, and only wanting to shoot him, I take to be very differentvery different indeed."

"Yes, different," said his brother; "but one commonly grows out of the other; so they have the same root."

"I don't understand you," said Arthur.

"I may

hate any one as much as I please; but if I treat him well, it is nobody's business but my own; nobody can complain."

"Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer,' the Bible says."

"Nobody is hung for his feelings," said Arthur. The boys were not likely to convince each other, therefore we took up the thread of their talk; and as other boys may be interested, and we hope profited, we will give it to them.

There are commonly three steps in guilt. Have you ever read the history of Joseph in the Bible? I daresay you are familiar with it. clearly each of these three steps.

It illustrates very

Joseph's brothers,

The first is wrong feelings. you know, were envious of him; they were jealous of their father's partiality for him; and, lovely as he was, the Bible says, "They hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him." There might still have been kind treatment at home, and no one might have seen by their manner the feelings which lurked in their hearts; but their hearts had gone astray, and, on the principles of God's law, they had committed sin. There was guilt,-not of action, indeed, but of feeling. And the worst of it is, the wrong does not usually stop here. This is the danger.

It takes the next, the second step-meaning to do wrong, planning to do wrong. A great many things may hinder a person from carrying out his wicked feelings. The providence of God may restrain him from inflicting injury, however he may wish to do it.

Did Joseph's brethren lay plans to do him

« AnteriorContinuar »