Read Harriet Beecher Stowe : Three Novels Online

Authors: Harriet Beecher Stowe

Tags: #test

Harriet Beecher Stowe : Three Novels (189 page)

BOOK: Harriet Beecher Stowe : Three Novels
13.41Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

 

Page 1084
with dainty care. She sat down by the child and began a movement towards undressing her.
"Shall I say my prayers to you," said Tina, "before I go to bed?"
"Certainly," said Miss Mehitable; "by all means."
"They are rather long," said the child, apologetically, "that is, if I say all that Harry does. Harry said mamma wanted us to say them all every night. It takes some time."
"O, by all means say all," said Miss Mehitable.
Tina kneeled down by her and put her hands in hers, and said the Lord's Prayer, and the psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd." She had a natural turn for elocution, this little one, and spoke her words with a grace and an apparent understanding not ordinary in childhood.
"There's a hymn, besides," she said. "It belongs to the prayer."
"Well, let us have that," said Miss Mehitable.
Tina repeated,
"One there is above all others
Well deserves the name of Friend;
His is love beyond a brother's,
Costly, free, and knows no end."
She had an earnest, half-heroic way of repeating, and as she gazed into her listener's eyes she perceived, by a subtile-in-stinct, that what she was saying affected her deeply. She stopped, wondering.
"Go on, my love," said Miss Mehitable.
Tina continued, with enthusiasm, feeling that she was making an impression on her auditor:
"Which of all our friends, to save us,
Could or would have shed his blood?
But the Saviour died to have us
Reconciled in him to God.
"When he lived on earth abaséd,
Friend of sinners was his name;
Now, above all glory raiséd,
He rejoiceth in the same."

 

Page 1085
"O my child, where did you learn that hymn?" said Miss Mehitable, to whom the words were new. Simple and homely as they were, they had struck on some inner nerve, which was vibrating with intense feeling. Tears were standing in her eyes.
"It was mamma's hymn," said Tina. "She always used to say it. There is one more verse," she added.
"O for grace our hearts to soften!
Teach us, Lord, at length to love;
We, alas! forget too often
What a Friend we have above."
"Is that the secret of all earthly sorrow, then?" said Miss Mehitable aloud, in involuntary soliloquy. The sound of her own voice seemed to startle her. She sighed deeply, and kissed the child. "Thank you, my darling. It does me good to hear you," she said.
The child had entered so earnestly, so passionately even, into the spirit of the words she had been repeating, that she seemed to Miss Mehitable to be transfigured into an angel messenger, sent to inspire faith in God's love in a darkened, despairing soul. She put her into bed; but Tina immediately asserted her claim to an earthly nature by stretching herself exultingly in the warm bed, with an exclamation of vivid pleasure.
"How different this seems from my cold old bed at Miss Asphyxia's!" she said. "O, that horrid woman! how I
hate
her!" she added, with a scowl and a frown, which made the angelhood of the child more than questionable.
Miss Mehitable's vision melted. It was not a child of heaven, but a little mortal sinner, that she was tucking up for the night; and she felt constrained to essay her first effort at moral training.
"My dear," she said, "did you not say, to-night, 'Forgive us our trespasses,
as
we forgive those who trespass against us'? Do you know what that means?"
"O yes," said Tina, readily.
"Well, if your Heavenly Father should forgive your sins just
as
you forgive Miss Asphyxia, how would you like that?"
BOOK: Harriet Beecher Stowe : Three Novels
13.41Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Surprise Me by Deena Goldstone
The Ex Who Wouldn't Die by Sally Berneathy
The Transfiguration of Mister Punch by Beech, Mark, Schneider, Charles, Watt, D P, Gardner, Cate
Fated - A Mermaid's Curse 2 by Lanzarotta, Daniele
Smittened by Jamie Farrell
Qualinost by Mark Anthony & Ellen Porath
The Last Page by Huso, Anthony


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024