Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 March 1877 — youths’ Department. [ARTICLE]

youths’ Department.

PREACHING WITH A SHOYEL. XT KMTLT HUNTINGTOX MHXKR. It vu ft dreary winter evening, and Laura waa snuggled up in a corner of the •ola with herbook in her lap. Just in the middle of a most delightful story. The boys were plavlng In the oorner, and now and then ahe caught a scrap of their talk; but ahe paid very little attention to it. Rob was putting his locomotive together and Fred was arranging an orphan asylum with his alphabet blocks. Twenty-seven orphans were ranged about the carpet; some of them In bed, some eating soup out of Laura's china dishes, one desperate fellow in solitary confinement behind the door, and a long row learning to read from bits of newspaper. The only trouble was that they all had such Jolly fsces; they would grin all the time; and what can you do with a boy that grins even when you whip him ? So presently the orphan asylum was turned into a gymnasium, where twentyseven little acrobats stood on th<pr beads, walked on their hands, turned somersaults, and performed all manner of wonderful feats. Then they were all convicts in State Prison, and Rob came and preached them a sermon. This was the sermon: “ My hrothern,” “People in jail aren’t hrothern,” said Laura, looking up from her book. “ Oh, yes, they are," said Rob; ” brethren is just a kind of preach word and means everybody but the minister. My brethren, folks ought to be good, and not steal things, and quarrel, and get angry. When you begin to be bad you can't tell how bad yon may get to be. The minister knows of s bay that begun by wouldn't let his brother take his skates when he didn't need ’em at ail himself; and he grew up so’t he set a house afire." "Isthat true, Robbyf" asked Fred, with veiy big eyes. “ Course not; that's a 'lustration. Sermons are true, and 'lustrations are just to make you understand ’em. Now, my brethren, you mustn’t steal, or do any more bad things, ’cause you can’t do it, anyway, and if you try to get ont, they’ll shoot you." The convicts now marched back to their cells under the sofa. Roo lay upon the carpet, with his arms under bis head, and said, very slowly: " When lam a man, I shall be a minister.” “1 thought you were agoing to be an engineer?’ said Laura. " Well, p’raps I shall. Cars don’t run on Sunday, and I could think up my sermons all the week, and then go and preach ’em.'’ "Oh, you can’t make sermons just thinking them up on an engine," said Laura, positively; "you have to do’em iu a stuuy wit# books and writing." *’ I could,” persisted Rob; " i shall say my sermons like Mr. Chaliis, and I know lots of texts." Law* looked at papa, who was smiling at them over the top of his paper, and asked, doubtfully, *• Could fie, papa?" ' “ 1 suppose he could," said papa. " But 1 thought ministers had to be just ministers, and not part something else." " I know of a boy,” said papa, “ who preaches first-rate sermons, and he does a great many other things—goes to school, brings in wood, takes care of a hone." " Me, papa?" asked Rob. Papa laughed, and shook bis head. "He preaches them to people on the street; he preached one to me to-night." " Oh!" said Laura, and Rob sat straight up and looked at papa.

“ He preaches them with a shovel.” Rob laughed heartily at this, and Laura looked more puzzled than ever. Fred came and leaned his arms on papa's knee. . "Now, papa,” he asked, “ how could anybody preach with a shovel T” “I’ll tell you,” said papa. “All through this month of snowy weather there has been one hundred feet on Beech sheet of clear, clean sidewalk. No matter how early I go down town, it is always ■the same—clean to the very edge of the walk. People pick their way through *he slush, or wade through the drifts, or .follow the narrow, crooked path the rest •of the ways but, when they come to this .place, they stamp their feet, and stand up straight, and draw a long breath. It makes you feel rested just to look at it. The boy that keeps that sidewalk clean preaches with his shovel. It Is a sermon on doing your work well,/-and not shirking; a sermon on doing things promptly without delaying; a sermon on sticking to things day after day without weaiying; a sermon on doing your own part without waiting for other people to do theirs.” “ Maybe a man does it,” said Boh. “ No, it is a boy; 1 have seen him at it. 1 saw him one day when it was snowing very fail, and i , *asuv~ : Why do-you cfean your walk now ? It will soon be as bad as ever.’ * Yes, sir,’ said he, ‘but Ihit snow will be out < i the way. 1 can brush it off now easily, but when it is tramped down it manes hard work.’ 1 call that a first-rate sermon, and everyone who does his work in his very best way preaches a sermon to all around him.” The, bell rang, ami somebody called papa away, but Rob k«. pt thinking of the litUe crooked, uneven path he had made to the barn and well, and what a stingy little pile of kindlings he had split for tne kitchen, and he made up his mind he would Uy and preach a sermon with the shovel the next day. Laura Baw that her mother had laid aside her own book to show some pictures to little Nell. “That’s what mamma is always doing," she thought, '“preaching sermons about loving other people better than yourself; 1 guess I’ll preach one about ‘Do unto others,’ ” and Laura left her story and amused her little sister uutil her oiue eyes were too sleepy even for smiles. The next day Rob widened his path and shoveled it ciear down to the firm ground, and then he called Fred to admire it. “ it’s said Fred: “1 guess it’s as nice as that sermon boy could make.” “ ’dpose’n we go and suovel a path lor Mrs. Rauney.”

“Come on,” said Rob; “that’ll be a Sermon about —about —I wonder about whutr’ "Being kind,” said Fred; “ butt don’t know what the text for it is, unless it's * Love one another.’ ” ,"~ “That’s a pretty good toy’ said Rob, Ihit fits to most anythinggood.”