A CARPET-RAG:LESSON.


MAMIE MILLER gathered up a basketful of carpet-rags, and carrying them out to the big apple-tree, sat down in the shade to sew them.

The bright needle flashed in and out, the hand that drew the thread moved rapidly, and by-and-by the needle was tucked away in its cushion and the sewed rags were wound into a ball.

"It's just like a life, as Aunt Ruth said the other day, this ball of carpet rags. It's made up of some very bright spots, and some very dark spots, and a great many medium spots. 

Mine's been about all medium. I wonder how 't would seem to have one great big bright spot like that long red rag in there. Some lives are not so hit-or-miss after all, I guess. 

Anyway, mine has been about one thing so far."

"I'll stay out here and finish these rags," she continued, as she tucked the end into the new-made ball; " it's ever so much nicer out here than in the house."

Up above her the pink apple blossoms were nodding and smiling, and the bees were humming their drowsy song. It was pleasant out there, "ever so much nicer," as Mamie said, than in the house. Mamie's thoughts ran on in the way of carpet-rags and lives.

"I suppose some people's lives are just all red rags. My! That must be fine; but then I 've heard that all brightness gets as monotonous after a while as all sober gray. I guess medium with bright spots is about the best. But, dear me! it must be awful where it is just about all black.

"I wonder if any one here in Salem has that kind of a life. Why, it must be something like that for Rachel Davis, because she's blind. Oh dear! 

I never thought before how much brightness that does shut out."

Just then Mamie raised her eyes, and saw a woman at the window of the house opposite bending over her sewing.

"Now, there's Mrs. Rogers, she must know a good deal about the black spots. They say she has to work hard all the time to get enough to live on, and Carrie is sick so much, too. Dear! When I come to think of it, I don't know but my life has been every bit like the red rags, after all."

At that moment something suggested last week's golden text: "By love serve one another."

"I'm going right over and see if I can't do something for Mrs. Rogers that will put even a little bit of a bright spot into her life; and tomorrow I'll run down and see Rachel Davis."

A moment later Mrs. Rogers raised her head to welcome a bright-faced caller, and well, no matter about the conversation, which followed. It was not long, however, until the woman who had been kept too closely in the house for several weeks because she could not leave her sick child alone, had laid aside her work and was out of doors in the sunshine and fresh air, while Mamie was stationed beside the bed of the little invalid.

The next day Mamie discovered that Rachel Davis had been longing for some time to keep up with the Sabbath-school lessons, but no one seemed to have time even to read them to her, and the last quarter had gone by with scarcely a word of its lessons for her to think about. After that, Mamie's preparation for Sabbath-school was made with the blind girl; and very often she found time to drop in to read a bright little poem or story to Rachel, which helped wonderfully to cheer the darkened life.

God gives even to children many opportunities of keeping the black and the gray from the lives of their friends by working in the brighter colors; and it is one of the best of ways to get the bright into our own lives. 




William Norris Burr.