SEWING-ACHES.



JESSIE sat down by her mother to sew. She was making a pillowcase for her own little pillow.

"All this?" she asked in a discontented tone, holding the seam out.

"That is not too much for a little girl who has a workbasket of her own," said her mother.

"Yes," thought Jessie, "mother has given me a work-basket, and I ought to be willing to sew," and with that she took a few stitches quite diligently.

"I have a dreadful pain in my side," said Jessie, in a few minutes. "My thumb is very sore," she said after sewing a little longer.

"Oh, my hand is so tired," that was next. And with that she laid down her work. Next there was something the matter with her foot, and then with her eye.  But at length the sewing was done, and Jessie brought it to her mother.

"Shall I not send at once for a doctor?" said her mother.

"A doctor for me, mother?" cried the little girl, as surprised as she could be.

"Certainly," said her mother;" a little girl so full of aches and pains must be sick, and the sooner we have a doctor the better."

"O mother!" said Jessie, laughing," they were sewing aches. I am well enough now.  "I have heard of other little girls besides Jessie who had sewing aches and pains whenever their parents had work for them to do. These aches and pains do show sickness. They are symptoms of a bad disease, which eats some people up. This disease is called "selfishness." It makes children cross, and fretful, and disobliging, and troublesome, and unhappy; and I am sure it makes those unhappy who have the charge of them.





The Christian Child.