Читать книгу: «The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 09, September, 1889», страница 7

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OUR YOUNG FOLKS

THE FRESH DRINK

A missionary teacher to the mountain whites, who was laid aside temporarily from teaching, on account of illness, writes of one of the children of her charge:

I must tell you of the little native girl who lived with us, and of her practical application of a Scripture text. It was my custom to teach her from the Bible every Sabbath afternoon. I had been reading from the ninth chapter of Mark, where it speaks of the child-like spirit our dear Saviour wants us to possess.

She listened very attentively, and seemed especially interested when we came to the forty-first verse, "For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name, … he shall not lose his reward."

She left me a few moments, but presently came back saying: "Won't you tell me about that verse again?" I gladly complied; then came the question, "Does it mean me—can I do something for Jesus?"

That evening, there came a gentle rap on my door, and to my "Come in," Minnie entered, bearing a glass of water.

Coming near, she placed the water on a little stand by my bedside. Noticing that she stood as though she would speak, I said, "What is it, Minnie?" She hesitated a moment, then replied: "I was thinking about what you said about the 'cup of water,' and I wanted to give you something 'cause you was sick, but I didn't have anything, so I thought may be you might like a fresh drink of water, for it's all I've got."

Indeed, my heart was touched by this poor girl's beautiful application of the lesson learned; nor was it forgotten—every evening during my illness came the "fresh drink" from the hands of the little beginner, who wanted to do something for Jesus.

LETTER FROM AN INDIAN BOY

JUNE 5th, 1889.

Friends at the East:

It is summer over here now and every thing looks green and nice. The roses are red and beautiful, so every day everybody has a bouquet on his coat. There are lots of more flowers, some of them are white, blue, red, yellow; so everything looks nice.

The girls always decorate the church on Sunday. They get lots of flowers on the hills and down in the bottom. The days have been nice for about two weeks. The sun shines every day, and the wind has not blown for a long time, but to-day the wind blows just a little but not much.

We always play ball, and have nice times playing. But some times we get hurt. The Perkins Hall boys always play ball with the Whitney Hall boys, but the Whitney boys always get beaten.

Everybody on the Reservation has ploughed his field and planted corn, potatoes, onions, squashes, beets, turnips, wheat, oats, flax, beans and melons, so everything is just coming out, and after a while they will grow big and good to eat.

Mr. Lawson went away in May, and the boys had to work up there alone. They worked all right, and when he came back he found that all papers were ready to be printed. He came back with some galley-holders and some cases. After he had been back about two weeks, another machine came; it is the paper cutter. It is a nice machine for the printing office. Seven boys work in the morning and six in the afternoon, so we are getting along first rate.

We always go after tipsina on the hills; some of the people call them wild turnips. They are very good to eat. If you don't know them, you lose something in your life. You don't know how they taste unless you have eaten some. They have dark-blue flowers on them which stand about four or five inches from the ground. They are easy to find out, and when we find them, we have to dig them. When we come back, we always get so tired that we lay down under the trees.