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any cases will occur in which you will wish to do that which your parents will not approve. If you do not, in such cases, pleasantly and readily yield to their wishes, you are ungrateful and disobedient.
Neither is it enough that you should obey their expressed commands. You ought to try to do every thing which you think will give them pleasure, whether they tell you to do it or not. A good child will seek for opportunities to make his parents happy. A little girl, for instance, has some work to do. She knows that if she does it well and quick, it will gratify her mother. Now, if she be a good girl; she will not wait for her mother's orders, but will, of her own accord, improve her time, that she may exhibit the work to her mother sooner and more nicely done than she expected.
Perhaps her mother is sick. Her affectionate daughter will not wait for her mother to express her wishes. She will try to anticipate them. She will walk softly around the chamber, arranging every thing in cheerful order. She will adjust the clothes of the bed, that her mother may lie as comfortably as possible. And she will watch all her mother's movements, that she may learn what things she needs before she asks for them. Such will be the conduct of an affectionate and obedient child. I was once called to see a poor woman who was very sick. She was a widow, and in poverty. Her only companion and only earthly reliance was her daughter. As I entered the humble dwelling of this poor woman, I saw her bolstered up in the bed, with her pale countenance emaciated with pain, and every thing about the room proclaiming the most abject poverty. Her daughter sat sewing at the head of the bed, watching every want of her mother, and active with her needle. The perfect neatness of the room, told how faithful was the daughter in the discharge of her painful and arduous duties. But her own slender form and consumptive countenance showed that by toil and watching she was almost worn out herself. This noble girl, by night and by day, with unwea