Self-Denial; or, Alice Wood, and Her Missionary Society

								


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SELF-DENIAL;
OR,
ALICE WOOD, AND HER MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
The village school-house was situated on a pretty green, and surrounded
by old elm-trees, and at a short distance and in full sight was a
candy-shop, kept by an old woman, whom the children called Mother
Grimes. Mother Grimes knew how to make the very best candies and cakes
that ever were eaten, and almost every day she displayed in her
shop-window some new kind of cake, or some new variety of candy, to
excite the curiosity or tempt the palates of her little customers, who
found it a very difficult matter to pass Mother Grimes's shop on their
way from school.
One day, just after the school-bell rang to give notice of the recess,
a pretty little girl, by the name of Alice Wood, was seen very busily
running about among the school-girls and whispering to one and another.
Her object was to induce them to remain a little while after the school,
as she had something to propose to them. Alice was a great favourite, as
she was always willing to put herself to any inconvenience for the sake
of giving any one else pleasure. So they all readily consented to stay,
if it were only to please her.
After school was out and the teacher had left, Alice collected the
girls together and told them her plan. "Girls," said she, "last night I
went to the missionary meeting, and some of you were there too. We heard
a missionary speak, who has just come back from India, and he told us of
the millions of poor degraded and ignorant people there, who have never
heard of God or the Bible, and who worship idol gods of wood and stone,
and sacrifice their children and themselves to these dumb idols; and he
told us of millions in other countries who are just as ignorant and
degraded, besides the multitudes in our own land who know nothing of
the Bible or the way of salvation. I knew all this before, to be sure,
for I have often heard it; but I never felt it as I did last night;
and when the missionary called upon us children and told us that we
could do something to save these immortal souls, I felt, for the first
time in my life, that it was my duty, by denying myself some
gratifications and by trying to save money in other ways, to do all that
I could to send the word of God to those who are perishing. Girls,"
said she, with earnestness, "I could hardly sleep last night, for I was
all the time going over in my mind the different ways in which I might
earn or save something, and I thought if all our school were to feel as
I did, and join me in this, we might collect a great many dollars a
year."
Here some of the older girls began to whisper to each other that they
had no money to spare, and that their parents could not give them money