At first she
ventured to disobey in some trifling thing. She still loved her
mother, and would have been struck with horror at the thought of
being guilty of crimes which she afterwards committed. But she went
on from bad to worse, every day growing more disobedient, until she
made her poor mother so miserable that she almost wished to die, and
till she became so miserable herself, that life must have been a
burden. You think, perhaps, that you never shall be so unkind and
wicked as she finally became. But if you begin as she began, by
trifling disobedience, and little acts of unkindness, you may soon be
as wicked as she, and make your parents as unhappy as is her poor
broken-hearted mother.
Persons never become so very wicked all at once. They go on from step
to step, in disobedience and ingratitude, till they lose all feeling,
and can see their parents weep, and even die in their grief, without a
tear.
Perhaps, one pleasant day, this mother sent her little daughter to
school. She took her books, and walked along, admiring the beautiful
sunshine, and the green and pleasant fields. She stopped one moment
to pick a flower, again to chase a butterfly, and again to listen to
a little robin, pouring out its clear notes upon the bough of some
lofty tree. It seemed so pleasant to be playing in the fields, that
she was unwilling to go promptly to school. She thought it would not
be very wrong to play a little while.
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