VALUE OF A KISS | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 29, 1880

VALUE OF A KISS.

IN prison at New Bedford, Mass., there now is a man whom we shall call Jim, and who is a prisoner on a life-sentence. Up to last spring he was regarded as a desperate, dangerous man, ready for rebellion at any hour. He planned a general outbreak, and was "given away" by one of the conspirators. He plotted a general mutiny or rebellion, and was again betrayed. He then kept his own counsel, and, while never refusing to obey orders, he obeyed them like a man who only needed backing to make him refuse to. One day in June a party of strangers came to the institution. One was an old gentleman, the others ladies, and two of the ladies had small children. The guide took one of the children on his arm, and the other walked until the party began climbing up the stairs. Jim was working near by, sulky and morose as ever, when the guide said to him:—

"Jim, won't you help this little girl up the stairs?"

The convict hesitated, a scowl on his face, and the little girl held out her hands to him and said:—

"If you will I guess I'll kiss you."

His scowl vanished in an instant, and he lifted the child as tenderly as a father. Half way up the stairs she kissed him. At the head of the stairs she said:—

"Now you've got to kiss me, too."

He blushed like a woman, looked at her innocent face, and then kissed her on the cheek, and before the man reached the foot of the stairs he had tears in his eyes. Ever since that day he has been a changed man, and no one in the place gives less trouble. Maybe, in his far away Western home he has a little Katie of his own. None know, for he never reveals his inner life; but the change so quickly wrought by a child shows that he may forsake his evil way.