Safe Little Effie

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 2, 1882

Safe Little Effie.

SHE came bounding down the steps, all ready for school.

"Come across," called her little friend, Johnnie Bates. "I'll wait for you." Right in front of her were two prancing horses.

"I can't come across the street," said Effie, "till the horses pass."

"O pooh!" said Johnnie, "clip across. You'll have time: the horses are standing still. They don't mean to go yet. 'Fore I'd be such a coward."

Down sat Effie plump on the stone step.

"I can't come across till the horses go by, not if they don't go in a week," she said. "My mamma said never to cross the street alone if there is a horse to be seen; and I am not going to."

Just then the horses, that a man had been trying to manage, became frightened at a kite that some boys were playing with, and broke from him. Away they went, right over the very crossing that Effie would have taken! Effie's mamma ran to the door, pale and trembling. She had seen those dreadful horses fly by!

"O my darling," she said, putting her arms around Effie, "what danger you have been in!"

"Why, mamma!" Effie said, looking up at her mother with her eyes full of wonder, "I don't think I was in a speck of danger. You told me not to cross the street when I saw horses, and of course I wouldn't. So how could they hurt me!"