p. 11 | Dependable Young Folks

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 14, 1909

Dependable Young Folks

“You needn’t worry a mite,” said Mrs. ——, when her niece fretted for fear the boy she had engaged to take a parcel to the five-o’clock train would be late. “John is a dependable boy, and he’ll be here.”

“But boys of thirteen are so heedless,” lamented the young woman. “I wish I had found some one more reliable.”

But the words were scarcely out of her mouth when the boy arrived, and the parcel was delivered in time. “I always keep my word,” he said, in answer to her many cautions. “Of course, I might fall and break a limb, but you need not worry at all.”

I really do not know where boys and girls just entering their teens received the reputation for being wholly untrustworthy. Some of the best, and brightest, and most trustworthy boys and girls I know, are hovering around that age, but still I hear people say you can’t put dependence in them.

Just a few weeks ago a girl gave up a chance to go to a picnic, in order to stay at home and take care of the baby, because her mother had a headache. Does that look like heedlessness? And only last year a boy of fourteen sat with his hand under the spout of a gasoline can holding it shut till his mother reached home. He was stiff, as well as cramped and tired, but he was afraid to let go. No one was near, and if the oil had escaped, it would have set fire to the building, for a wood fire was playing in the shed, and by accident a big lad broke the spout to the heavy can. He ran away in fear, but the plucky little lad held on and saved the house from destruction.

“If you are anything in the world,” a mother used to say to her boys and girls, “be reliable. Be sure that people can depend upon you, and you can not fail in life. And above all things, be faithful in the little things.”

And do you know the little things are the hard ones? If we do them well, we may rest assured that when the big ones come, we shall know all about managing them. A boy who longs to dash into a burning building and rescue a child from death, almost shed tears when his mother asked him to weed the onion bed last week. You see dashing into the building would take only a few minutes, and he feels sure he would get out all right, but it takes pluck to work faithfully when the sun is doing its best to scorch his back.

But the boys and girls who can be depended upon now are the ones who will be the successful men and women by and by.—Selected.