HOW TO GIVE | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 5, 1902

HOW TO GIVE.

A LITTLE boy eight years old opened his bank one day in the presence of his father, and counted his money as he arranged it in piles. There were fifteen cents in coppers, twenty-five cents in five-cent pieces, and one dollar in silver dimes.

“There,” exclaimed the boy, pushing aside fifteen pennies, “I’m goin’ to give those to the missionary society.”

“Ah,” said the father, “and what are you going to do with the silver?”

“Buy candy and peanuts for myself.”

The father looked steadily at the boy until the latter’s face flushed.

“What’s the matter, papa?” he asked.

“There’s nothing the matter with me,” was the quiet answer.

“But there is with me—that’s what you mean, I know. I’m a mean old pig—that’s what I am, but I won’t be any longer—so there!”

He put the pennies and nickels back in the bank, and doing up the silver dimes, he said,—

“I’ll give this pile to the missionaries, so I will,” and he did.

The lesson was one which many an older person would not have been as quick to learn or to heed.