SOLD HIS BOY | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 10, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 45.

SOLD HIS BOY.

A FARMER drove up to the scales with a load of corn and asked to have it weighed. He had on the load of corn with him his ten-year-old boy. The load was weighed and the weight recorded and the farmer drove away and sold and unloaded the corn; then he sent his boy off on an errand while he went back and weighed his wagon. The public weigher did not observe that the boy was not on the wagon when it was weighed the second time, and so the farmer got the pay for the weight of his boy.

He drove away home in the evening chuckling to himself over the smart game he had played; he had sold his boy for corn. The public weigher had not observed it; the man who bought the corn knew nothing about it; his neighbors were all ignorant of what had happened; he had played his little trick successfully, and no one knew a thing about it but himself and his boy. He had sold his boy. He only got about fifty cents for him, to be sure, but then it was such a sharp trick, and the farmer laughed aloud, ha! ha! ha! He would a little rather the boy had not known about it, “but then,” he said, “he is young and will soon forget it.”

Twelve years passed, and one day a criminal stood up in court and received sentence of a long term in the penitentiary. He had committed a burglary, and in attempting to avoid arrest, had wounded a man almost to death. Just behind the criminal sat his aged father, his head bowed in shame, and his heart almost breaking with grief. After the sentence was pronounced, the criminal turned to his father and said:—

“Father, twelve years ago, when I was but a mere boy, you put me on a load of corn and deliberately sold me. You thought you were selling me to the corn merchant, but really you sold me to the devil; I, of course, consented to the wickedness you taught me that day, and I have felt ever since that I belonged to the devil, and have been his faithful servant. Father, you sold your boy to the devil for the paltry sum of fifty cents; you are responsible for my ruin.”

Ah, how many parents have sold their boys, sometimes for a mug of beer or a glass of whisky; sometimes for the fiendish pleasure of showing how infant lips can be taught to profane the name of God! Alas, they have sold their boys to the devil, and after a few years, the devil has come to claim his purchase, and they have gone to destruction!—Anon.