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ARCHIE’S LESSON

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 21, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 29.

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ARCHIE’S LESSON.

By Kate S. Gates

PAPA was away, and the baby was sick. Mama could not leave him to go to church, so there was no one to go with Archie.
“Mayn’t I just go by myself?” he pleaded. “I’ll be ever and ever so good, and remember the text for you, and maybe some of the sermon. Mayn’t I go?”
Mama hesitated a minute, then she consented.
“I am sure I can trust my little boy,” she said, and Archie went off very happy and proud. He sat in papa’s seat, and felt quite important. He had found the text, after considerable hunting, and now he was wondering if the sermon was not almost done.
He had said his Golden Text once to himself to be sure he had not forgotten it, and then he put his hand in his pocket to satisfy himself he had not lost his pennies.
And then, I am sure I do not know how it happened, but he thought of the candy in Mrs. Draper’s window. Archie was very fond of candy, but mama did not like him to eat it, so he seldom had any.
“Tommy Baker has some ’most every day,” he thought, in an aggrieved way, “and he isn’t sick, either. I don’t see why I can’t have some once in a while. Maybe if I did, and it didn’t make me sick, mama wouldn’t care any more, and let me have all I want. I wonder if there would be any harm in keeping one of my pennies and getting a chocolate stick to-morrow.”
Now Archie knew very well that there would be a great deal of harm in doing so, but he just shut his eyes to that view of the case, and would not see it.
“Of course, if I supposed mama didn’t want me to have it,” he reasoned, “it would be different; but you see all she cares is she is afraid it would make me sick, and I’m ever so sure it wouldn’t. I can tell her all about it afterward.”
Well, you know how it was, Archie kept thinking how much he wanted the candy, and he would not let himself think how wrong it would be to get it in this way. So when Miss Dayton passed the box in Sunday-school, Archie only put in one penny.
But after the box had passed him, do you know it seemed to him that everybody could see that penny down there in his pocket, and would know how he had kept it back? On the whole, he felt very uncomfortable, and the worst of it was, he dreaded to see mama.
He went the longest way home, and walked as slowly as he possibly could, and he sat down on the piazza quite a while, in fact, until he heard the dinner bell ring. He was not very hungry, and asked to be excused before dessert was over.
“I just wish I hadn’t never thought of that old candy,” he said impatiently to himself, as he swung in the hammock. “I’ve a good mind not to get it; there’s no fun doing a thing when you feel so mean. I can save my penny and put it in the box next Sunday, and it will be all right, and nobody will know anything about it.”
Archie slipped his hand into his pocket, and an instant later took it out empty; for there was no penny there.
He turned his pockets inside out; he felt in them all, but there was no penny to be found; he had lost it. And now what was to be done?
He could not get the candy certainly, and he did not care much for that, but why need he say anything about it to any one?
“I don’t see what good it will do to go and tell mama now; it won’t bring back the penny, and it will just make her feel sorry. She says you shouldn’t make folks feel bad if you can help it, so I don’t think I ought to tell. There needn’t any one know about it, and I’ll never do so again, I know.”
Just then mama called.
“Come and tell me the text now, Archie,” she said.
So he went and sat down beside her and found the place in her Bible.
“Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart,” she read aloud. “Do you know what that means, dear?”
Poor little Archie! a great lump came up in his throat, and it seemed to him that he could not look up into mama’s face.
He hated to have mama know he would be so mean as to steal; it was very much like stealing; for it was not his money. He dreaded to tell her; but God knew; there was no hiding it from Him.
It made him so ashamed and afraid!
“Tell me all about it, dear,” said mama; for, of course, she had known all the time that something was wrong.
So Archie confessed.
“I’m so sorry, mama,” he sobbed. “I s’pose I knew all the time that I was doing wrong, only I just wouldn’t listen when something tried to tell me so. I wanted the candy, and I thought nobody would ever know. I forgot about God’s seeing everything. But I’ll never forget again—at least, I don’t believe I will.”
The next day Archie weeded in the garden for papa two hours, and, tho he was very tired, he felt happier because he had earned a penny in place of the one he had lost.
“And I shall remember always,” he said gravely.
And to help him mama gave him a pretty card to hang in his room, with these words on it, “Thou God seest me.”—Kate S. Gates, in Christian Work.