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A Criss-Cross Day

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 3, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 21.

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A Criss-Cross Day.

“Come, Amy, it’s seven o’clock; get up.”
It was a winter morning, and Mrs. Strong was calling her little daughter.
Amy awoke at the sound of her mother’s voice, but she did not get up right away.
She lay still, thinking how nice and warm it was in bed and how cold it must be out-of-doors. She knew by the grating of wheels over the frozen earth outside that it was a cold day, very cold.
That reminded her of a poor woman whom she had seen knocking at the door of an opposite house the night before, and then she began to think how grand it would be to be grown up, and rich like their neighbor, Mrs. Jones, and to have poor people coming to her door all the while and asking for help, and never to send them away disappointed, because she would have enough money to give them all something. Then how grateful they would be, and how much they would love her, and how they would speak of her as the benevolent Mrs.—. She had not quite decided what her name should be, when her father came to the door.
“Amy, are you ready for breakfast? Come down-stairs right away if you are.”
There was a sudden end to the day-dream. Amy jumped up and dressed herself just as fast as she could.
She was in such haste that she did not get her hair very smooth, and, sad to relate, she knelt down to say her prayers while she was buttoning her dress. Of course she could not think of what she was saying, and so she repeated, “Now I lay me down to sleep,” instead of, “Now I wake and see the light.” Then without any real thought of asking the Lord Jesus to be with her through the day, she hurried to the breakfast table. The rest of the family were through eating by that time, and Amy’s food being cold did not seem to be as good as usual.
After her meal she had to help her mother with the housework, but I am afraid her part of it was not very well done, because she had to hurry so much in order to get ready for school.
As she felt in her pockets for her mittens she found two pennies there that somebody had given her the day before. She glanced at the clock to see whether she would have time to stop at the candy store, and made up her mind to run the risk of doing so.
She was leaving the shop with two sticks of peppermint carefully rolled up in a piece of brown paper, when she met a school-mate.
This little girl, whose name was Katy Brown, was the daughter of a very poor woman.
She was shabbily dressed. Indeed, her clothing was not thick enough to keep her warm, and her face was so drawn and pinched that it looked as though it ought to belong to an old woman rather than to a little girl.
“Won’t you give me some candy, Amy? I haven’t had any in ever so long.”
“Then ask your mother to give you money and let you buy some; I want mine myself.”
Could that have been Amy Strong who answered so unkindly and selfishly? Was it the Amy Strong who had been thinking that morning how nice it would be to help everybody? Was it the Amy who had promised her mother at the beginning of the year that she would try to grow more like Jesus every day?
When the two children reached the school the teacher was calling the roll. Amy was just in time to say “late,” and to have a long black mark put opposite her name.
That worried her so that she could not think about her geography lesson when she tried to study it; and then in the class, when she was asked, “What is the capital of Maine?” she said, “Androscoggin.”
This was so funny that all the girls laughed—all but Amy herself, who was so angry that she almost cried.
It was just as bad all through the session. Amy made one mistake after another, and at last the teacher told her that she must stay after school to study.
How long that hour was! the hour in which she was “kept in.” It seemed as though it would never be over. But it was at last, and then Amy rushed home to her mother to be comforted.
“Oh, mamma, isn’t it dreadful? Everything has gone criss-cross all day, and I didn’t mean to be naughty at all!”
The tears came then thick and fast. When the shower was over, Mrs. Strong coaxed Amy to tell her the whole story of the day’s misdoings.
“I think,” she said kindly, “that my little girl made two mistakes before breakfast. The first was in not minding her mamma at once, and the second was in not asking the Lord Jesus to be with her through the day. Let me teach you a verse that Christ taught his disciples. It is this: ‘Without me ye can do nothing.’”
Without his blessing neither children nor grown people can hope to have either pleasant or useful days.—Christian Intelligencer.