HOW MRS. ADKINS TURNED OVER A NEW LEAF.
Do the readers of this department of the Signs of the Times remember of reading, in number 15 of the current volume, of a visit a certain Mrs. Adkins made to her neighbor, Mrs. Jewett, and of her going home with a full determination of turning over a new leaf in her own home. The truth is, Mrs. Jewett had by the help of the Holy Spirit "provoked her neighbor unto good works" by her own example, by kindly words, and deeds, too, in supplying her with good yeast and directions how to use it, and the loan of a good book to read to her children. But the Holy Spirit was also performing its office work in Mrs. Adkins' heart, and as she walked home, she might have been heard to say this: "There is something in religion; that has to do with the difference I believe. Oh, I wish I was a real genuine Christian; I wonder if I ever can be." She found her children having a great game of hide-and-seek in the yard, but they left playing and followed her into the house; the baby had gone to sleep again, and laying him down, Mrs. Adkins set herself to work diligently, setting things to rights without one word of the usual fault-finding, telling her children as she worked all about the visit, of the cozy rooms, of the new home-made rag carpet, and how the rags were made ready, and of how the Jewett girls managed their dish-washing, and how much they seemed to enjoy it. "O Hattie, let us try it in the morning! May we, mother? I wish there were dishes to wash to-night, don't you?" "Yes, I do, Dora! won't we have fun? I don't see why we never thought of it ourselves." Mrs. Adkins knew why, and sighed to think how she had always thought it too much trouble to devise plans to make work seem pleasant for her children; how she had always rather do the work than to run the risk of getting into a bad humor herself and putting them into the same, before the work was done in any shape. To-night she saw her mistake plainer than ever before, and with it the glimmer of a hope of something better in the future; and very soft and tender was the voice in which she said,— "George, if you and Hattie and Dora will help me with good will to do up all the chores, so I can get my sponge all set and ready for bread, when baby gets to bed for the night, I will read aloud to you from a book Mrs. Jewett said her children all liked; what do you say?" "I say, hurrah for Mrs. Jewett! and you too; we'll do all we can, won't we girls? Dora, you shut up the chickens, Hattie you get the night wood, and lots of nice dry chips; and I'll feed the horses and calves. Mother, you seem so happy to-night, wish you would go visiting oftener and let us all go 'long." His mother's cheeks flushed with hot blood that came with the excitement of her new venture, and at the words of her son, which proved that the change in herself was marked by him, and almost without knowing what she did, she silently prayed, "O Lord, help me to make lasting change for the better, that may show everywhere, and to every one." Then turning to the children, she said, "Run now, and let us see how we can get everything done up good; won't father be surprised to find everything done when he comes home tired? may be he will like to hear the story too." With what a will all worked; and George could work "better 'n some men," his father often said, "when he 's mind to." He was a kind-hearted, impulsive boy, and to-night, having caught the sweet spirit of tenderness and enthusiasm from his mother, he went running from house to barn, and as he patted the face of their favorite horse after giving her the feed she had been neighing for, he said aloud, "If mother 'd only always be so pleasant as she is to-night it would be jolly, wouldn't it Jule?" looking into her eyes as if expecting an answer. Was it a gleam from out the mild, grateful eyes of the faithful old work horse that broke over his soul, and suggested a perfectly new thought to him. "I do wonder if I can't help her to be always so, I know I can do things to rest her, and if I don't plague the girls, she would not worry about that; my mother is the prettiest woman on earth, I believe, when she is not tired and —" cross was the word he thought, but something made him ashamed of even thinking it to-night; he pitched down the hay for all the horses; carried in the milk for his mother, and fed the calves; took a look to see if Dora had brought plenty of wood for morning. "Is there anything else I can do to help, mother?" "Only, I have been thinking, if you will help me bring that chest from the store-room, and set it in that corner where your father usually puts his chairs for his evening nap; I will fold a large comforter and put on it, which with a pillow will be much more comfortable I think, don't you? and I believe I can fix it up to make quite a decent-looking lounge one of these days." The old chest was put into place, and a box put at the end of it, one comforter folded and made to form a mattress, another to cover the whole, a pillow, and then it was declared by the children "so nice that they believed pa would forget to wake up till morning." When Mr. Adkins came home, there was such a quietness about the house that it seemed strange to him, yet every one looked happy; he wondered more and more as he found the chores all done, an unusual tidiness apparent in kitchen and dining-room, and when he got ready for his two chairs and found even in his corner another surprise, he said, "What has happened to you all, to-day, I wonder?" No one answering, from sheer ignorance as to how to answer, he gave his wife a bit of news. "Jennie, Mrs. Owen has a sister just come from Chicago, and she said, tell you to be sure and come and see her." "A sister! what is she like, John; like Mrs. Owen?" "Not a bit; better looking, ever so much; tall and slender, blue eyes, brown hair, white hands—'bout like yours were Jennie when—when I—when we were married. Can you remember how that was, wife? I can." "Jennie" and "wife" both in one sentence almost, "and he never calls me anything but mother, any more hardly," Mrs. Adkins thought, while the children looked from one to another thinking, "How nice pa and ma are to-night;" and while the little bit of chatting was going on, Mrs. Adkins rubbed very bright a lamp chimney, lighted the lamp, and then said apologetically,— "John, I promised the children to read to them awhile to-night; I thought if I read low, perhaps you would enjoy your nap better than if they were as uneasy as sometimes they are. You won't mind it will you?" "Mind it? I'll only be too glad to have you read; it will seem like old times, like the winter before George was born; let me see, we used to take turns reading aloud then, didn't we?" "Yes, John!" and though the book was opened, the children anxiously waiting, Mrs. Adkins had a great deal to do to get the lamp turned just right, and a strange lump swallowed down out of her throat so she could read; and when she turned her eyes on the book she found them too full of tears to see, and suddenly turned to the baby's crib, and gave him some entirely unnecessary pats and tuckings till the tide risen to her eyelids ebbed back again to its hidden fount. Mrs. Adkins was a good reader, and in a voice softened by the unusual state of mind,589she read two chapters of the book without looking up to mark the effect upon her listeners; then she found them all awake and ready to clamor for more. "Mother is tired, my children, and this new lounge of mine has rested me so much more quickly than I am accustomed to that I will change places with her and read one chapter for you myself," Mr. Adkins surprised them all no less than himself by saying. He insisted on his wife's resting on the lounge he left, and felt something like a lump in his own throat, as he saw George arrange the pillow for her and sit down, caressing her forehead with one hand. The chapter done, he said, "Now children, who will be first in bed? This has been a good evening to us all, may to-morrow be as pleasant all day long." For a wonder, all went to bed with alacrity with quietness and good temper, even to little Dora, without a single remonstrance. But the father and mother lay long, wide awake and thinking, each believing the other asleep, and each resolving over and over to make life more pleasant for all concerned, in the future. Thus "a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump," and Mrs. Jewett sleeping away soundly in her home half a mile away, little guessed the seed sown a few hours before was already springing into life; but had she known she would have taken no glory to herself, but thanked "God who giveth the increase;" and surely it was he who had spoken to both these parents in the closing words of the last chapter, as Mr. Adkins read: "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God, with all thy heart and all thy soul." Over and over he turned in his bed with the first sentence always recurring to his memory: "What doth the Lord require of thee?" At last, just as he fell asleep, his wife heard him murmur, "'What does the Lord require of thee?' That 'thee' means me, I believe."