I DON'T HAVE TO by Eleanor Scott

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 28, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 29.

"I DON'T HAVE TO."

By Eleanor Scott

BY ELEANOR SCOTT.

"I DON'T have to!" The words were so quick and defiant, they came fairly bounding up the stairs, and dashed into Aunt Meg's half-open door. It was the first time during her week's visit that those words had rudely intruded themselves into the stillness of her room.

And yet Jack had not the least intention that Aunt Meg should know he talked that way. He thought she was the jolliest aunt, and knew the most nice things, and in another minute he was knocking at her door.

"Aunt Meg, may I come in?"

How different his voice sounded!

"Yes, walk right in. Have you been home from school long?"

"No. But are you busy?"

"Only writing letters, and that can wait. What is it?"

"Some of us are going skating on the dam. Won't you come along? I can almost cut a circle. And lots of folks are out, and it will be glorious fun."

"Yes, indeed, I want to go."

In a few minutes they started off, laughing and talking; and the lamps were lighted, and supper on the table, before they came back.

After supper, while mother was putting Baby Meg to bed, and father was out getting the evening mail, Aunt Meg looked up from her reading and said:—

"Jack, what don't you have to do?"

"'Have to do?' I don't know what you mean."

"Just before we went skating, there seemed to be something you did not have to do."

"Oh!" said Jack, his face reddening as he realized his aunt had heard his hasty words. "Kate said I must wipe up the snow I brought in on my shoes before I went out."

He looked down at his St. Nicholas again, although Aunt Meg knew he was not reading, but wondering what she was going to say next. And her next words surprised him so he looked up at her, quite forgetting his embarrassment.

"Those words, 'I don't have to,' have helped me more than I can tell you, for a good many years, Jack."

"Why Aunt Meg! They're always coming out when I am cross and in a hurry. And mother says they're ugly. I didn't suppose you'd ever say them, and don't see how they could help you."

"Once in school I had a nice piece of candy, and two or three times I took a taste while the teacher was not looking, and once while she was looking and I thought she was not."

Jack was all attention now. It was such a new idea to think of Aunt Meg doing as boys and girls do now.

"But instead of making me throw away my candy, my teacher merely looked straight at me, and said, 'It is a great temptation, I know, but you don't have to yield.' All the boys and girls looked around at me, and I felt very uncomfortable, but the words kept ringing in my ears, 'You don't have to yield.' And, Jack dear, so many times when I have wanted to do some pleasant but wrong thing—and so many of our temptations are pleasant things—I have said to myself, 'Yes, it might be a pleasure to yield, but I don't have to.' And God has made me strong enough, and will make you strong enough, so that you 'won't have to yield,' either."

The room was very still; the creaking of mother's rocking-chair could be heard overhead. Jack's elbow was resting on the table; the St. Nicholas lay forgotten as he looked seriously at his aunt, and she went on.

"I wonder, Jack, if you ever noticed Christ's first temptation in the wilderness? He was hungry, and he could have turned the stones into bread, but he said he did not need to yield to his appetite, he did 'not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.' God's word tells God's will. And it is so with us. Many a thing would gratify us, but our life is a nobler, grander thing than pleasing ourselves—it is doing God's will. It is doing what is right, even if that is only wiping up snow when Kate says so, or not eating'—

Just here the latch key turned in the lock, and father walked in.

And Jack still continues to say, "I don't have to—yield."—S. S. Times.