THE BOOK OF REMEMBRANCES.
By Ellen Howe
"O MOTHER, isn't it hard for me to have to lie here abed while the other boys are playing baseball?" said Walter Warren to his mother, as she sat by his side with an aching heart, watching the boy who but a year ago had carried off the honors of his class in the high school, but who was now prostrated with a lingering, and perhaps fatal, disease. "Yes, my dear; it is very hard, but still it might be worse," she added cheeringly. "How could it be worse?" asked the sufferer gloomily. "Don't I have pain all the time?" "Yes, my boy, you suffer steady pain of body, I know; but you don't suffer from lack of care or kindness." "Seems to me I'd change places with anybody in the world," continued the poor boy wearily. Presently Mrs. Warren rose, and, bringing a new notebook and pencil, said: "Now, let us write down in this book all the kind things people have done for you since you have been ill. We'll begin with Cousin Jennie. Here's the plate of grapes she sent you this very day." "That's so, and some days she comes in and reads me nice stories," said Walter with some interest. "Yes, and once she brought in her new game of tiddlywinks to show you how it was played," added his mother as she wrote. "And wasn't it funny to watch her play it!" said the boy, now actually smiling. "Then George Barnes brought in his new battery and showed me how he was going to rig up a little electrical machine. Don't forget to write that." "I'll write all you can think of, only you must give me time enough," said Mrs. Warren. "Then you remember how Joe Harris brought in his model yacht and let it stay here for a week, so that I could learn it all by heart. Didn't the little brass binnacle shine on it!" Walter had already forgotten his pain and confinement, and, with a happy face, went on recalling little acts of kindness done toward him by one and another friend, while his mother wrote, till he finally fell asleep, and then she prayed that he might not forget to include the goodness that had followed him all the days of his life, bestowed by the Friend above all others. Day after day at intervals this little notebook was taken up, and more entries were made in it, till finally Walter asked to keep it under his pillow so that he could write in it himself, and very often he would ask to have it all read to him. "But don't look at the last page," he would add, "though sometime you may." "Why, mother," he said often, "it seems as if everybody I ever knew had his name written down in my book of remembrance for doing some kind thing for me since I've been out of school!" And, though he grew weaker, the complaining all ceased. One day there was much harder pain than usual, and Walter never woke from the sleep that followed it. When his mother took away the precious notebook, it opened to the last page, and she read these feebly written lines, and was comforted: "No book of remembrances could be big enough to have written in it all the kind things my father and mother and all of our family have done for me, but God has done more, because he gave me this home. If I never get well, I know that my heavenly Father has got a home for me that is even better than this—though I don't see how it can be—and that Jesus loves me even more than my mother does, so I'm not afraid to die. I only wish I had done more in return to him and to all those I love, but now I can only say from my heart that I thank you all." Would not many unhappy and complaining boys and girls forget all the trials that seem so hard to bear, if they, too, should try to remember all the bright and happy and kind events of life, and keep their attention fixed on these alone?—Selected.