p. 12 | SOUR APPLES, OR SWEET? by Rev. James H. Taylor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Dec 23, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 49.

SOUR APPLES, OR SWEET?

By Rev. James H. Taylor

"WHERE is the apple basket?" asked Mary Littlewood, as she "hopped and skipped" into the house.

She was just home from school. The little white school-house where she went was nestled under the trees on one corner of her father's farm, nearly a half mile away. A spring burst from the bank of the ravine below, and an elm tree, whose roots the spring moistened, drooped its graceful branches, making a shade as welcome to the children as the cool water, with the tin cup ever hanging on a projecting root. There they sported at recesses, and there they ate their noon lunch in summer days, when heat and dust made a tramp home at midday anything but pleasant. The boys had built a play-house for the girls,—a framework made of old limbs gathered from the adjacent grove, and a covering of hemlock boughs. The girls had partitioned it into kitchen, sitting-room, and bedroom, where their dolls were cuddled into beds made of wild flowers, and curtained with long shreds of moss. Rare fun it was!

There were ten of them, but really only nine had much to do with their sports; for Betsy Baker was an odd one. It was not easy to say just what the trouble was; but—poor child!—nobody liked her, or wanted to be in her company. When all the others were busy in the play-house, Betsy only sat around, for the most part doing little but look on. Sometimes she would go and get a piece of board from a broken fence to help finish the floor, or make a seat. She even contributed her doll to complete the family, and carried water from the spring in their toy tea-pot, and did other such outside work, but was rarely inside. She knew the other girls did not like her, and she sometimes went off alone and said to herself, "I'm a good mind to stay at home, and never come to school again, the girls act so to me." But Betsy did continue in school week after week. The others all had their intimate friends, but to her all were about alike, and none would even walk to school with her if any other was near for company. So the summer wore away, and Betsy wished for the last day long before it came. But it came. When Mary Littlewood skipped into her home asking, "Where is the apple basket?" the last day was at hand.

"In the pantry," said her mother. "But what do you want of it?"

"To-morrow is the last day of school," said Mary, "and I want to go down to the sweet-apple tree, and get one apple for each little girl, and have them for our nooning in the play-house. May I? Say yes, mamma; for none of the other girls have a sweet-apple tree like ours!"

"Well," said her mother, "if you can find enough that are ripe and mellow."

Off Mary scampered, so delighted that she carelessly stepped on a little chicken as she turned the corner of the wood-house, and it went crying and limping to its mother in the coop. Mary followed until she saw it cuddled into the old hen's down. Then, saying, "I guess it will be all right by morning," turned with her basket for the apple tree.

Here and there they lay on the ground, turning up their yellow cheeks, and seeming to say, "Here we are!" She quickly counted them into her basket,—nine of them.

"But," Mary said, "there are ten; that is, if I count Betsy Baker!"

She found she was talking aloud to herself; but, looking around to see if anybody could have overheard her, she continued:—

"Nobody likes Betsy, anyhow. I'm sure I don't! And I'll just go to the sour-apple tree, and get the meanest little thing I can find; and that'll make ten, and be a good joke, too!"

So off she set, and found a little, gnarled, hard apple, that looked sour.

"There," she said, as she threw it into the basket, "that looks just about as sour as Betsy acts!"

Walking toward the house, and thinking of her mother, Mary felt uneasy about the sour apple; and so, setting the basket down, she put the sour one in the bottom, and the sweet ones atop.

Mary's mother met her on the back porch, and was quite delighted at the good hit of finding such handsome specimens for the occasion.

But, handling them one by one, she came upon the little hard one.

"What is this, Mary?" said her mother. "You've made a mistake, and got one from the sour tree."

"No, no mistake at all," said Mary. "I got that one on purpose for Betsy Baker. She is a little plague anyhow, and that is just fit for her."

"But, Mary," said her mother, "do you think you would like to have anybody treat you so, if you were Betsy Baker?"

"I'm not Betsy," said Mary, "nor a bit like her, either."

"But suppose you were," insisted her mother. "Suppose you had been born with a bad temper, and suppose your mother had been unkind to you, as they say Betsy's is to her; would you like to have little girls treat you so? And, besides, what does Jesus say about doing to others as we would have them do to us?"

Mary dropped her eyes, and, hanging her head, set the basket into the pantry, and saw it no more until next morning. When school-time came, she started with her two baskets,—one of lunch, to which her mother had added a glass of jelly because it was the last day, and the other with the apples.

Mrs. Littlewood had said no more about the sour apple, but left Mary to think it out for herself alone.

Evening came, and Mary returned with her two baskets empty; but her heart was full of delight.

"Well, my child," said her mother, "did you have a nice lunch with the girls?"

"Oh, it was lovely!" cried Mary; "just lovely! The teacher gave us a half hour extra, and we made a little table in the play-house, and invited the teacher in with us; and I gave her the glass of jelly, because there was no apple for her. But she passed it around to us all; and the apples surprised them so! Then we all gave the boys outside a piece of our apples and some of the jelly too."

"And," interrupted Mrs. Littlewood, "what about Betsy and the sour apple?"

"Well, mamma," said Mary, "you see when I said my prayer last night, and came to, 'Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,' I couldn't say that. It made me think of Betsy and the apple so. I don't know why; I didn't owe Betsy anything that I knew of. But, somehow, when I would start and say 'forgive,' I couldn't get any farther until I told God I would give Betsy a sweet apple. So I said I would, and then I went to sleep. This morning, you know, I was late to breakfast. Well, I hurried down to the sweet-apple tree, before anybody else, to get one for Betsy. And, don't you believe, one had fallen in the night that was almost as large as any two others! Why, it was so big!" putting her two fists together. "So I said, 'Poor little Betsy has been unhappy, and had no fun all the time, and now I'm going to give her that biggest and yellowest apple of them all.' So, on my way to school, I threw the little sour one over into the pigs' pasture. I got into the school-house without the children's seeing me, and hid my basket under my sun-hat. At recess I went around and whispered to all the girls, and said, 'Betsy Baker hasn't had any fun all this term; she has been unhappy all the time, and not into the play-house any hardly. Now let's invite her in to-day, and see if we cannot make her happy for once.' The girls all agreed, and I went to Betsy myself, mamma, and asked her to go into the play-house. You ought to have seen how her eyes brightened, and her whole face looked as I never saw it look before. When I brought out the apple basket, with that great yellow one on top, an 'oh, oh!' as

big as the apple went all around. But when I went right past some other girls to Betsy, first of all, and gave her that big one, they all were still as death. Betsy looked up into my face so surprised—only looked—and I had to put the apple into her lap. Then she almost cried, and next she laughed, and we all laughed and laughed until we cried, just to see how happy Betsy was. I don't know as we had ever seen her laugh before, and you can't believe how changed she was! She played all noon-time and next recess, and the girls all liked her, too. Why, we hardly knew it was Betsy at all, and the girls all said: 'Next term we will have Betsy in the play-house all the time.'"

"Well, Mary," said her mother, "which do you think is better, when people are unhappy and disagreeable, to treat them unkindly or kindly—to give them sour apples or sweet ones?" And Mary just then thought of the little crippled chicken, and went singing around the corner of the wood-house.—Rev. James H. Taylor, in S. S. Times.