Very joyful and very thankful was Janet Maclean, as, with her boy in her arms, she returned to her cottage. Bridget had remained there to take care of the twins during the absence of their mother. Mrs. Macbride received her neighbor with a smile, and the words, “Didna I say, Janet, that ye’d not one too many, nor would willingly part wi’ a single bairn out o’ your nine?”
“The Lord forgie my thankless heart!” said poor Janet, and she fondly kissed her boy. “We ne’er are grateful enough for our blessings until we are like to lose them.” Then putting the little child down on the brick floor, with fresh courage and industry the mother returned to her ironing again.
May we not hope that all Janet’s toil and hard work for her children had one day a rich reward? May we not hope that not one out of the nine, when old enough and strong enough to labor for her who had labored so hard for them, but did his best to repay her care and her love? How large is a parent’s heart, that opens wide and wider to take in all the children of her family, however numerous those children may be! Though each new babe adds to poor parents’ toils, and takes from their comforts, still the kind father and the fond mother, as they look round their home circle of rosy faces, can not only say but feel, “There is not one too many.”
CHANG WANG was a Chinaman, and was reputed to be one of the shrewdest dealers in the Flowery Land. If making money fast be the test of cleverness, there was not a merchant in the province of Kwang Tung who had earned a better right to be called clever. Who owned so many fields of the tea-plant, who shipped so many bales of its leaves to the little island in the west, as did Chang Wang? It was whispered, indeed, that many of the bales contained green tea made by chopping up spoilt black tea-leaves, and coloring them with copper—a process likely to turn them into a mild kind of poison; but if the unwholesome trash found purchasers, Chang Wang never troubled himself with the thought whether any one might suffer in health from drinking his tea. So long as the dealer made money, he was content; and plenty of money he made.
But knowing how to make money is quite a different thing from knowing how to enjoy it. With all his ill-gotten gains, Chang Wang was a miserable man, for he had no heart to spend his silver pieces, even on his own comfort. The rich dealer lived in a hut which one of his own laborers might have despised; he dressed as a poor Tartar shepherd might have dressed when driving his flock. Chang Wang grudged himself even a hat to keep off the rays of the sun. Men laughed, and said that he would have cut off his own pigtail of plaited hair, if he could have sold it for the price of a dinner! Chang Wang was, in fact, a miser, and was rather proud than ashamed of the hateful vice of avarice.