LITTLE Susie was sent by her mother to the garden one day, to get some flowers. Before the door was a man chopping wood. Susie climbed over the pile of wood, which he had already chopped, and ran into the garden. When she came back with her hands full of flowers, the wood-chopper lifted her over the pile of wood, and setting her in the doorway said, “I have lifted you over, my dear child, as I was afraid you would hurt yourself and I would have been very sorry.” Susie thanked him with a smile and running to her mother, told her how kind the old wood-chopper had been to her, and asked if she might give him some little present. “What would you like to give?” asked the mother. “I thought to give him that red apple, you gave me this morning. Shall I, mamma?” “Yes, if you wish,” answered the mother. With hasty steps Susie ran to the wood-chopper and brought him the apple. He reached out his rough hand to the child and said, “What shall I do with this beautiful ale, my child, may I take it to my poor Johnny?” “Johnny? Who is Johnny?” asked Susie. “It is my poor boy, who is a cripple. When he was very little, he fell from his chair into the fire. The flames caught his dress and would have burned him to death, had not his mother been attracted by his cry. He suffered very much and especially since his mother died. May I give him this apple?” Susie said, “Yes,” and slowly went to the house. Oh! how she pitied poor Johnny.
When evening came and the woodchopper was nearing his hut, the poor cripple was waiting by the window to receive his father with open arms. How surprised he was when his father laid the apple on the table and told him of the kind-hearted giver. How he would like to have run and thanked her. He gazed at the apple a long time, then he looked at his father and said, “I know what I will do with this apple. I will give it to that bad boy that comes to the window and makes faces at me, and mocks me because of my misfortune. What do you say, father?” “Ah! you mean Jack Newman, whom I had to chase away, because he annoyed you, with his mean tricks? I thought you did not love him very much.” “I used to hate him, I could not bear it, that he mocked me for my misfortune which I am unable to change,” answered Johnny, “but when you read in the word of God, not long ago, that the Lord Jesus prayed for His enemies, and told His disciples to do the same, then I thought the hatred in my heart must be something bad. I wept because I saw, that, by nature my heart was not better than Jack’s. I prayed to Jesus to take away the hatred from my heart and from that time I have loved Jack. Often I wished for something to prove my love towards him. Now, father, the Lord Jesus gave me this apple which I will give to Jack to prove my love.” The father said nothing but turned from the child to wipe a tear. Never were their hearts happier than on that evening, and never was the word of God, which the father read every evening, more precious to Johnny than then.
ML 08/20/1899