One day as a young lady walked up the street, she saw a little boy running out of a shoemaker's shop, and a shoemaker chasing him. The boy had not run far when the shoemaker threw something at him, and he was struck in the back. The boy stopped and began to cry.
The Spirit of the Lord touched that young lady's heart, and she went to the boy. She asked him if he was hurt and he replied that it was none of her business. She asked him if he went to school. He said, "No."
'Well, why don't you go to school?"
"Don't want to."
She asked him if he would not like to go to Sunday School. "If you will come," she said, "I will tell you beautiful stories and read nice books."
She said that if he would go, she would meet him on the corner of a street which they should agree upon. He at last consented, and the next Sunday, true to his promise, he waited for her at the place designated.
When they met, the lady took the boy by the hand and led him into the Sunday School.
"Can you give me a place to teach this little boy?" she asked of the superintendent.
The man looked at him; they didn't have any little ones in the school, but a place was found in a corner, and she tried to win that soul for Christ.
The little boy had never heard anybody sing so sweetly before, and when he went home, he was asked where he had been.
He told his mother he had been to Sunday School, but his father and mother told him he must not go there any more or he would get a flogging The next Sunday the boy went, and when he came home he got the promised flogging. He went again and got a flogging, and then again, with the same result. At last he said to his father, "I wish you would flog me before I go, and then I won't have to think of it when I am there." The father said, "If you go again I will kill you."
It was the father's custom to send his son out on the street to sell articles to the passers-by, and he told the boy that he might have the profits of what he sold on Saturday. The little fellow hastened to the young lady's house and said to her, "Father said that he would give me every Saturday to myself, and if you will just teach me, then I will come to your house every Saturday afternoon."
I wonder how many young ladies would give up their Saturday afternoons just to lead one boy into the kingdom of God.
Every Saturday afternoon he was at her house, and she tried to tell him the way to Christ. At last the light of God's spirit broke upon his heart.
One day, while he was selling his wares at the railway station, a train of cars approached unnoticed and passed over both his legs. A doctor was summoned, and as he arrived, the little boy asked, "Doctor, will I live to get home?"
"No," said the doctor, "you are dying."
`Will you tell my mother and father that I died a Christian?"
They took home the boy's body, and with it, the last message that he had died a Christian.
Oh, what a noble work was that young lady's in saving the little wanderer! How precious the remembrance to her! When she goes to heaven she will not be a stranger there. He will take her by the hand and lead her to the throne of Christ. She did the work cheerfully. Oh, may God teach us what our work is that we may do it for His glory.