e dry-goods box as it used to be at the
Euclid House. One disappointment Tode had. When he trudged down to the
little house to have his great empty coffee-pot replenished, it was
closed and locked.

"Course," he said, nodding approvingly, "they've gone to church. I might
a known they wouldn't wash and iron and go to school Sunday. I ought to
remembered and took away my coffee. Well, never mind, I'll just run
around to the Coffee House and get my dish filled, and that will make it
all right."

So many customers came just at tea time that he found it impossible to
go home to tea, but took a cup of his own coffee and a few of his cakes,
and chuckled meantime over the fact that he was the only individual who
could take his supper from that dry-goods box without paying for it.

It was just as the bells were ringing for evening service that he
joyfully packed his nearly emptied dishes into the basket, shook the
crumbs from his little table-cloth, folded it carefully, and rejoiced
over the thought that he had done an excellent day's work, and could
afford to go to church. The brown house was closed again, so he left his
basket under a woodpile in the alley-way, and made all possible speed
for Mr. Birge's church. Even then the opening services were nearly
concluded, but he was in time for the Bible text, and that text Tode
never forgot in his life. The words were, "Remember the Sabbath day, to
keep it holy."

I can not describe to you the poor boy's bewildered astonishment as he
listened and thought, and gradually began to take in something of the
true meaning of those earnest words. Mr. Birge was very decided in his
opinions, very plain in his utterances. Milk wagons, ice wagons, meat
wagons, and the whole long catalogue of Sabbath-breaking wagons, to say
nothing of row-boats and steamboats, and trains of cars, were dwelt upon
with unsparing tongue--nay, he went farther than that, and expressed his
unmistakable opinion of Sabbath-breaking ice-cream saloons and coffee
saloons; then down to the little apple children, and candy children, and
shoestring children, who haunt the Sabbath streets. Tode listened, and
ran his fingers through his hair in perplexity.

"It must come in _somewhere_," he said to himself in some bewilderment.
"I don't quite keep a coffee house, and I don't--why, yes I do, sell
apples every now and then; and as to that, I suppose I keep a coffee
_box_. What if it ain't a house? I wonder now if it ain't ri