to spin, she had taken Annie, and
thus a friendship commenced between herself and Charlotte.

Annie had been early taught by her mother to abhor deceit and falsehood
as hateful to God, and Charlotte often startled her by equivocating, but
she had never known her to tell a direct untruth, and she loved her
because she was affectionate and kind. Some kind and pious ladies had
succeeded in establishing a Sunday-school in the village, and Annie was
among the first who attended; she told Charlotte, who prevailed upon her
mother to let her go, and they were both regular scholars.

One pleasant Sunday morning, the two little girls went together to
school, and after all the children had recited their lessons, the
superintendent rose and said that a good missionary was about to leave
his home, and go to preach the Gospel to the heathens far over the sea,
and that they wanted to raise a subscription and purchase Bibles to send
out with him, that he might distribute them among those poor people who
had never heard God's holy word.

He told them how the poor little children were taught to lie and steal
by their parents, and how they worshiped images of carved wood, and
stone, and sometimes killed themselves and drowned the infants, thinking
thus to please the senseless things they called their gods. He said that
children who could read and write, and go to church, ought to be
grateful to God for placing them in a Christian country, and they should
pray for the poor little heathen children, and do all they could to
provide instruction for them.

"I do not expect you to do much, my dear children," he said, "but all I
ask is, to do what you can; some of you have money given you to buy toys
or cakes; would you not rather know that it had helped a little heathen
child to come to God, than to spend it in anything so soon destroyed and
forgotten? And to those who have no money, let me ask, can you not earn
it? There are very many ways in which children may be useful, and God
will most graciously accept a gift which has cost you labor or
self-denial. You remember Jesus himself said that the poor widow's two
mites were of more value than all that the rich cast into the treasury,
because they gave of their abundance, but she cast in all that she had;
will you not, therefore, endeavor to win the Savior's blessing by
following the widow's example, and 'Go and do likewise?'"

The children listened very attentively to all the superintendent