shells
in a row. Oh you thoughtless child! You must certainly be a very little
child to take pleasure in such a babyish thing; and you are very, very
thoughtless and wrong to do it at the expense of a poor innocent bird
which never injured or wished to injure you, though you can rob it of
all its delight, to please such a silly fancy. If you want a pretty
thing to ornament your room, go and pick up some round, clear pebbles,
of different colours, and give one side of them a polish at the
grindstone; then get some pieces of brick, and join them together in the
shape of an arch, or any thing you fancy, with a little mortar; spread
more mortar, thick and rough, over the front, and, while it is wet,
stick in your pebbles, with the shining side outmost, with bits of
glass, moss, sealing-wax, and any gay thing that comes in your way. I
have seen such pretty contrivances, and have said to myself, "The boy
who made this is skilful, and may come to be a good builder, or other
artisan, some day;" but when I see bird's eggshells hung up, I turn away
with a feeling of pain, because I know that somebody must be there,
either idle and cruel, or encouraging their children to be so.

[Illustration]

But there is something far worse than this. When the mother bird has
made her nest, and sat long days and nights on her eggs, and heard the
little ones chirp within, and helped them to break the thin shell, and
felt their little warm bodies cuddling themselves among her soft
feathers, and seen their yellow beaks open to ask her for the food that
it gives such joy to her affectionate heart to put into them; oh, THEN,
can you turn all her honest happiness into misery and mourning, and kill
those baby-birds with a miserable death, by cold and hunger, if not by
other tortures. If ever you have done this, pray to the Lord God to
forgive your sin, for Jesus Christ's sake. Do you think He will forgive
you? Yes, you say, because he is very merciful. Indeed he is and for
that very reason he hates cruelty: but while you look to the Lord's
mercy for pardon, you must steadily resolve to offend no more by doing
what he hates; else you only mock him.

I do not myself understand how anybody can bear to hurt little birds,
they are such endearing creatures; but I have seen it with my own eyes,
and am obliged to believe it. Bad example will go a great way. Boys, and
men too, will do what they see others do, without stopping to think of
the great truth tha