Page 306 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

“ W hy arc you crying, mammy?”
T only shook my head.
" I t ’s nothing, Nellie,” I whispered;
li Kiss me, and go to bed."
"L e t rue say my prayers, mammy—
WiH you hear me say them now ?”
She prayed for her absent, father;
I listened, but God knows how.

She prayed to the Lord to bring him,
Safe and sound and well,
Back from the far-off country
To mother and little Nell—
Prayed that, with her fattier lying
In that far-off country, dead I
"N ow , father’s safe till to-morrow,”
She whispered, and went to bed*

I hadn't the heart lo tell her,
So night after night she prayed,
Just as she promised her father
When the hist good-bye he bade.
But the prayer was a cruel dagger
To me as I sat and heard,
And my heart was stabbed to bleeding
With every childish word.

So a weary month went over,
Till at last my nerves gave way,
And I told her to stoo one evening.
x. ~J1
A s she came to tny knee to pray.
M y brain was turned with sorrow,
I was wicked and weak and wild
To speak as I spoke that evening,
And shock the faith of a child.