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A BUDGET FROM THE LITTLE NAILER.

They have come! the long expected letters from “Jemmy Stubbing,” or the Nailer Boy.  I am sure they will be a treat to all the children that meet in our School-room.  I hope all the benches will be full whilst Josiah’s letters are read.  And what a nice thing it was in the children in America, to take that little fellow out of the cinders and soot of the blacksmith’s shop, and send him to school for two years!

Now many a little boy and girl of our school-room circle has contributed half a dime towards Josiah’s education.  I would ask that little boy or girl what he or she would sell out all right and title to the pleasure and consequence of that act for?  What would you take in money down for your share in the work of expanding that little fellow’s mind, and filling it with such new ideas as he expresses in his letters?  What a new world he has lived in since he returned from school to his little wayside smithy, the roof of which can hardly be seen over the hedge!  Think of it—­but you cannot think of it as it is, unless you could see that nailer’s shop and cottage.  But think of what he was, when you took him from the anvil and sent him to school.  Then he could not tell a letter of the alphabet, and never would have read a verse in the Bible, if it had not been for your half dimes.  Now see with what delight he searches the scriptures, and marks and commits to memory choice verses in that Holy Book.  He has taught his father to read it too, and is teaching his sisters, and the children of the neighbors to read it, and all good books.  A great many young boys and girls in England have heard what you did for him, and some of them are beginning to write to him, and he answers them, and gives them good advice.  The last steamer from England brought us a nice lot of letters from him, some directed to you, some to me, and one or two to others, I will read them to you in the order in which they are written.

        BROMSGROVE LICKEY, Dec. 4, 1849.

  My Dear Sir: 

I thought that when I wrote to you again I should have a few subscribers for the Citizen.  I will tell you the reason why I have not got them; they are most all primitive methodists.  They have been trying to scheme them a chapel for this last twelve months.  They are having tea parties and missionary meetings every two or three weeks, so they have put me off a little longer.  I had a good deal on my mind through reading the Citizen.  I opened my bible at the forty-first chapter of Isaiah and at the sixth and seventh verses.  There I read the following words:  ’They helped everyone his neighbor, and every one said to his brother, be of good courage; so the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, it is ready for the sodering, and he fastened it