“Would you?” asks the mother.

“Yes, mother, I should like to give him some very much.  Do you suppose he sang the song for us?”

“I don’t know that he did,” replies the mother.  “We don’t know exactly what the birds mean by all their singing.  They take some pleasure in seeing us, I think, or else they would not come so much around our house; and I don’t know but that this bird’s song may come from some kind of joy or gladness he felt in seeing us come to the door.  At any rate, it will be a pleasure to us to give him some crumbs to pay him for his song.”

The child will think so too, and will run off joyfully to bring a piece of bread to form crumbs to be scattered upon the path.

And the whole transaction will have the effect of awakening and cherishing the sentiment of gratitude in her heart.  The effect will not be great, it is true, but it will be of the right kind.  It will be a drop of water upon the unfolding cotyledons of a seed just peeping up out of the ground, which will percolate below after you have gone away, and give the little roots a new impulse of growth.  For when you have left the child seated upon the door-step, occupied in throwing out the crumbs to the bird, her heart will be occupied with the thoughts you have put into it, and the sentiment of gratitude for kindness received will commence its course of development, if it had not commenced it before.

The Case of older Children.

Of course the employment of such an occasion as this of the singing of a little bird and such a conversation in respect to it for cultivating the sentiment of gratitude in the heart, is adapted only to the case of quite a young child.  For older children, while the principle is the same, the circumstances and the manner of treating the case must be adapted to a maturer age.  Robert, for example—­twelve years of age—­had been sick, and during his convalescence his sister Mary, two years older than himself, had been very assiduous in her attendance upon him.  She had waited upon him at his meals, and brought him books and playthings, from time to time, to amuse him.  After he had fully recovered his health, he was sitting in the garden, one sunny morning in the spring, with his mother, and she said,

“How kind Mary was to you while you were sick!”

“Yes,” said Robert, “she was very kind indeed.”

“If you would like to do something for her in return,” continued his mother, “I’ll tell you what would be a good plan.”

Robert, who, perhaps, without this conversation would not have thought particularly of making any return, said he should like to do something for her very much.

“Then,” said his mother, “you might make her a garden.  I can mark off a place for a bed for her large enough to hold a number of kinds of flowers, and then you can dig it up, and rake it over, and lay it off into little beds, and sow the seeds.  I’ll buy the seeds for you.  I should like to do something towards making the garden for her, for she helped me a great deal, as well as you, in the care she took of you.”