One day a girl, coming out from school, got on a street car to go to her home.  The car was crowded.  She found a seat next to a woman who was heavily laden with bundles.  She had all she could do to hold those bundles in her lap and keep them from falling and scattering their contents on the floor.  Then a string about one of the packages became untied.  She struggled to get that string fastened securely.  She had so many packages, her fingers were numb with cold, and again and again the string slipped just at the crucial time.  Finally this school girl, who was an attractive, well-dressed girl, reached over and placed her nicely gloved finger on the obstreperous knot.  There was a grateful smile from the troubled woman and a hearty “Thank you.”  The next stop was the girl’s home.  As she went to the end of the car she passed a school friend who had watched the little incident.  She said to her, “I see you belong to the helping hand society.”  “No,” replied the girl, “not the helping hand, just the helping finger society.”  This is a great society, girls and boys.  Admission to it requires no initiation fee, no dues, simply the desire and the will to be helpful wherever you are.

MEMORY VERSE, Ecclesiastes 9:  10

    “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”

MEMORY HYMN [349]

    "Saviour, thy dying love thou gavest me."

TWO R’S AND AN A

Do you know what week this is?  We have all sorts of weeks, don’t we!  There is Sunday School week, Go to Church week, Boy Scout week, Red Cross week, Social Welfare week, Hospital week, Y.W.C.A. and Y.M.C.A. week.  Sometimes we wish we could have one week all to ourselves.

Well, this is a special week.  It is called Good Literature week.  I want to tell you about Good Literature week by the use of these three letters, two R’s and an A.

The first R stands for Read.  By all means read.  There is no excuse for not reading, there is so much to read.  Indeed I think that is the chief difficulty, we have too much, at least too much of that which is not good to read.  Here’s the bulky daily paper.  When it is delivered there is a rush for it.  The children want the comic supplement.  So do some of the grownups.

    “A little nonsense now and then,
    Is relished by the wisest men.”

That is true, and all right, but read something beside the comics.

The second R is Remember.  You cannot remember all that you read.  You can remember much.  You should train your mind to remember the best.  John Ruskin, one of the most gifted of Englishmen, said, “To this I owe all that I have of power, to the fact that when I was a boy my mother made me learn, every day, and remember, a verse of the Bible.”

Now the A. The A stands for, can you guess?  It means Action.  Read, remember what you read, and then apply it, put it into action.  It is a fine thing to read a story like Pollyanna and get all excited over it.  It is much finer to read Pollyanna and then put her spirit into action in the daily life of the home.