2.  “It implies,” said her mother, “in the first place, a total destruction of all selfishness:  for a man who loves himself better than his neighbors, can never do to others as he would have others do to him.  We are bound not only to do, but to feel, toward others as we would have others feel toward us.  Remember, it is much easier to reprove the sin of others than to overcome temptation when it assails ourselves.

3.  “A man may be perfectly honest and yet very selfish; but the command implies something more than mere honesty; it requires charity as well as integrity.  The meaning of the command is fully explained in the parable of the Good Samaritan.  The Levite, who passed by the wounded man without offering him assistance, may have been a man of great honesty; but he did not do unto the poor stranger as he would have wished others to do unto him.”

4.  Susan pondered carefully and seriously on what her mother had said.  When she thought over her past conduct, a blush of shame crept to her cheeks, and a look of sorrow into her eyes, as many little acts of selfishness and unkindness came back to her memory.  She resolved that for the future, both in great things and small, she would remember and follow the Golden Rule.

5.  It was not long after this that an opportunity occurred of trying Susan’s principles.  One Saturday evening when she went, as usual, to farmer Thompson’s inn, to receive the price of her mother’s washing for the boarders, which amounted to five dollars, she found the farmer in the stable yard.

6.  He was apparently in a terrible rage with some horse dealers with whom he had been bargaining.  He held in his hand an open pocketbook, full of bills; and scarcely noticing the child as she made her request, except to swear at her, as usual, for troubling him when he was busy, he handed her a bank note.

7.  Glad to escape so easily, Susan hurried out of the gate, and then, pausing to pin the money safely in the folds of her shawl, she discovered that he had given her two bills instead of one.  She looked around; nobody was near to share her discovery; and her first impulse was joy at the unexpected prize.

8.  “It is mine, all mine,” said she to herself; “I will buy mother a new cloak with it, and she can give her old one to sister Mary, and then Mary can go to the Sunday school with me next winter.  I wonder if it will not buy a pair of shoes for brother Tom, too.”

9.  At that moment she remembered that he must have given it to her by mistake; and therefore she had no right to it.  But again the voice of the tempter whispered, “He gave it, and how do you know that he did not intend to make you a present of it?  Keep it; he will never know it, even if it should be a mistake; for he had too many such bills in that great pocketbook to miss one.”

10.  While this conflict was going on in her mind between good and evil, she was hurrying homeward as fast as possible.  Yet, before she came in sight of her home, she had repeatedly balanced the comforts which the money would buy against the sin of wronging her neighbor.