One pleasant Sunday morning, the two little girls went together to school, and after all the children had recited their lessons, the superintendent rose and said that a good missionary was about to leave his home, and go to preach the Gospel to the heathens far over the sea, and that they wanted to raise a subscription and purchase Bibles to send out with him, that he might distribute them among those poor people who had never heard God’s holy word.

He told them how the poor little children were taught to lie and steal by their parents, and how they worshiped images of carved wood, and stone, and sometimes killed themselves and drowned the infants, thinking thus to please the senseless things they called their gods.  He said that children who could read and write, and go to church, ought to be grateful to God for placing them in a Christian country, and they should pray for the poor little heathen children, and do all they could to provide instruction for them.

“I do not expect you to do much, my dear children,” he said, “but all I ask is, to do what you can; some of you have money given you to buy toys or cakes; would you not rather know that it had helped a little heathen child to come to God, than to spend it in anything so soon destroyed and forgotten?  And to those who have no money, let me ask, can you not earn it?  There are very many ways in which children may be useful, and God will most graciously accept a gift which has cost you labor or self-denial.  You remember Jesus himself said that the poor widow’s two mites were of more value than all that the rich cast into the treasury, because they gave of their abundance, but she cast in all that she had; will you not, therefore, endeavor to win the Savior’s blessing by following the widow’s example, and ‘Go and do likewise?’”

The children listened very attentively to all the superintendent said, and after school there was much talking among the scholars as to the amount to be given, and how to obtain it.  The following Sunday was appointed to receive the collection, and all seemed animated with a generous feeling, and anxious to do what they could.

“I have a bright new penny,” cried little Patty Green, who was scarcely six years old.  “I didn’t like to spend it, because it was so pretty, but I will send it to the little heathen children to buy Bibles with!”

“And I,” added James Blair, “have a tenpence that Mr. Jones gave me for holding his horse; I was saving it to buy a knife, but I can wait a while for that; uncle has promised me one next Christmas.”

“You may add my sixpence to it, brother,” said his sister Lucy.  “I did want a pair of woolen gloves, but it is long until winter, and I do not need them now.”

“Good!” exclaimed merry, good-natured Simon Bounce.  “Ten and six are sixteen, and Patty’s bright penny makes seventeen; and let me see, I’ve got fivepence, and John Blake offered me three cents for my ball, that will make two shillings exactly, quite a good beginning.  Why what a treasure there will be if we all put in our savings at this rate!”