Red, White, Blue Socks, Part First Being the First Book

Excerpt

"Oh dear! what shall I do?" cried George, fretfully, one rainy afternoon. "Mamma, do tell me what to do."

"And I'm so tired!" echoed Helen, who was lazily playing with a kitten in her lap. "I don't see why it should rain on a Friday afternoon, when we have no lessons to learn. We can't go out, and no one can come to see us. It's too bad, there!"

"Helen, do you know better than God?" asked her mother, speaking very gravely. "You forget that He sends the rain."

"I suppose I was thoughtless, mamma," answered the child; "I did not mean to be wicked, but, dear me, the time passes so slowly, with nothing to do."

"Have you and George read all your books?"

"Oh yes! two or three times over," they both answered; "and oh, mamma," continued Helen, "if the one who wrote 'Two Little Heaps,' or the 'Rollo' book writer, or the author of 'The Little White Angel,' would only write some more books, I, for one, would not care how hard it rained. If I was grown up and rich, I wouldn't mind giving a dollar a letter for those stories."

"Nor I," shouted George in an animated tone, quite different from the discontented whine he had favored his mother with a few moments before; "the best thing is to have them read aloud to you; that makes you understand all about it so much better. I say, mamma, couldn't you write a letter to one of those delightful people and beg them to hurry up with more stories, especially some about bad children;—not exactly wicked, you know, but full of mischief. Then I am sure that they are all true. Only wait till I'm a man! I'll just write the history of some jolly fellows I know who are always getting into scrapes, but haven't a scrap of meanness about them. That's the kind of book I like! I'll write dozens of them, and give them to all the Sunday school libraries."

His mother smiled at this speech, and then said quietly, "I know a gentleman who likes the story of 'The Little White Angel,' as much as you do, and he has written a letter to request the author to write six books for him."

"Six! hurrah!" shouted George, "how glad I am!" and he skipped up to Helen, caught her by the hands, and the two danced round the room, upsetting a chair, till Helen, catching her foot in the skirt of her mother's dress, they both tumbled down on the carpet together.

"If you cut up such violent capers," said the kind mother, laughing, "at the first part of my information, it may be dangerous to tell you what the author replied."

"Oh no, do tell us!" cried the children. "We'll be as still as our shadows;" and while they made violent efforts to look grave and stand quiet, their mother told them that the author had consented, the six books were to be written, and she would buy them the very first day they were published. "Perhaps," she continued, "mind, only perhaps, I may get them for you before they are ever printed."

"Why, how, mamma?" they both asked.

"Well, suppose you make some very good resolutions—let me see," and she took a pencil out of her pocket, and drawing a sheet of paper toward her, began to write:

"1st. To endeavor to say your prayers morning and evening without a wandering thought....