But when she reminded them of that text, “When thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room,” &c. they saw in those words a very serious reason for not pushing forward into the best place in company.  And when they recollected that every man was to do to others as he wished others to do to him, it became clear to them that it was the duty of all people to study their neighbours’ comfort and pleasure as well as their own; and it was no hard matter to show how this rule applied to all the little ins and outs of every-day life, whether at home, or in society.  And there were plenty of other texts, ordering deference to elders, and the modesty which arises out of that humility of spirit which “vaunteth not itself,” and “is not puffed up.”  There was, moreover, the comfortable promise, that “the meek” should “inherit the earth.”

Of course, it was difficult to the little ones, just at first, to see how such very serious words could apply to anybody’s manners, and especially to their own.

But it was a difficulty which mamma, with a little explanation, got over very easily; and before the little ones went to bed, they quite understood that in restraining themselves from teazing and being troublesome, they were not only not being “tiresome,” but were actually obeying several Gospel rules.

“Nothing to do.”

“Had I a little son, I would christen him nothing-to-do.”  Charles Lamb.

There is a complaint which is not to be found in the doctor’s books, but which is, nevertheless, such a common and troublesome one, that one heartily wishes some physic could be discovered which would cure it.

It may be called the nothing-to-do complaint.

Even quite little children are subject to it, but they never have it badly.  Parents and nurses have only to give them something to do, or tell them of something to do, and the thing is put right.  A puzzle or a picture-book relieves the attack at once.

But after the children have out-grown puzzles, and picture-books, and nurses, and when even a parent’s advice is received with a little impatience, then the nothing-to-do complaint, if it seizes them at all, is a serious disease, and often very difficult to cure; and, if not cured, alas! then follows the melancholy spectacle of grown-up men and women, who are a plague to their friends, and a weariness to themselves; because, living under the notion that there is nothing for them to do, they want everybody else to do something to amuse them.

Anyone can laugh at the old story of the gentleman who got into such a fanciful state of mind—­hypochondriacal, it is called—­that he thought he was his own umbrella; and so, on coming in from a walk, would go and lay it in the easy-chair by the fire, while he himself went and leant up against the wall in a corner of the hall.