Excerpt from Childhood's Morning: For Kindergarten Use in Sunday School and Home

Why, how does this happen? Hasn't each one two hands? Or, has some one three?

Let us count again. How many children are there? Yes, ten Then some one has only one hand. All two hands? Well, did you all hold up your two hands? Ah, no! Henry held up only one; this accounts for it. So there are really twenty hands in the room, twice as many as there are children; and if you count my two, then there will be how many? Yes, two more than twenty, - twenty-two.

Just look at your hands. What wonderful things they are! How soft and tender and warm [here pass around, taking some of the little hands in your own What beautiful nails with the little white half-moon at the bottom!

Are the nails of any use? Yes; they protect the fingers which have to do very hard work. If there were no nails at the ends how many hard knocks and sharp cuts the tender flesh would get!

Bend your finger slowly, one finger at a time, very slowly; now shut the hand; now Open it and see What a curious thing it is.

What can this little hand do? Think of something. Yes, it can use a knife, it can write with a pencil or piece Of chalk, it can paint beautiful pictures, it can use a hammer, it sews With a fine needle and makes such even little stitches And when it is larger and stronger, like a man's, it may build huge engines and high bridges and great mills and the tall church spires; or it may run over the keys of the piano so nimbly that you can hardly see the fingers as they fly.

But does the little hand ever do wrong? Can you think of any wrong things it does? Yes, sometimes it strikes sometimes it takes things which do not belong to it; sometimes it is very unclean. Could your dear little hand do these things?

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