LACIE'S TRACKS.
MAMMA, what do you keep that ugly stone on the what-not for?" asked Lacie one day, as she was helping her mother dust the parlor.
"That stone! Why, I value that stone very highly,—more than all the rest."
"I am sure it is not half so pretty as those pink and-white corals, or those lovely tinted shells."
"No, it is not a pretty stone. But see here!
Didn't you ever notice it?"
"No. What made that rough place?"
"It is a bird's track."
"A bird's track! A bird made a track in the hard stone!"
"No; this was made ages ago, when the rock was soft like mud. After long years, this mud changed into stone; and as the track remained undisturbed, of course it would appear in the stone just as it had in the mud."
"Is this the only track that was ever found?"
"O no! There have been hundreds of them found.
Some of them are very small, as if made by birds no larger than a sparrow; while others are much larger than the feet of any birds we have now a day's. Just by the footprints on the stones we can tell very nearly what kinds of birds lived ages ago."
"How strange! Do people ever make tracks that will last always?"
"Yes; we are all making them every day."
"Me! I make tracks! I make them in the dust sometimes, but the winds and the rains soon destroy them. Last winter I made some in the snow, but they melted."
"I think I saw you make a track yesterday that will last."
'"Me! Where?"
"At the picnic. Do you remember when I asked poor Mary Miller and her little 'brother to come and eat dinner with us, that you said, loud enough for Mary to hear, ‘No, we don't want them here; they never go with us'?
Don't you suppose you left a mark upon Mary's heart that will, never be erased."
"I see what you mean now, mamma. I never thought of that before."
"Mamma," said Lacie the next morning, "I have been thinking of what you said about tracks; and I suppose, if you can tell from bird's tracks what the bird was like, you can tell from a little girl's tracks what she is like."
"Certainly. I am glad you have thought so much about it."
"I am going to see if I can't make a good track every day. And can't I begin by having a picnic this afternoon out under the locust-trees?"
"Whom do you want to invite?"
"Mary Miller and little Tommy. - I'll go and tell them I'm sorry for what I said, and ask them to play there was a big rain came and swept away that ugly track."
"You will drown it with kindness, will you?"
"Yes, mamma. We will have such a good time with my picture-book and dolls and dishes, that she will forget that I ever said anything ugly to her. And can't we have supper all by ourselves on my little table? Oh, that will be so nice! Where is my hat? Let me go this minute, and tell Mary!"
Mary and Tommy came; and when the time came to start home, they both wore such smiling faces, that mamma said,—
"Well, guess you have drowned that ugly track."
"O yes! Mary says she will never think of it again. We had such a good time, and I'm so happy; I think I must have made a track in my own heart too."
Well-Spring.