Kindness to animals begets a feeling of care and protection for the helpless and dependent.

Henry was a little boy who lived on a big place near town. There were plenty of trees in his yard and the birds were always flying round, but there were no squirrels. One day Henry said to his cousin Ed who lived in town:

“Cousin Ed, I wish you would get me two little squirrels.”

“All right, Henry, I will try to get them, but you will have to take good care of them.” Henry promised, and in a few days cousin Ed told him a man had promised to get the squirrels.

Henry was very busy now getting the squirrels’ home ready. He built it out of an old box, fixed it so that no rain could get in, and cut a hole in the side so that the squirrels could go in and out. By the time the box was ready the squirrels came—two little baby squirrels, just old enough to take care of themselves.

Henry was a very happy little boy. He put the squirrel house high up in a tree in the yard, and plenty of nuts close by so that the squirrels could get them. He took care not to frighten the squirrels, and never tried to catch them until they were quite tame.

In about a week’s time they knew his voice, and would climb down the tree to take a nut from his hand and then scamper back up to the squirrel home and hide it inside. Soon they were tame enough to come inside the house and play around. They would climb on Henry’s shoulders and down into his pockets to hunt for nuts.

One day Henry’s grandfather came to dinner and sat in a big chair on the porch. There was a bowl of nuts on the table, and Henry called “Jack” and “Jill”—for those were the squirrels’ names. They came running and saw the nuts. They looked at grandfather. They must have thought he was a tree, for they began to hide nuts all over him. They ran behind him and into his pockets which they almost filled with nuts. Then grandfather got up and the nuts scattered in every direction, while every one laughed to see how astonished Jack and Jill were to see their tree walk off that way.

The next year out came four little baby squirrels from the squirrel house, and they went to live in the trees in the yard. And in a few years there were squirrels everywhere, running over the trees and about the yard, and people often came to see them and play with them.

Jack and Jill still live in the old home, but they certainly have a yard full of children.