Lord, evermore give us this bread.

Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it and was glad.

"Association is a queer thing, children; association of ideas, I mean." (Some people might think that Grandma Burton used large words in talking to her grandchildren; but the fact was, she did not try very hard to make her words little. Not that she selected long ones; her language was always simple; but words which they would be likely to hear among cultured people, or to see in their books, she aimed to use in talking with them. If they did not understand a word, they were always at liberty to ask its meaning. The consequence was, they were quite intelligent children, and the phrase, "association of ideas," did not trouble the older ones in the least. As for little Sarah she did not bother her brains about it, yet awhile.)

"Now you wouldn't suppose," continued Grandma, "that there was anything in that verse to make me think of a large, old-fashioned farm-house kitchen, with a wooden bowl on the table, and a wooden spoon hanging over it, and old-fashioned dishes arranged on the shelf above it, and a woman in a straight dress, and neck handkerchief, bending over the bread-bowl, and a little girl with a high-necked apron on, standing before an old-fashioned churn, moving the dasher up and down, yet I see all those things as plainly as though it was yesterday morning, instead of sixty odd years ago."

"What makes it, Grandma? What happened?" And Marion settled little Sarah more comfortably on the hassock, and straightened herself, ready to listen.

"Why, it is this association of ideas I was speaking of; my memory of that verse about bread is mixed in with all those scenes. I was the little girl moving the dasher. You see it was this way:

"Mother was very sick that spring, and father had to take her to the city to be under the care of a great doctor, and he had to stay with her; so we children were scattered. I went to spend a week with aunt Pat Worcester."

"What a horrid name for a woman!" said Rollo.

"Oh! it was a nice name. Patriot, the whole name was, but almost everybody called her aunt Pat. She was a splendid woman. People all respected her. She was my father's aunt and he had lived with her a good deal when he was a boy and loved her very much; he liked to have me stay with her. That winter, or spring, it was, she had a nephew living with her; a great red-headed boy named Jeremiah, only we always said Jerry. I didn't like him very well. He was a smart, bright boy, and might have been pleasant, only he was always teasing children younger than himself, telling them things which were not true, threatening to drown them, you know, or bury them alive, or something of that sort; things that he had no more notion of doing than he had of flying; but they were too young to know it, poor things, and he had that kind of evil nature which seemed to be pleased with making others uncomfortable. He didn't trouble me much, because I kept close to aunt Pat; but once in awhile he would wink his great eyes at me, and tell me he was going to swallow me, some day, when aunt Pat wasn't looking."

Grandma's children all laughed at this, and Marion questioned: "Why, Grandma, you surely didn't believe that, did you?"

"No, child; not exactly, of course; and yet I couldn't help feeling kind of creepy all over, when I was in danger of being left alone with him, and I thought of his great mouth. It is my opinion that little folks suffer from these things more than older ones have any idea. I should despise a boy who would descend to so mean a trick as trying to tease one younger than himself."

Harold looked out of the window, steadily, his cheeks a trifle red. The question was, did Grandma know, or did she not know, that he told little Bobby White the other day he was going to tie him to the top of the great big flag staff at the corner, and leave him swinging there for a flag, because his dress was red, and his collar was white, and his eyes were blue. But Grandma didn't look at Harold.

"Aunt Pat was moulding bread in the great wooden bowl, and I was moving the dasher up and down very slowly, and watching her all the while. I wanted to learn how to make bread, and I asked a great many questions; but, after all, the thought most in my mind, and which I said nothing about, after a fashion which children often have, was this very story about Jesus feeding the five thousand people with five loaves of bread. Only the day before, which had been Sunday, aunt Pat had read this whole story to Jerry and me, and talked it over. She was an excellent hand to tell Bible stories, she made them seem so real. She explained the size of the loaves, and all about it. When I saw the great big ones she was moulding, I thought they would have fed a great many more than the little lad's; and from that I went on, thinking out the story, and the way those people followed Jesus the next day, and asked for the bread which would keep them from getting hungry again, without understanding at all what they were asking for. Aunt Pat said they prayed just as plenty of people did nowadays; asked great big things without thinking of them, or wanting them very much. Just then Jerry came in, blowing his fingers, and pretending to be very cold; it was a rather sharp spring morning, and he had been out at the woodpile. He said he wasn't so cold, though, as he was hungry. Aunt Pat laughed, and said she wondered if there was ever a boy made wasn't hungry all the time; then she looked at the clock, and found it was about the time when she always gave Jerry a lunch; for he had been up and at work since five in the morning. Oh! he had his breakfast, of course, a little after five, but aunt Pat always gave him a piece in the middle of the forenoon. By this time she had her loaves all nicely moulded, and she went to the closet and cut him a thick slice of the most excellent bread, and spread it with butter that smelled like June roses. Jerry took great bites of it with a satisfied air, smacking his lips to show how good it was; it must have brought some thought of the very story I was thinking about, for suddenly he spoke out: 'Evermore give us this bread! I say so too!' Then aunt Pat's eyes flashed. 'Jeremiah,' she said, and her voice was very stern, 'you are named after too good a man to be guilty of making fun of Scripture in any such way. Repeating a prayer, too, and not meaning it any more than the heathen do, when they mumble words to their little stone gods. I'm ashamed of you!'

"Jerry looked a little abashed, and muttered that he didn't mean any harm; but I remember to this day, just how wrought up aunt Patriot was about it; she told Jerry that boys who commenced by turning sacred words to fit their own notions, often ended by being profane, wicked men. And that's just the way Jeremiah Carter ended. I haven't thought of him for many a day. But he grew up to be a bad man."

"After all," said Rollo, after a few moments of silence, "you don't think, Grandma, that quoting that Bible verse made a bad man of him?"

"N-o," said Grandma, speaking slowly, giving her head a little doubtful shake the while, "I wouldn't like to say that. Boys do trifle with serious words, sometimes, and get over it, and make good men. I should be sorry enough if I thought they didn't. But then, Jeremiah Carter was exactly that kind of a boy. He had no reverence for the Bible, nor for words of prayer; he was tempted to make fun of everything; and he got so used to it, that after awhile, nothing of that kind shocked him; he became one of these men who pretend not to believe the Bible; and sometimes I have thought that if he had not learned to make light of it when he was a boy, it would not have come so handy when he grew up. Anyhow it always makes me think of Jeremiah Carter when I hear anybody doing it; and he isn't a pleasant body to think of, I can tell you. He died a good many years ago, and they said his last word was a profane one."

The grandchildren made no other comments, and Rollo presently began to whistle. He knew one thing; and that was, it was a great temptation to him to quote a Bible verse now and then, for his own use. Not anything so wicked as Jeremiah did, but in a way that his grandmother, he knew, would call "light and trifling." He wasn't sure whether anybody else had noticed this habit and he made up his mind while he whistled, that they should never again have a chance to notice it in him.