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the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.










TIP LEWIS AND HIS LAMP

BY <DW29>


AUTHOR OF "ESTER RIED," "ESTER RIED YET SPEAKING," "MRS. SOLOMON SMITH
LOOKING ON," "AN ENDLESS CHAIN," "FOUR GIRLS AT CHAUTAUQUA," ETC. ETC.




TIP LEWIS AND HIS LAMP.




CHAPTER I.

"Cast thy bread upon the waters."


The room was very full. Children, large and small, boys and girls, and
some looking almost old enough to be called men and women, filled the
seats. The scholars had just finished singing their best-loved hymn,
"Happy Land;" and the superintendent was walking up and down the room,
spying out classes here and there which were without teachers, and
supplying them from the visitors' seat, which was up by the desk.

The long seat near the door was filled this morning by half a dozen
dirty, ragged, barefooted boys; their teacher's seat was vacant, and
those boys looked, every one, as though they had come thither just to
have a grand frolic.

Oh, such bright, cunning, wicked faces as they had!

Their torn pants and jackets, their matted hair, even the very twinkle in
their eyes, showed that they were the "Mission Class."

That is, the class which somebody had gathered from the little black,
comfortless-looking houses which thronged a narrow back street of that
village, and coaxed to come to the Sabbath school,--to this large, light,
pleasant room, where the sun shone in upon little girls in white dresses,
with blue and pink ribbons fluttering from their shoulders; and upon
little boys, whose snowy linen collars and dainty knots of black ribbon
had evidently been arranged by careful hands