The Indianapolis Journal

PRAYING FOR PAPA
How God Answered a Little Girl Most as Quick as the Telephone.
Detroit Post and Tribune.

A few nights ago a well-known citizen of this town, who has been walking for some time in the downward path, came out of his home and started down town for a night of carousal with some old companions he had promised to meet. His young wife had besought him with imploring eyes to spend the evening with her, and had reminded him of the time when evenings passed in her company were all too short. His little daughter had clung about his knees and coaxed, in her pretty, willful way, for "papa" to tell her some bed-time stories, but habit was stronger than love for wife and child, and he eluded their tender questioning by the special sophistries the father of evil advances at such times from his credit fund and went his way. But when he was blocks distant from his home he found that in changing his coat he had forgotten to remove his wallet, and he could not go out on a drinking bout without money, even though he knew that his family needed it, that his wife was economizing each day more and more in order to make up his deficits, and he hurried back and crept softly past the windows of the little home, in order that he might steal in and obtain it, without running the gauntlet of either questions or caresses. But something stayed his feet; there was a fire in the grate within—for the night was chill—and it lit up the little parlor and brought out in startling effects the pictures on the wall. But these were as nothing to the picture on the hearth. There, in the soft glow of the firelight, knelt his little child at her mother's feet, its small hands clasped in prayer, its fair head bowed, and as its rosy lips uttered each word with childish distinctness, the father listened, spellbound to the spot.

"Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take."

Sweet petition! The man himself, who stood there with bearded lips shut tightly together, had said that prayer once at his mother's knee. Where was that mother now? The sunset gates had long ago unbarred to let her pass through. But the child had not finished; he heard her "God bless mamma, papa and my own self,"—then there was a pause, and she lifted troubled blue eyes to her mother's face.

"God bless papa," prompted the mother, softly.

"God bless papa," lisped the little one.

"And—please send him home sober"—he could not hear the mother as she said this, but the child followed in a clear, inspired tone:

"God—bless papa—and please—send him—home—sober. Amen."

Mother and child sprang to their feet in alarm when the door opened so suddenly, but they were not afraid when they saw who it was returned so soon; but that night, when little Mamie was being tucked up in bed after such a romp with papa, she said in the sleepiest and most contented of voices:

"Mamma, God answers most as quick as the telephone, doesn't he?"