Little Foxes

“PAPA, what are you going to give us this winter for our evening readings?” said Jennie.

“I am thinking, for one thing,” I replied, “of preaching a course of household sermons from a very odd text prefixed to a discourse which I found at the bottom of the pamphlet-barrel in the garret.”

“Don’t say sermon, Papa,—it has such a dreadful sound; and on winter evenings one wants something entertaining.”

“Well, treatise, then,” said I, “or discourse, or essay, or prelection; I’m not particular as to words.”{8}

“But what is the queer text that you found at the bottom of the pamphlet-barrel?”

“It was one preached upon by your mother’s great-great-grandfather, the very savory and much-respected Simeon Shuttleworth, ‘on the occasion of the melancholy defections and divisions among the godly in the town of West Dofield’; and it runs thus,—‘Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.’”

“It’s a curious text enough; but I can’t imagine what you are going to make of it.”

“Simply an essay on Little Foxes,” said I, “by which I mean those unsuspected, unwatched, insignificant little causes, that nibble away domestic happiness, and make home less than so noble an institution should be.