The effect will not be great, it is true, but it will be of the right kind.

It will be a drop of water upon the unfolding cotyledons of a seed just peeping up out of the ground, which will percolate below after you have gone away, and give the little roots a new impulse of growth.

For when you have left the child seated upon the door-step, occupied in throwing out the crumbs to the bird, her heart will be occupied with the thoughts you have put into it, and the sentiment of gratitude for kindness received will commence its course of development, if it had not commenced it before.
_The Case of older Children_.
Of course the employment of such an occasion as this of the singing of a little bird and such a conversation in respect to it for cultivating the sentiment of gratitude in the heart, is adapted only to the case of quite a young child.

For older children, while the principle is the same, the circumstances and the manner of treating the case must be adapted to a maturer age.

Robert, for example--twelve years of age--had been sick, and during his convalescence his sister Mary, two years older than himself, had been very assiduous in her attendance upon him.