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six to fifteen years of age, besides a number of little boys. The lady who had charge of the school was pious, and always opened her school with prayer. She prayed for the children, and taught them the plan of salvation. One of her scholars attended a meeting in the neighbourhood which resulted in her conversion. She returned to the school, and told all the children what great things God had done for her. A general seriousness began to pervade the school. She then proposed to the girls that they should make them a little bush meeting-house, out in the woods, and that she would conduct a prayer-meeting for them every day, during the hours of recreation. They all consented, and soon broke down bushes and built them a place for prayer. There they all met together, and their sweet, bird-like voices mingled charmingly together, as they swelled up in the forest, hymning the praises of God. A revival commenced among them. Among the first that were converted was Betty Kilpatrick. She was so happy that her full soul seemed as though it would burst her frail confinement and mount up to heaven.

On the evening of the day on which she was converted, she hastened home, as soon as the school was dismissed. She had about a mile and a half to go. Everything around seemed to wear a new and lovely face. It was a summer eve. The shadows were growing long as she entered her father's farm. The sunlight was painting a parting smile upon the fleecy clouds piled among the horizon, as she entered her own sweet house. Her mother was alone, with her babe and one of the smaller children. Her father and brother were on the farm. As soon as she entered the house, she flew to her mother's chamber, and clasping her snowy arms around her neck, and imprinted a kiss upon her cheek, she exclaimed, O, mother, mother! God has converted my soul. O God has converted my soul. O I am so happy. ever."

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Glory to God for

The mother was startled. She scarce knew what to do. "Hush, Betty, hush," she said.

talking about?"

"What are you

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"O, mother," said Betty, "I am so happy; God, for Christ's sake, has converted my soul."

"Why, Betty," said her mother, "you are going crazy." Hush, be still. What do you mean?"

"O, mother!" said Betty, "God has pardoned my sins, and I am so happy."

Just about this time the father came in. alarmed. "What is the matter?" he exclaimed.

He was

“O, father, father," said Betty, "God has converted my soul. I am so happy."

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Why, Betty," said the father, "you are going crazy." "No, no," said Betty, "God has pardoned my sins; and you and mother will bow down upon your knees, I will pray for you, and God will convert you too."

if

The mother began to weep, and the father to tremble, while Betty pleaded for them almost like an angel. Her face was beaming-her language was unearthly-she begged of them to begin to pray; and so powerful and irresistible were her appeals, that the mother could resist no longer; and she knelt down, crying aloud, "God be merciful to me a sinner. O Betty, pray for me." Presently her father covered his face, and knelt down too; while Betty, with one arm round her mother, and the other round her father's neck, began to pray, and they prayed; and there began a meeting that resulted, in a few days, in the happy conversion of the father and mother, and two or three older brothers. But the influence did not stop there. It went out into Mr. C's congregation, and spread in every direction, until hundreds of souls were the happy subjects of divine grace.

How often God brings sinners by a way they knew not, illustrating his sovereign disposals. An apparently trivial cause sometimes starts influences that extend in every direction, through a thousand channels, and uncounted years, and brings about joyful, tremendous results in time and eternity. The conversion of one little girl, the erection of the bush meeting-house in the deep forest, the prayer-meeting house conducted by the young convert, resulted in the conversion of Betty Kilpatrick, and her

conversion led to the conversion, first of the parents and brothers, and then of many souls besides. How many

more shall be converted in consequence shall be known in heaven.

How much good a little child can do. Try, my dear little reader, to do some good. Begin at once. To-morrow may be too late.

THE PRIEST AND THE ROBBER.

FORTY years ago the scenes here related occurred in the heart of France. A Roman Catholic priest was called on to prepare for his last change a highway robber about to perish on the scaffold. The good father used all his eloquence and all his efforts, to lead the prisoner to repent of his aggravated crimes in vain. He observed that the mind of the latter was absorbed that he seemed to heed him not. What could engage his thoughts at such an awful hour?

"Do you reflect," said the priest, "that in two hours you are to appear before your Maker?"

"I do," said the criminal, "but I wish to live and repent, not to repent and die; and the thought has come into my brain-and I can't for the soul of me drive it out-that you are the very man to save me from death, not to pave my way to it."

"But," said the priest, "even if I had the power-I cannot see that I have-should I not be doing a wrong to Imankind by setting you free, and be subjecting you to a further load of guilt?"

"If that's the only obstacle in the way, you may, good father, be entirely easy on that score. I have seen the scaffold too near, ever to expose myself to its terrors again. Never will I rob or defraud more. I will be henceforth a changed man."

With eyes imploring and bathed in tears, he knelt before the priest and begged his life. He appealed to a kind heart, and saw the impression he had made. The chapel in which

they were was lighted only by a window near the ceiling, and was more than fifteen feet from the floor.

"You have but," said the prisoner, "to put your chair upon the altar which we can place near the wall; you will then ascend on the chair, and I will mount upon your shoulders, from which I can gain the window."

In an instant the criminal was beyond the reach of the law. The priest remained tranquilly seated in the chair, having restored the altar to its place. Some hours after the flight, the hangman, impatient at the long prayers of the priest, who, he thought, might have put half a dozen souls on the road to heaven in less time, knocked at the door. Not seeing the prisoner, he demanded what had become of him.

"He must be an angel of light," said the priest, "for, on the faith of a priest, he went out by that window. I saw it with my own eyes."

The hangman was in a maze. Having closely questioned the priest, he demanded if he was in earnest. On his replying in the affirmative, he ran to warn the judges. They hastened to the chapel, examined the chair, the window, the height from the floor, and saw no other means of escape than that stated by the priest. Their brains were perplexed. But they could not preserve their gravity at the sang froid of the good father, while describing the flight of the angel, as he styled him, through the window-and the prayer he was tempted to make to him, as he vanished, to take him along with him to the skies. Be this as it may, the Church was too powerful in those days to question the word of the priest, who assumed to himself the merit of converting a sinner into an angel in an hour.

Twenty years afterwards, the priest was lost in the woods of Ardennes. The night came on; he was without food or place of rest. Wild beasts were prowling around. Step by step, weak and desponding, he still wandered farther in the mazes of the woods. His frame sunk exhausted with hunger, fatigue, and terror. He commended his soul to the care of heaven, and laid him down to die. He had lain there some hours, when the light of a lantern shone on his face. It was

held by a peasant, who examined his features attentively. He aided him to rise. With his sinewy arm he bore the exhausted form of the priest to a neat farm-house, delightfully situated in a fertile plain on the skirts of the woods. The priest was nursed with care and restored to life, and warmly thanked his benefactor. On his recovering sufficiently to eat, the table was spread for the new guest. A fine capon was cooked and nicely dressed, and every luxury the farm afforded set before him. A female, neatly attired, with eight little ones surrounded the table.

"Father," exclaimed the peasant apart to him, after they had finished their repast, "a wife, children, farm-all of these blessings, I owe to you. You saved my life when I was condemned to die on the scaffold; I have, in turn, saved yours. I have redeemed my pledge made to you. When I was a wandering beggar I came to this house, where by industry and honest dealing, I soon won the confidence of the father of my wife, who, on his death, left us this farm. I have prospered ever since in my affairs. My wife has been a real blessing to me, and my children, with their ruddy faces and their sweet smiles, remind me cach day, as I return from my daily toil, of what I owe to heaven and to you."

The priest, whose conscience had often smote him for the fraud he had practised on the magistrate, and the danger of letting a robber loose to depredate on the public highway, was set at case. He embraced the peasant, and thanked his God that he had been the means of reclaiming a guilty soul, and of raising a condemned felon to the dignity of an honest

man.

EXPANSIBILITY OF WATER.-One pint of water converted into steam fills a space of nearly two thousand pints, and raises the piston of a steam engine with the force of many thousand pounds. It may afterwards be condensed and reappear as a pint of water.

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