upper chamber, stepped in, and took the covering off the bodies. "Oh, my sons," sobbed the father,

my sons!" She turned herself away and wept. At last she took him by the hand and said, "Rabbi, have you not taught me that we must not refuse to give back what was intrusted us to keep? See, the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away,-the name of the Lord be blessed; and Rabbi Meir

repeated the words, and said, "Amen."

QUESTIONS.--What was Rabbi Meir? What did his wife do with her dead sons? What did their father ask when he came home? What answers did his wife give? What question did she ask? What did his wife say when they went up to the room where their sons lay?

SENTENCES TO BE WRITTEN FROM MEMORY.

Dost thou love life? then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. Plough deep while sluggards sleep. Three removes are as bad as a fire. Never leave that till to-morrow which you can do to-day. Vessels large may venture more, but little boats should keep near shore. There never was a good war or a bad peace.

NIGHT.

How beautiful is night!

A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:

In full-orbed glory yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray

The desert circle spreads,

Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky:

How beautiful is night!

Robert Southey, 1774-1843.

CHARLIE SCOTT was the pride of the village school, he was so clever, and kind, and brave. He took the prize as the best scholar, and there was not one of the boys who could run or leap like him, or who was half such a nice companion, for he was full of fun and stories, and as cheerful as a bird.

After he left the school, Charlie was taken into the office of a lawyer who lived in the village, to be near a great man for whom he acted as agent. Charlie grew up to be a tall, fine-looking fellow, and every one said he would one day be a lawyer himself, and live in as large a house as Mr. Brown. By

and-by he rose to have such a good income, and could afford to dress so smartly that he looked quite grand in the quiet streets.

There was a fine young girl in the village, which was a pretty large one. Her name was Mary Green. Her mother was a widow, but had kept her daughter at school till she was an excellent scholar, and had got her taught music as well, and made fit to be any one's wife. Charlie Scott fell in love with this girl, who was so pleasant-looking, so quiet, and so modest, that every one loved her.

After a while, when Charlie had enough a-year from his master to keep house for himself, they were married, and Mary Scott, of whom I am writing, was their first and only child.

For some time everything in the little household went on so happily that it would be hard to say whether the mother, or the father, or the dear little girl, was the most gay and cheerful. Their places in church were never empty on Sundays, and you could see them taking walks together in the pleasant evenings as if they were everything to each other.

But Charlie had always been a favourite with the young men of the place, some of whom were no better than they should be. Though he had given up keeping company with them when he married, they got him, after a time, to come again now and then to their meetings, at the village inn, to sing to them, and to have a night of it, as they said. Little by little, the liking to be there grew on him, and he got fond of the ale, until he could hardly do without it, and came to prefer the inn and the young men

to the quiet of his own home. Before very long he could drink as much as any one, and too often took more than enough, till he was seen, at times, reeling home the worse for it. You may think what his poor wife felt at all this. She pleaded with him, and got him to promise that he would give up his drinking companions, and you cannot tell how ashamed he was of himself, and how he vowed he would change. But the habit had grown on him, and he soon forgot his promises, and went back and back, till it came to be said-"Ah! poor Charlie Scott has taken to drink." He would now get angry with his wife when she spoke to him, and once he even struck her.

In the midst of all this she fell into poor health. Her red cheeks grew white and hollow, her shoulders began to stoop; only her eye seemed to grow brighter than ever. His master had seen the change in Charlie, for he was often absent nowadays, often blundered, and even came to the office only half sober,-so that he had been told that he must be sent away if this continued.

One night he had gone away with his companions to the next town, and had, as usual, been drinking. They started to come home after dark, and had got as far as the high place where the road skirts the hill, with a steep wall of rock on the one side. Poor Charlie, staggering along, went too near this, fell over, and was taken up dead.

His wife, you may be sure, was broken-hearted. The house that used to be so nice, had been stripped of nearly everything for drink, and she

was so ill that she could not work. So she went back to her old mother again with her child; and people said, as they saw her in her widow's weeds, so thin and white, that she would not be long here, and that her husband's drinking had killed her. Winter came, with its cold winds, and one day, after she had taken her little Mary tenderly in her arms, she kissed her, and prayed to the God of the orphan to take care of her when she was gone. Next week they carried away her body, and buried her beside her Charlie, in the village-churchyard, and that is little Mary in the picture, come out in the evening to sit on the grass of her mother's grave, and sing the little hymns she used to teach her. I believe she thinks her mother hears her.

If Charlie Scott had never tasted strong drink, she would not have been a fatherless and motherless orphan. Never let a drop of it within your lips, and then you will be safe.

name?

QUESTIONS.-Who was Mary Green? What was her child's name? family did they show at first? fall into? How did he die?

What was her husband's What signs of a happy What bad habit did Charles Scott What became of his wife?

THE BANISHED DUKE'S REFLECTIONS.

SWEET are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Shakspere.