"Have I not said," he replied, "that I can do nothing more for any charity than I did last year? There seems to be no end to the calls upon us in these days. At first there were only three or four objects presented, and the sums required were mod erate; now the objects increase every day; all cak upon us for money, and all, after we give once want us to double and treble our subscriptions: there is no end to the thing; we may as well stop in one place as another."

The stranger took back the paper, rose, and, fixing his eye on his companion, said in a voice that thrilled to his soul,

"One year ago to-night you thought that your daughter lay dying; you could not sleep for agony upon whom did you call all that night ?"

The merchant started and looked up; there seemed a change to have passed over the whole form of his visiter, whose eye was fixed on him with a calm, intense, penetrating expression, that awed and subdued him; he drew back, covered his face, and made no reply.

"Five years ago," said the stranger, "when you lay at the brink of the grave, and thought that if you died then you should leave a family of helpless children entirely unprovided for, do you remember how you prayed? who saved you then?"

The stranger paused for an answer, but there

was a dead silence. The merchant only bent forward as one entirely overcome, and rested his head on the seat before him.

The stranger drew yet nearer, and said, in a still lower and more impressive tone, "Do you remember, fifteen years since, that time when you felt yourself so lost, so helpless, so hopeless; when you spent days and nights in prayer; when you thought you would give the whole world for one hour's assurance that your sins were forgiven you?-who listened to you then?"

"It was my God and Saviour!" said the merchant, with a sudden burst of remorseful feeling; "oh, yes, it was he."

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And has He ever complained of being called on too often," inquired the stranger, in a voice of reproachful sweetness; "say," he added, “are you willing to begin this night, and ask no more of Him, if he, from this night, will ask no more from you?"

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“Oh, never, never!" said the merchant, throwing himself at his feet; but, as he spake these words, the figure seemed to vanish, and he awoke with his whole soul stirred within him.

'Oh, my Saviour! what have I been saying? what have I been doing?" he exclaimed. "Take

all, take everything! what is all that I have to what thou hast done for me!"

THE CANAL-BOA T.

Of all the ways of travelling which obtain among our locomotive nation, this said vehicle, the canal-boat, is the most absolutely prosaic and inglorious. There is something picturesque, nay, almost sublime, in the lordly march of your well-built, high-bred steamboat. Go take your stand on some overhanging bluff, where the blue Ohio winds its thread of silver, or the sturdy Mississippi makes its path through unbroken forests, and it will do your heart good to see the gallant boat walking the waters with unbroken and powerful tread, and, like some fabled monster of the wave, breathing fire, and making the shores resound with its deep respi rations. Then there is something mysterious, even awful, in the power of steam. See it curling up against a blue sky some rosy morninggraceful, fleeting, intangible, and to all appearance the softest and gentlest of all spiritual things-and then think that it is this fairy spirit that keeps all the world alive and hot with mo

tion; think how excellent a servant it is, doing all sorts of gigantic works, like the genii of old; and yet, if you let slip the talisman only for a moment, what terrible advantage it will take of you! and you will confess that steam has some claims both to the beautiful and the ter rible. For our own part, when we are down among the machinery of a steamboat in full play, we conduct ourself very reverently, for we consider it as a very serious neighbourhood; and every time the steam whizzes with such red-hot determination from the escape valve, we start as if some of the spirits were after us. But in a canal-boat there is no power, no mystery, no danger; one cannot blow up, one cannot be drowned, unless by some special effort: one sees clearly all there is in the case—a horse, a rope, and a muddy strip of water--and that is all.

Did you ever try it, reader? If not, take an imaginary trip with us, just for experiment. "There's the boat!" exclaims a passenger in the omnibus, as we are rolling down from the Pittsburg Mansion House to the canal. "Where?" exclaim a dozen of voices, and forthwith a dozen heads go out of the window. "Why, down there, under that bridge; don't you see those lights?" "What! that little thing?" exclaims

an inexperienced traveller; "dear me! we can't half of us get into it!" "We! indeed,” says some old hand in the business; "I think you'll find it will hold us and a dozen more loads like us." 66 Impossible!" say some. "You'll see," say the initiated; and, as soon as you get out, you do see, and hear too, what seems like a general breaking loose from the Tower of Babel, amid a perfect hailstorm of trunks, boxes, valises, carpet-bags, and every describable and indescribable form of what a Westerner calls "plunder."

"That's my trunk!" barks out a big, round man. "That's my bandbox!" screams a heartstricken old lady, in terror for her immaculate Sunday caps. "Where's my little red box? I had two carpet-bags and a-My trunk had a scarle-Halloo! where are you going with that portmanteau ? Husbard! husband! do see after the large basket and the little hair trunk oh and the baby's little chair!" "Go below--go below, for mercy's sake, my dear; I'll see to the baggage." At last, the feminine part of creation perceiving that, in this particular instance, they gain nothing by public speaking, are content to be led quietly under hatches, and amusing is the look of dismay which each new-comer gives to the con