THE COUNTRY CHILD

The city child, who has no acquaintance with cows and calves and sheep and horses, with birds and bees and butterflies and daisied fields, has missed a lot of fun that it really seems every child ought to have. How wonderingly the little heads bend to watch the lovely miracle where the birth of the crocus breaks the brown crust of mother earth with a flash of gold. Small noses sniff delightedly the scent of violets empurpling a sunny border in the old-fashioned garden, with its southern exposure, its hot-beds and its multitude of wonders happening under glass. At one minute, the Southern children pity brothers and

sisters living farther north where there is yet snow on the ground; the next minute they would love to be up there and help in the snow-balling.

The familiarity with domestic animals, which constitutes a part of farm-life, is another of the country child's blessings. What friends some of us who were raised in the country used to make of Bossy and Dimple, the good cows who gave us such rich milk! To bring the cows home was great fun, was it not? The writer found it so. The tinkle of the bells in the evening, the sweet smell of the meadows, the splash of the brook as we came through-Dimple and Bossy and Brindle and Sweet Buttercup and the whole bovine company, with

their human guardians and playmates in charge. What excitement there was in trying to learn to milk!" Soh! soh, Bossy, soh!" we'd say. Instead of "sohing" how often Bossy kicked us and our little pails over-never roughly enough to hurt us badly. Bossy understood children.-Mary Jordan.

THE HOME KEEPER

About her household moving glad each day,
With heartfelt care of all the simplest things;
And near her side a child voice coos and sings;
She hears the noise of pattering feet at play,
And pauses oft to kiss the lips that say

"Mother!" and joys to feel the hand that clings
Close to her heart, as to her apron strings-
Nor would she chide that little hand away!
Then, when the day hath drifted to the dark,
And brightening stars loom through the twilight late,
She feels the heart within her bosom stir

At

every leaf that strikes the lattice . . . Hark! Her life's reward-a footstep at the gate,

And love that comes to claim the love of her!

-Frank L. Stanton.

BOARDING-HOUSE VERSUS HOME

Many a country boy in a city boarding house, not having known anything. different, fancies he is seeing social life, and likes his chilly hall bedroom, where he can bring the other fellows up to have a smoke, even better than the sweet and sunny room at home, made dainty by his mother's loving care.

Indeed, if his maiden aunt, or the invalid sister, or the blessed mother herself, took a fancy for a visit to the city, he would hesitate to bring them just as they are into the atmosphere of this city boarding house which he calls home. He would not like his mother to be patronized or looked down upon, and he knows by a sort of instinct, that her Sunday shawl and best black silk would seem out of date at the table or in the parlor. He loves his maiden aunt, who, since he was a baby boy, has had nothing she liked better to do than to coddle and pet and spoil him, but he could not have her come for a visit with that little wisp of hair twisted up like a doorknob on the back of her head. And even the invalid sister has a stoop in her shoulders that effectually prevents her taking on "any kind of style." He isn't conscious of being ashamed of any one of them. He only thinks that it would be more comfortable for a fellow if they quietly stayed at home.

How all this changes when sickness seizes the city young man in his boarding house. Then he forgets the old-fashioned cut of the gown. Then he doesn't

mind that the strong, tender face that bends above him has only plain bands of thin hair twisted into a knob. He is glad enough to have somebody who loves him come down from the country to get a gas stove to warm up his room, to sit by his bedside and mend his stockings, to transfer his sloppy and cold boarding

house broth into something that he can take without disgust. He ceases to be ashamed of his relations, and if the sickness is long enough and severe enough, and there is good stuff at the bottom, he becomes ashamed of himself.-Mary Lowe Dickinson.

Where the chickens and the pigs and the pumpkins be,
Is the very best place good times to see!

THE HOME HEROES

Harry Ripley sat by the kitchen window with an open book in his hand; but he was not reading. His mother, in the buttery just beyond, was busy with her milk pans, and his sister Flora was outdoors tying up rose bushes and transplanting violets. Harry's book was about heroes, and the boy was lost in a dream of the great things he would have done had he lived in the days of the knights who went to and fro to assist people in distress, and who always fought on the side of the weak.

"But now," thought Harry, "there is nothing for a brave man to do. The same humdrum life every day, and no adventures or wonderful things happening. I am tired of it."

"Harry," called his father, from the barn, "the cows are in the garden. They are tramping down the turnips and breaking off the currant bushes. I am afraid you forgot to shut the gate. Run, my boy, and drive Whitefoot and Bess to pasture."

Harry made haste to obey. He remembered now that in his hurry to get to "Launcelot and Galahad," he had left the gate open, and one glance showed him that the cows had done some mischief. He felt vexed at them.

"I meant to have written a splendid composition this afternoon," he said to himself."Now it will take a whole hour to put this garden to rights again. What hateful things cows are!"

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Harry went down the lane, through the bars, across the dewy fields, and out to the clover meadow with the creatures," and then turned round and came slowly home. All the way he was planning what noble things he would do if he were only a soldier, or a sailor, or a rich banker, or a king's son. As he approached the house he saw that something unusual had taken place. Flora was standing in the doorway with tears in her eyes. Mother was very pale, and where was father? Surely that was not father lying on the lounge and looking so white and deathlike. Yet it could be nobody else. Harry's heart stood still.

"My dear boy," said his mother, "where did you put those drops I asked you to bring from the shop yesterday? Father has had a bad turn, and I could not find the medicine anywhere."

Poor Harry! He blushed and fidgeted a moment before he answered.

"Oh, mother, I am so very sorry. I forgot to go to the shop. The bottle is still in the pocket of my best coat up-stairs."

"Well," said his mother, "your father is better, but his life might at some time. depend upon having had medicine at hand. You must give the bottle to Flora, and let her go to the apothecary's with it. I can always trust my Flora, and Harry, I cannot always trust you. Do you know what made father ill to-day?”

"His heart?" said Harry.

"Yes, dear, his poor heart can endure so little over-exertion, and you forgot to chop the wood or bring down the hay last night; so while you were gone with the cows your father did those things himself."

"It was all that book," Harry began.

"Not the book, but the boy, Harry," said the gentle mother. "It is right to read about heroes, and to wish to be like them; but the real heroes, after all, are those who attend to the little duties faithfully just as they come along. God blesses the boys who do not forget the business he has given them to do."

I am glad to tell you that Harry resolved, with God's help, not to be a dreamer, but a worker, and God assisted him in his efforts to conquer his besetting sin. His mother to-day says that she depends a great deal on Harry.

THE PILOT'S WIFE

We went to housekeeping immediately upon our marriage, for mother said. she "despised these boarding people; she went to housekeeping when she was married, and she meant all her children should do the same; and if their husbands weren't able to go to housekeeping, then they weren't able to be husbands, and there was an end of it; and no two people," she said, "brought up in different fashions, could unite their lives into one without some jarring, and a third party was sure to turn that jar into an earthquake; if there were fewer third parties, half the trouble would be done away with; for she believed half the divorces and separations and quarrels in the state were brought about by boarding-house intimacies with third parties." So to housekeeping as I said, we went-though I knew that by and by I should just perish with loneliness, and in the very pleasantest house, I am sure, that the whole city had to offer, if it was the smallest-the bay-window of the sunny little parlor looking out upon the water, so that we could see everything that came up the harbor, and, from my bird's-nest of a room above, with the glass that Bert mounted there, I could sweep the bay, and see Bert's boat when it was miles away.

Bert staid up with great contentment for a week or ten days, pottering and tinkering about the house, and finding little odd jobs to attend to, where he had thought everything perfect till experience proved the contrary, planting morning-glories and scarlet-beans round the basement to run up over the bay-window, and a prairie-rose for the lattice of the door, setting out a cherry tree and a dwarf-pear, and trimming up a grape-vine in the little yard, and arranging all manner of convenient contrivances in all manner of corners. Then when dark came we would light the drop-lamp, and have a little wood-fire on the hearth, for we were just beginning the cool May nights, and then we would draw around it-I with my worsteds, and he with the evening paper; and he would look at me over the paper, lay it down, and draw a long breath of pleasure, saying if we had been married a year we could not be more comfortable.-H. P. Spofford.

No one ever loved child, parent or sister too much. It is not the intensity of affection, but its interference with truth or duty, that makes it idolatry. Love was given, sanctioned, and encouraged that self might be annulled.