happy I should be; and if I could see to read, I could teach the poor children in the raggedschool, and take good tracts to my neighbours and so be useful to others. Well, a thought came, if I could get some tracts, and persuade some little girl to lead me, I would take them to the cottages. I prayed many times that the Lord would help me, and I told a good girl what I wanted. I asked her if she would take me to the tract depository. She very kindly did, and there I got a little basket full of tracts and small books; and on the Sunday afternoon, the good child led me amongst the houses to distribute them to the people who would have them. Most of them were kind to me, but one was very cross, and the second Sunday he said,

"I thought I had ordered you not to come to this door with your rubbish."

́ ́ Yes, sir, you did.'

"Then why do you come again?

Well, sir, I have a fresh guide to-day, and she did not know of you refusing to have a tract; but you would please me much if you would have one this time; do please.'

"As I spoke, I held out my hand, containing a tract, touching the top of the chair on which he sat. The touch caused me to think he had taken it, and letting go my hold, the tract fell to the floor. The white, woolly dog instantly had the tract in his mouth, and squatting down on his hind legs, sat bolt up, offering it to his master. The man's wife said,—

"Now then, no one dare take that out of Turk's mouth but you, except they do not care for a bite, and you know the dog will sit there all day if you do not take it.'

'The man was now in a fix, and to please the dog took it out of his mouth, laying it on the mantlepiece, but determined not to read it. Being alone in the evening, and believing that no one could see him, he thought he would just see what the blind woman had brought. He took down the tract, and read it through, standing on the spot, for to his utter astonishment it was a correct description of himself, describing to the very life what he was, and clearly pointing out to him what he might be. It told of a man who for many years had lived

a most wretched life,-drinking, swearing, cardplaying, Sabbath-breaking, scoffing at the Bible and religion; a sullen, surly sinner, so miserable that life became a burden, and that he had made up his mind to drink himself to death. How, when going to the races, he saw on a barn door a placard with the words, "The way of transgressors is hard," and he thought if all the Bible be as true as that sentence, it is all true. The placard caused him to turn back. On his way home he met a boy, who gave him a tract, containing the first eighteen verses of the third chapter of Proverbs. He went early to bed, that he might read what the boy had given him unseen. Three days after, as the result of deep conviction for sin, earnest prayer, and believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, he became a changed and truly happy man, and, instead of drinking himself to death, joined the church, and lived to do much good.

"The man put the tract back on the mantelpiece, but still stood looking at it as it lay there. The first part of that man's history he knew was the history of himself; his wicked career had made his life a heavy burden, and he had often wished himself dead. He had intended to go to the public house that night as usual, but durst not; he suspected some one had given the blind woman the tract specially for him, and he had a very restless week. The Sunday morning following the dog began barking loudly at hearing a knock at the door; the man himself opened it, just in time to hear me say,

"Oh, this is the house where I must not leave any of my books; what shall I do ?' "You must come in and sit down a moment, I want to ask you a few questions,' said the

man.

"I entered the house with considerable fear, my guide leading me. The man took the tract out of his pocket, saying,

"Tell me who ordered you to leave this book here ?'

"No one ordered me, sir, for being blind I do not know the titles; I am told they are all good ones.'

"I suspected some of my neighbours had. It seems very strange; I hope you will forgive my harsh conduct, and not pass the house

without calling. I will pay you for this tract, for I must keep it.'

"When I heard this I called for the dog, for I remembered that it was he that had given the tract to his master, and I said,—

"Let me pat Turk,' 'let me pat Turk; fine dog, Turk. He gave it to you, and you shall keep it.'

"He did keep it, and keeps it still, as a memorial of the mighty change wrought in his own soul, a change from a sullen, surly sinner to a cheerful, happy child of God."

Clapping of hands, and stamping of feet followed the blind girl's speech, and she sat down, having modestly and unconsciously taught us all a very useful lesson.

PELL, we don't want to know anything about that yet," some of the young readers of these chapters are ready to say, and they will remind us of the old adage, "All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy." Very true, my boys and girls, but all play and no work, may make Jack a very useless boy; so I think you had better try to mix them; and although some of you are thinking you won't care for this chapter, yet I will try to say something that will do you good, if you will listen to it.

Now we are quite willing that you should have lots of play. Boys and girls ought to play. And under certain conditions as to time and place, we will let you shout, and jump, play at marbles, spin tops, fly kites, skip, and send your shuttle-feather spinning through the air. All this will do your lungs and your legs good, and may do you good in other ways, but we must have a little work among hands.

You know when you get to be men and women you will have lots of work to do, and if you grow up careless, you will take badly to your work; and it is a bad thing for men and women to be lazy and always grumbling at their work.

Now you must be industrious at school. You boys and girls have fallen upon happy times for school-work. Many of your grandfathers were taught by men who did not know how to teach, and who did not know much themselves; and the perplexities of long division, and rule of three, were made more awful because the master would try to thump it into them. But now teaching is a much pleasanter process. Your schoolrooms are brighter and more beautiful; and, as a rule, things are far better than they used to be. But remember, you cannot learn without labour. You must read, and think, and commit to memory; for, as is often said, "There is no royal road to learning;" and if you boys want to get a double-first, spoken of in the short account of Mr. Gladstone in the January Hive, you must work for it. When at school, then be industrious; try to remember all about the parts of speech; learn well your rules of grammar, work hard at your arithmetic, be determined to write well and spell correctly, and get to know something about the different countries and people in the world. When you have home exercises to do, don't put them off till morning. You will have plenty of time to play; and you will have all the more time, and enjoy it better if you get your lessons done first thing. Remember the saying-business first, pleasure afterwards; it is as applicable to boys and girls as it is to grown-up folks.

But many of the readers of the Hive are the children of hard-working parents. Their fathers and mothers cannot keep servants to do every little thing that wants doing; they have to work hard themselves, and there is many a little thing that children can do to help their parents. Our country has made great progress in many things during the past sixty years; and in the care that is taken of children there

is a vast improvement. Many who are now old men, can remember, when they were children, having to rise very early in a morning to go to their work, and to work till late at night. There was no half-time system to protect them from the hard toil imposed upon them from day to day. But it is better now. No doubt many have to go to the mill sooner than they ought to do; some go whose parents are really poor and need their help; others because their parents are too anxious to save money; but whether our young friends who read this go to mills and shops or not, to work, they can, now and then, find a little work to do. Girls may learn to knit and sew; boys can run many an errand, they can carry coals, and water, and wood, they can pick stones out of the garden, weed the flower bed, and do many other things. In this way they can save many a penny and many a shilling for their parents; and if their parents are not so very poor as to be anxious to save pennies in that way, it is still a good thing for boys and girls to learn to work. It will in many cases keep them out of mischief; children cannot be still for long together, and it is true that,

Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do.

It will also accustom them to work; for work is the great end of human life. God never intended any body to be idle. If a man is not obliged to work in order to get his living, he ought to work for the good of others in some way or other.

Many boys and girls grow up with the idea that it is undignified to work, and especially to do work that dirties their hands. This is a great mistake. If work must be done, there is no disgrace in doing it, if it is done well. There is no more disgrace in cleaning boots than there is in making a watch, or in writing a book. When you are asked to do any work, do it cheerfully. Work done grudgingly is five times harder than the same work done cheerfully; and is not only harder, but takes a much longer time. Try also to do your work well. Remember the saying, "A thing once

well done is twice done," which means of course that to do a thing well once is better than doing it twice badly. A story is told of two members of parliament: one an old, rich, proud man, who had made a speech in support of a certain question. The other had risen from a low position in life by his industry and perseverance; and he opposed the views of the older one; this the old man could not endure and taunted him by asking him who he was? and saying, "You once cleaned my shoes"? "Well," replied the other, "and didn't I clean them well?" Children, when you have work to do, do it cheerfully and as well as you can. Do not be ashamed of it, if it is honest work. Remember that God's Book says,-"An idle soul shall suffer hunger; "He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand; " Drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags."

Remember also that idleness is often attended with other bad qualities. Idle people are often dirty, extravagant, and mischievous, and sooner or later will reap the bitter reward of their bad habits. Therefore, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."

Adrift and Alone.

A TRUE STORY.
PART I.

OWN on the shore at Cliff Foot, a group of noisy fisher-lads were at play, sending flat stones skimming and dancing over the smooth sea, and making a curved track of rings on the water like an immense Turkish scimitar, or chasing each other along the sands in and out of the shallow retreating tide, or sitting listlessly on the rocks and singing fragments of old boat songs, to long-drawling melancholy tunes, such as one may hear at any fishing village all round our coasts.

It was an idle day, for the fishers of Cliff

Foot had all returned yesterday, their smacks well-laden with mackerel, and to-day their wives were away at the nearest town, a mile or two distant buying in a week's supply of bread, tea, &c., with the money their husbands had just earned; while of the men themselves, some were resting at home after their toils or preparing to go out again for another haul, and others amid shouting and quarrelling and swearing, were tossing down a part of their hard-won money on the comfortless deal table of the inn near by, called "The Three Fishers."

Among the three or four boys who were sitting on the rocks and singing, the centre one was Will Rogers, a stout young fellow about twelve. Will was gifted with a good voice, and he was now leading off an old stave about some ancient craft, that no doubt, had ages ago laid her bare skeleton ribs in the sands at the bottom

of the sea. It was a sight to see the lad, as sitting there with his wide oyes gazing out to seawards at nothing particular, he would give his head a swing, take in a long breath, and lead off again with a fresh verse, while at the end of it his companions would chime in with the curious old sea chorus which sounded something like:

To the Lowlands!

To the Lowlands!

As they sailed her to the Lowlands Low!"

"Where is Alick Spence?" cried Will Rogers, after he had chanted the score of verses of which this old ditty was composed. "Where is Alick Spence? It's him that can sing the bonniest song of all!"

An' if ye

"Alick Spence! Alick Spence!" cried a voice in contemptuous surprise, "Him sing! He canna' sing onything but hymes (hymns) and Sunday-nicht school sangs! want to find him, Will Rogers, ye'll get him ower at the ither side o' the rocks, reading the Bible. He aye takes to reading the Bible when his father takes to the drink, and I heard a man tell that auld Alick Spence has been drunk up at the Three Fishers,' all morning!"

"You're aye hearin' something, Tom Harper, but it's never any good of anybody," returned

Rogers, as he got up from his seat and clambered over the ridge of rock that ran down into the sea.

He had not gone very far when he saw young Spence sitting in a solitary cove, and thoughtfully gazing out to sea. Rogers lifted a pebble to throw at his friend, and attract his notice; but paused after a minute, dropped the pebble and returned to his other companions. There was something sacred in the solitude of this poor boy Spence, sitting here with his Bible open before him, and the wonderful sky, and the equally wonderful sea, reaching away in front from where he sat, straight to the horizon. Rogers could not disturb him, so he crept back quietly to his companions on the sands.

Young Alick Spence was an odd sort of boy. He was what might be called noticeable. He was the only one of the Cliff Foot lads that you would have had any desire to look at twice, for if you passed him on the shore, you would be sure to turn round again to have a second glance at him. That strange, absent look about the eyes, which is observable in most children of fisher folk, and which seems to speak of long watches on the solitary ocean, and anxious, farsearching glances from over the waves to where the cottage light blinks out of the darkness on the cliff at home, was the first thing that fixed your attention in the thoughtful face of young Spence. Then you could not help observing that he had a finely formed head and delicately cut features. When at play among the other village boys, he would often be as merry and daring, and sometimes even as noisy as the rest; but the sport would soon tire him, and then you might observe him steal away down the shore by himself, and sit alone listening to the music of the waves, watching the seagulls wheeling above the bay, or reading in some old book which he would draw from his pocket, for Spence had been a great reader since he was six years of age, and he was now nearly twelve.

"Learn young, learn fair," they say, and Alick had done both; for his mother, who had died about two years before the date of our story, had been a teacher in a neighbouring village before her marriage, and taught her boy

to lisp his letters as soon as he could toddle, and to read simple story-books before he had got into his first jacket. She had also taught him a lesson she herself had early learned-to seek for help and support in all times of trial and bitterness where alone they are to be found -in the Bible.

"But poor little Spence," you will say, although he was solitary and sometimes rather melancholy, could have no great trials to endure, no very bitter sorrows to oppress him, for he was but a child—was hardly twelve years of age.

He had only one trial, but it was enough to darken all his bright childhood, to disturb his sleep with the wildest of nightmares, to drive him away from his companions into melancholy and unhealthy solitude.

Like the other boys in Cliff Foot, Spence always went with his father out in the boat, often for days, sometimes for a week together, to fish. At these times, though the life was rough and the work hard, young Alick was happy enough. It was the return to land he feared; for it too often happened that his father, after he had sold his cargo and paid his debts, would walk away to the "Three Fishers," with a handful of silver money in his pocket, and throwing it over the bar, would call for drinks for himself and all who liked to join him, as long as the money lasted. These visits to the "Three Fishers" were the terror of young Alick's life. His fear of his father at such times amounted to horror, and if the father could only have felt that his drunkenness caused his child such shrinking dread and suffering, I believe it would have made him stop in the midst of the most reckless carouse, and break off once and for all the habit that was the cause of so much misery.

Often in the middle of a joyous game on the sands, in which young Alick was as merry as the best of them, a boy would come to the beach from the highlands above, and shout out:

"There's auld Alick Spence comin' drunk out o' the Three Fishers'! Come awa', lads, let's gang up and have some fun wi' him."

This brutal and malicious announcement

used to go to the heart of young Alick like an arrow. His voice was no longer heard in the game. He was still enough, quiet enough. now. He would slink away behind the rocks, and looking up into the sky, would pray God to forgive and protect his father and him. Then, remembering his mother's sweet voice, and her last words to him, he would dash up the bank to his father's cottage, and running in with a face all dabbed with tears, much to the astonishment of his aunt Martha, who now kept house for his father, he would pick up his Bible, and would then walk away down among the rocks by the sea-margin, where he would sit and read till the evening was come, when he would creep homeward and go silently to bed.

On the morning on which our story opens, young Alick knew that his father had gone to the "Three Fishers," and it was with a heavy heart he had taken his Bible as usual and was sitting alone reading by the shore, where Will Rogers, his chief friend and companion, discovered him.

"I'll no speak to Alick just yet," said Rogers to himself, as he crept quietly back. "But what's yon?" he continued, standing up on rock, and looking away along the highway towards the "ThreeFishers." "Why, it's auld Alick Spence comin' hame reeling drunk from the public. O, poor young Alick— poor young Alick!

The boys that had been playing on the beach had by this time perceived the drunken fisherman coming staggering along the road, and as he passed the spot where they were gathered they gave him a derisive cheer.

"Drunken auld Alick Spence!" cried out Tom Harper when the staggering wretch had gone past. "Ye should take to the reedin' o' your Bible like your son, and much good may it do you. But where's young Alick? It's a pity he should na' see his father. Let's go and find him!”

So saying, Tom Harper, followed by a troop of boys, ran down to the rocks to torment the son of the drunken man.

"Come here, Alick, and look at your father!" 'cried Harper.