"I saw the blue Rhine sweep along, I heard, or seemed to hear, The echoing chorus sounded through the evening calm and still; But we'll meet no more at Bingen, loved Bingen on the Rhine." In the Wee Sma' Hours. Two o'clock in the morning! Sleep, for the fortunate beings who go to bed and sleep all night without uneasy spells of wakeful tossing to and fro, is now at its deepest. A blessed silence broods over the country, and the town has not yet turned on its pillow. But to you and me who know what insomnia is, who have learned by fell experience how relentless is its grasp and how recurrent are its returns, two o'clock in the morning is fraught with uneasy associations. times a horror of great darkness comes without warning on the soul at that hour, when the bodily strength is at the ebb and the adversary is most in earnest. It is as though a sudden paralysis had fallen upon faith; God seems far away; prayer rises, to our apprehension, no higher than the ceiling. These struggles, when the powers of the unseen close in about us, and we wrestle not with flesh and blood, involve real and desperate suffering to those who have the calamity to enter into their valley of the shadow, though to the practical mind they appear so vague and intangible. Out of such conflicts, though the soul may emerge victorious, the brow gathers wrinkles, and the strength and youth of the man are lessened. The soul strife with doubt, with conscience, with temptation, at two o'clock in the morning is often a veritable battle with Apollyon, in which the utmost one can do is to cry oftentimes: "Rejoice not over me, mine enemy. Though I fall I shall arise again; or, with a prophet of old, to exclaim, "Though He (the Lord) slay me, yet will I trust Him." Happy is that Christian to whom, in such a Gethsemane, there comes a sudden and convincing memory of the divine goodness, of the everlastingness of the divine love, so that it is as if a voice spoke in his ear, "The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath thee are the everlasting arms. At two o'clock in the morning one's tangible troubles, affairs of business, errors of judgment, notes to meet without requisite funds, mortgages with interest in arrears, taxes looming up like mountains of ice, possible loss of income or of position, loss of health, failure of plans, rise and set their battle in array. Financial embarrassments are never so formidable as when they weave their toils around one in the dead of night. Debt never weighs so heavily, never fetters the feet with so leaden a weight, nor drags its ball and chain so cruelly after its prisoner, as when it is remembered at two o'clock in the morning. It is, of course, an error, and sometimes a crime, to have debts. A mortgage is often a long misery, and most people are to some extent responsible for their financial anxieties, especially in America where our habit is to put the best foot foremost at whatever cost; but wisdom is often the dear-bought prize of experience, and, again, circumstances are great tyrants, and wherever the fault may have lain, the trouble seems darkest when we meet it with armor off, in the bed from which sleep has fled. So, when we are distressed over our children's willfulness, or weakness, seeing so plainly that one or the other has entered upon a road which can lead only to disaster, yet feeling powerless to avert calamity, the evil thing assumes its most menacing proportions, when it stalks like a specter past our nightly couch. It is as well, realizing the exaggeration which difficulties receive at this hour, to summon philosophy to our aid. The clear shining of the new day's light dissipates many a cloud, scatters many a fog-bank. We waken, dress, and wonder at our recent fears. The troops of shivering ghosts vanish in the vision of the breakfast-table, with the baby in her high chair, and the sturdy boy on fire to go to school and attack his problems with a resolution which father and mother are fain to emulate. Honesty of purpose, perfect candor and the exercise of fearless common sense relieve situations, or modify conditions, which were insupportable when anticipated in the hours just after midnight. Friends lend a helping hand unexpectedly; a ship comes in laden with good fortune; there is a turn of events which is favorable rather than the reverse; a hitherto barred gate flies open of its own accord the face of the world is changed for the better. I do not doubt that the suicide, rushing madly on his fate because his brain is turned by brooding on the aspect of his calamities till his soul is filled with despair, could he but wait and pray and trust, would generally find that nothing is after all desperate. His cowardice is part, let us think, of his insanity when he leaves others to fight with troubles from which he flies to God's judg ment seat. Beyond everything else the discouraged man or woman who lies awake at night nursing trouble and growing weaker to meet it, or striving with terrors that have no name, should remember that, straw though each of us be, we are of value in God's eyes. "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? But ye are of more value than many sparrows." "I will remember Thee on my bed," said David, “and meditate on Thee in the night watches." It is not in vain that we call upon God, not in vain that we invoke the heavenly hosts to come to our relief. And if only our eyes were opened, we should see, oh, how often, the angel of the Lord encamped around about us, and just before us, flung wide for our shelter and salvation, the banners of the King! Wake to thine Easter, O my soul, A Song of Easter. The King, whose look shall make thee whole, Wake to thine Easter! Droop no more, Oh, didst thou dream, poor faithless one, And when thy loved were reft away And grief and loss held weary sway Didst thou forget that just beyond Wake to thine Easter! Christ is risen! They sing to Christ the King! Wear not this day a mournful face; Sweet odors waft from spice and myrrh, And every simple worshiper Wake to thine Easter, O my soul! Arise, be glad and brave! The Lord whose look shall make thee whole, Dorothy's Vacation. 'I feel as if I had lost my opportunity in life," wrote Dorothy Dane to her college chum, Marcia Potter, during the first week of vacation. Everybody does not fully appreciate the sense of letting-down which comes to a student, when, at DOROTHY. year of intellectual work and hard routine over, she simply sinks into the position of one of a quiet-going family. Dorothy loved books, loved hard and eager study, and was noted for the intensity of her application. In her classes she stood very high, and at the commencement exercises she carried off numerous prizes, and received honorable mention where somebody else was first. The professors were very proud of Miss Dane. She would go out as a credit to the college, and they were the more interested that she expected to become a teacher, and to carry their methods and ways of getting at things into other schools and places. had Commencement been over with its joys and excitements for several weeks Dorothy had become used to waking when she pleased in the morning, to regulating her day, not by bells, but to suit herself. She had valiantly laid out a course of reading when she first came home, but so many interruptions broke in upon her plans, that she had not been able to adhere to her prescribed system, and as she finished and |