the forbidden thing, but it has been made up to me even in outward circumstances, which is not always the case: I have prospered wonderfully since then, destructive as the step appeared to my earthly prospects." The two men parted then, and were lost in the crowd; and I, looking after them, suddenly saw a face which I thought I knew, and soon discovered to belong to the young girl whose terrible grief I had witnessed when her treasure crumbled away. Her countenance was calm now, though the impress of sorrow was stamped upon it; and she was speaking earnestly to a girl about her own age, whose eyes were fixed upon a fruit growing not very far above her head, and upon which I could trace in small characters the words earthly love. "Ah," said the speaker, "you are doing just what I did once, and I feel that sorrow will come to you out of it as it did to me." The girl turned somewhat sharply upon her: "I don't see why, because you have suffered, that I should!" "Not because I have suffered, dear," said the other, "but because idols must be destroyed, or they will destroy their worshippers. My idol left me; the love crumbled and was nearly gone before I could or would realize that such a thing was possible." 66 'Well, suppose now that the idol had not gone, you would be much happier surely, and quite as good, I dare say.” 66 Happier-yes, in a sense; that is, of course one does not pass through an agony like that without shrinking, and for a long time I felt half stunned with the pain; but now I see it was essential for me, and my soul rests on a higher Love in a way that only a short time ago was incomprehensible to me." She turned so gently to her friend, and added, "What God sends you take gladly and thankfully, but do not wrap your heart in any earthly thing; if you do, the covering must be taken off, and the closer it enfolds you the more will your heart be torn in the parting." I watched this pair a few minutes more, and then was attracted by seeing the man who had succeeded in getting the gold-coloured fruit, and was so delighted with it. He was now dreadfully altered, he looked ill and depressed, and I heard him say, as if speaking his thoughts aloud, "I have got it, the one thing I toiled and fought for, and why is it not enough for me? I am rich, and men envy me, but I am tired of it all! Friends gone, my health gone, and nothing left but one who wishes me gone that he may get the gold I leave !" As he said these words he came rather near me, and I looked attentively at the gold-coloured fruit he still held in his hand; it looked as if some one had bitten it, so that I could see the inside; and what was my astonishment to find that instead of the juicy pulp I expected, the fruit was filled with a fine dust! Now, I thought, I understand it all. No wonder the fruit-seekers are disappointed! who could be satisfied with "apples of Sodom"? I tried again to rise from my seat and go and gather one, and examine it closely, found that I could rise, and as I did so a mist seemed to pass before me, and in another moment the garden was as I had always known it, and I was alone, the lime trees waving over my head, but not for a shade, for the sun had gone down, and the voice of my friend was calling from the house to ask why I remained out so long. "I am coming," I called in reply; and, as I proceeded to obey the summons, mentally thanked God for my dream, which had perhaps saved me from realizing the meaning of the words, "They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare," and helped me to feel in my heart as well as believe in my head that "all things work together for good to them that love God." M. J. L. BREAD UPON THE WATERS. NO. II. "And they brought young children to Him, that He might bless them." MR. DISRAELI in one of his novels remarks upon the terrible retrospect all men must have whose youth has been unenjoyed. And to such of us as can happily recall the memories and associations of childhood and youth, the possibility of remembering them as seasons of hardship and pain, not only seems unnatural, but distant and far-fetched. The days when we were brought in as a sort of pageant to entertain our father's guests at dessert; when in white frock and with mottled legs and arms we were deposited by nurse in that peculiar chair with an elevated rest for the sitter's feet, and a bar before his waist to prevent his sprawling over the table or falling incontinently to the ground; when mamma stood with us as the incarnation of love and mercy, and papa was regarded as a mysterious entity before whom less noise was to be made, and whose presence somehow detracted from the obsequious consideration we held to be our right; when, pleased with a rattle and "tickled by a straw," we valued pretty toy or a toothsome sweetmeat before either the intellectual or financial superiority of those aroundform with many of us the earliest reminiscences of childhood. Mixed up with them is the prayer night and morning, literally on the mother's knee, a prayer beginning with "Our Father," and winding up with a blessing on "all relations and friends," and with the verse commencing, "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," and closing with "Pity my simplicity." Ah! happy, happy time, when relations were put before friends, and when the greater was believed to include the less. Tell a child that his own kin will be often less than kind, that the acquaintance he meets by chance, or is introduced to haphazard, is far more likely to give him encouragement in time of need than the people in whose veins runs the same blood as his own, and you will rapidly sink in his esteem. Take Master Oliver, aged six, to the window, and point out to him the first stranger who passes by, and reminding him of the uncle or aunt who gave him the small globe or the Chinese puzzle, put the proposition that some person he never saw before is of the class to whom he will hereafter be indebted for sympathy and kindness, while those with whose smile he is now familiar will be the ones most likely to magnify his failings and depreciate his deeds, and Master Oliver will first look at you incredulously, and then unconsciously book you in the tablets of memory as a person to be shunned. And rightly. Let the world's hard lessons come in their own way and at their own time, but never tamper with a child's faith. When the boy in the Greek epigram was slowly clambering down a precipice, all invitations to return were futile, until supplemented by the sight of his mother's breast; and so, preach of pitfalls, terrors, and deceptions as you may, they will make no impression unless your statements are endorsed by the person in whom is centred faith and love and hope, and all the qualities which in later life we look not for on earth. On the other hand, the pleasures given to childhood are amply repaid by children. "No man can tell," wrote that "warbler of poetic prose," Jeremy Taylor, "but he who loves his children, how many delicious accents makes a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges. Their childishness, their stammering, their little anger, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society." And though this is meant to apply chiefly to babydom, who shall say either that the years just preceding the "teens," or the "teens themselves, do not confer equal pleasure upon parent and child? When the high chair has been resigned in favour of our juniors, when the mottled legs have been cased in merino or wool to their infinite discomfort, to mamma's regret, and greatly to papa's satisfaction; when the pickings at dessert are augmented by half a glass of wine, which powerful stimulant was never swallowed until-happily the silly torture to the operator and the operated upon has been long abolished by good taste-the formula, "Your good health, Mr. Blank," had been repeated to every one round the table; when to be a big boy and to ride a pony are goals of human bliss beyond which the imagination cannot travel; when the value of money as a commodity bringing tarts and toffee, kites, popguns, and marbles in its train begins to be appreciated; when dreadful relations examine you in history, sacred and secular, or set you recondite sums, telling all witnesses that your cousin, who is six months younger, is infinitely your superior in learning and intelligence; when school is an unknown mystery, and all teachings have been tempered with tenderness and associated with love; when the fast-budding intelligence asserts itself in probing and not always well-timed questionings and searching queries,-what is all this but happiness in another form? The sage who mourned that old heads cannot be put upon young shoulders was but an ill-conditioned moralist and an unsound philosopher, after all. Despite the blunders, misapprehensions, and disasters into which an insufficient estimate of our own position in relation to the world may have led us, who would wish to have been prematurely wise, or to have exchanged the careless buoyancy of youth for the thoughts and reflections of maturity? "What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys, "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast, This is not a picture for children to emulate, or for parents to covet for their own, and we may pass it by, with the conviction that no human being ever adopted it willingly, and that it is irreconcilably opposed both to the dictates of nature and the lessons of revelation. When school days come to have a meaning, when punishment is a stern possibility and duty a hard fact, when we have a place in life outside the domestic circle, when we are called Dobson or Jones, instead of the affectionate diminutive of our Christian name in use at home, when we learn to sacrifice the present for advantage in the future, when impulse must be governed by reason, and every faculty subjected to discipline,-then do we learn a lesson to which the mere bookish portion of tuition is an unmeaning trifle. Upon the day in which we figure as "the new boy," and in the hour in which we are patronized for not having been at school before, our eyes are partially opened to the world. Not an allusion to “last half," not a comparison between the cricket score at this and preceding matches, nor a mention of bygone treats or punishments, nor a recurrence to the boys who have left, but leaves its mark. We find, half wonderingly, that there is a past in which we have not figured, and the next tentative effort is to realize a future of which we have never dreamed. The many pursuits unknown to us hitherto; the friendships, partialities, and dislikes of those around us; the subdued voices and modified conversation when the pedagogue is present, and the contemptuous reference to him when away, are all bewildering from their very novelty. When the first few working hours are over, and we stand in the playground, the inclination to go behind a tree and cry soon gives place to the healthy liking for companionship, and the keen pleasure we derive from the games and gambols in which we so speedily join. But the predominant feeling is still wonderment at the contrast between life here and the life we have been accustomed to. And so through the day to night. The formal regularity of meal-times; the obvious fact that we are not so much a creature in whom pride and hope are centred, as a cog in a great wheel, a link |