Year: 1874

Forty years once seemed long and


weary pilgrimage to make. 1t now


seems but step; and yet along the


way are broken shrines where thous-
and hopes fade to ashes, footprints sa-
cred under their drifting dust, green
mounds where the grass fresh with the


watering of tears. We will garner the
sunshine of these years, and with
chastened steps and hope press on to-
ward the twilight where the waters are
still and the storms never beat.


When the summer of youth is
slowly wasting away in the nightfall of
age, and the shadows of the past years
grow deeper and deeper, and life wears
to its close, it is pleasant to look back,
through the vista of time, upon the
sorrows and felicities of our earliest
years. If we have home to shelter,
and hearts TO rejoice with US, and fire.
sides, then the rough places of our
way-faring will have worn and
smoothed away, in the twilight of life,
while the sunny spots we have passed
through will grow brighter and more
beautiful. Happy indeed, are they
whose intercourse with the world has
not changed the tone of their holier
feeling, or broken those musical chords
of the heart, whose vibrations are so
melodious, so tender and thouehing in
the evening of the age y


A Mothers Loye-We are indebted
to Lamartine's exquisitely fine pen for
the following touching aud graphic il
lustration of mothers love:


In some spring freshet, river wide
ly washed its shores and rent away a
bough, whereon bird had built col
lege for her summer hopes. Down the
white and whirling stream drifted the
green branch, with its wicker cup of
unfedged song; and fluttering beside
it as it went, the mother bird. I'm
needing the roaring river, on she kept,
her cries of agnony and fear piercing
the pauses of the storm. How like
the love of the old-fashiOned mother
who followed the child she had pluck
ed from her heart, all over the world.
Swept away by passion, that might be,
it mattered not; bearing away with
him the fragments of the shattered
roof tree, though he did, yet that
mother was with him, Ruth through
all his life, and Rachel at his death.


1t cannot be that earth is mans only
abiding place. 1t cannot be that our
life is bubble cast up by the ocean of
eternity, to float moment upon the
waves and sink into darkness and
nothingness. Else why is it, that the
high and glorious aspirations, which
leap like angels from the temple of
our hearts, are forever wandering
abroad, unsatisiied? Why is it, that
the rainbow and the cloud come over
US, with beauty that is not of earth,
and then pass off and leave us to muse
on their faded loveliness? Why is it,
that the stars, which hold their festi-
walls around the midnight Throne of
God, are set so far above our limited
faculties, forever mocking US with
their unapproachable glory? And
finally, why is it, that bright forms Of
human beauty are presented to our
view, and then taken from US, leaving
the thousand streams of our affections
to flow back in Alpine torrents upon
our hearts? We are born for higher
destiny than that of earth. There is
a realm where the rainbow never fades;
where the stars will be spread out be-
fore US like the islands that slumber
on the ocean, and where the beautiful
beings, which here pass before US like
will stay in our presence forev-
er.-Geo. b. PreRtice.