Year: 1873

AMI ONE HARD 10 LEARN.


Do not tell me it is the same old story
and therefore of no account. There is
no lesson of real life that is not old as
life itself. The blessing which came of
the first throb of loving heart has been
daily and hourly re-echoed for thousands
of years and it is as sweet and fresh to-
day as it was that morning hour when
the sun first shone upon the love scene of
Eden. And those lessons of life which
lead to the true living, though they may
have been preached and expounded over
and over again, can never be preached
too much. They cannot be worn out.
The need of their guidance will cease on
ly when this life shall have been swal-
lowed up in the life eternal. So, though
this same lesson has been 80 often illus
trated and enforced, / deem it no un-
seemly repetition to tell the simple story
which shall illustrate it again. / know
Albert Moore well-and l knew Alice in
other years, also, and the lesson of their
life which now write down eliminated
under my own observation.


Albert Moore, at the age Of twenty
five, took Alice Warren for ais wife, and
fancied that he was going to be as hap
rs it is given to ordinary mortals to be.
Albert had been in the army-had gone
in at the age of twenty fought through
from Balls Bluff to Richmond
come out with captains commission
and had found his way, Immediately on
his discharge, to his early love, and de-
manded the helping hand in the COM
mencement of the peaceful life Alice did
not refuse. She had held him in her
heart through the dark years, and now
in the glow of the glad light, she joined
hands with him happily and hopefully.


Albert had come from the army with
but little money but he had a good
trade, stout heart and strong pair of
hands, and he borrowed no trouble for
the future. Alice had saved up few
hundred dollars from her wages as a
teacher, and when the twain had be-
come man and wife, they fonnd, upon a
careful inventory, that they had enough
TO furnish small house comfortably.
Albert proposed that they hire tene-
ment in the city, but Alice thonght they
had better secure pretty cottage in the
suburbs-a cottage which they perhaps
in time might make their own. Albert
had no disposition to argue the question,
so the cottage was found and secured.
1t was pleasant, rural location, and so
connected..with the city by rail that AL
bert found no difficulty in going to and
from his workshop.


During five years experience in school
teaching, Alice had learned many things,
and having been an orphan from an ear
ly age, she had made the problems of
real life one of her chief studies, and
what she had learned in the latter de-
partment served her in her new station.
After her marriage she found Albert to
be just the man she had known him to
be in other years. He was kind to
fault. free hearted ana generous ready
always to answer the call of friendship
and to pluck the flowers that blossomed
to-day, regardless of what might be ma
tured to bloom on the morrow.


They had been married few months
when Alice found that her husband was
cutting his garments from day to day ex-
actly according to his daily supply of
cloth. Not shred was he likely to
save up for the cutting of an extra gar
ment for rainy day to come.


Albert, she said to him one evening,
do you know we ought to be laying up a
little something?


Albert looked up from his paper and
waited for his wife to elucidate.


l think l heard you tell Mr.. Green
ough that you had no money-that you
had paid away your last dollar this after
noon.


Exactly, my dear; but you know to-
morrow is pay day.


And you have spent your last months
+?


Yes.


A brief silenne ensued, which Albert
broke.


Come, Alice, you have got something
on your mind. Out with it, will listen.


And then Alice, in a smiling, pleasant
way, went on to tell that they ought to
be laying up something.


Albert smiled in turn and asked how
such thing was to be done when it cost
all he could earn to live.


You earn three dollars and a half a
day, said Alice.


Yes.


George Somers only three dollars?


You are right.


And yet he lives and does not run in
debt.


Rut he Is forced to DENY himself MANY |