SAY YOUR PRAYERS IN FAIR WEATHER.

34 APTAIN BLANK, who

- commanded a vessel trading between Liverpool and America, once took on board a man almost at the last minute, to serve during the voyage as a common sailor. The newcomer was soon found to be quarrelsome, foulmouthed, and drunken. In short, he was the plague of the vessel.

At length a violent storm arose, all hands were piped upon deck. When the men were mustered to their quarters, the swearing sailor was missing, and the captain went below to seek him; great was his surprise to find him on his knees repeating the Lord's Prayer. Vexed at what he accounted his hypocrisy or cowardice, he shook him roughly by the collar, exclaiming, “Say your prayers in fair weather.” The man rose up, and said in a low voice, “God grant that I may ever see fair weather to say them "

In a few hours the storm abated, a week more brought them to harbour, and the incident passed away from the memory of the captain; the more easily, as this sailor was paid off the day after landing, and did not appear again.

Four years had passed, during which, though the captain had twice been shipwrecked, he still lived without thought of God. . At the end of this period, he arrived in port after a long and dangerous voyage.

It was on a Sunday morning, and the streets were thronged with persons proceeding to the different houses of worship; but the captain had no thought of joining those good people. He was on his way to a tavern to drown the recollection of his past perils.

Whilst walking towards this place, he met a former friend, a comrade of many a thoughtless hour. Salutations over, the captain seized him by the arm, declaring that he should accompany him. “I will do so,” replied the other, “on condition that you come with me first into this church, and thank God for His mercies to you on the deep.” The captain was ashamed to refuse, so they entered the church, and succeeded in getting a place in front of the pulpit, at about five yards from it. he preacher riveted the attention of the whole congregation, including the captain himself, to whom his features and voice seemed not wholly unknown, though he could not recall where or when he had seen them before. At length the preacher's eye fell upon the spot where the two friends stood. He suddenly paused—still gazing upon the captain, as if to make himself sure that his eyes did not deceive him—and after a silence of more than a minute, he exclaimed, in a voice that startled every one, “Say your prayers in fair weather.” The audience were amazed, and it was some minutes before the preacher recovered sufficient self-possession to tell the incident which the reader already knows, adding, with deep emotion, that the words which his captain uttered in the storm had clung to him by day and by night after his landing, as if an angel had been charged wit the duty of repeating them in his ears; that he felt the holy call as coming direct from above, to do the work of his crucified Master; that he had studied at college for the ministry, and was now, through grace, such as they saw and heard him to be. It is said that Captain Blank was so struck by this effect of his own hasty words, that he sought the counsel of the clergyman, and became a true nitent, and in due time an earnest hristian sailor.

over the water with a double-bladed paddle, at a great speed, in pursuit of whales, seals, or wildfowl. During their short summer the Esquimaux leave their snow-houses to melt, and taking their tents they forsake the sea-shore, and hunt the reindeer in the valleys, or capture the wild-fowl and fresh-water fish in the lakes in the interior of the country. When the long dreary winter returns, during which the sun is altogether out of sight for months together, the Esquimaux come back to the coast and build new snow villages. Perhaps during the summer, when the water was open, they may have visited the shore for the purpose of capturing that great giant of the icy seas—a whale! The Esquimaux do not use harpoons with ropes fastened to them in securing a whale, as the sailors do who go out from this country and America. When the huge creature is discovered, the men of the tribe get into their canoes and surround it; then they hurl darts into its body, each dart having fastened to it a seal-skin inflated like a bladder. When a number of these are fixed in the body of the whale, the creature, strong as it is, cannot sink down far into the water; it soon rises to the surface again; the seal-skin floats show where it is: the Esquimaux dart after it in their canoes, and shoot a fresh volley into its body, till at last the whale is wearied out and killed. The capture of a whale, however, is a rare piece of good fortune. It is the seal on which the Esquimaux mainly depend. The seal may be regarded as the staff of their life, in that it furnishes them not only with food, but with light, fuel, and clothing. In open weather, when the Esquimaux hunter sees a seal on the ice he works craftily round, hiding behind snow-drifts and ice-hillocks, often clothing himself in a seal-skin, and floundering clumsily over the ice, wagging his head from side to side, as the

seals are seen to do; so that if the animal sees him it may mistake him for one of its companions. In this way he gets between the seal and the water, and then kills it by a blow on the snout with a club, or by piercing it with a spear. But in winter, when the sea for hundreds of miles is covered with ice a full yard in thickness, the seal-fishery would be at an end, and the poor Esquimaux would starve, were it not that God has given the animal a habit peculiar to itself, which brings it within their reach. Though the seal can live in water like a fish, and probably could pass a whole winter under the ice without much inconvenience, yet it likes, now and then, to take a little fresh air, and have a quiet nap on the top of the ice. With this design it breaks a hole in the ice while it is thin, and keeps it carefully open during the whole winter, clearing away each new crust as it forms. The Esquimaux, knowing this habit, watch a seal's hole till the creature comes out on to the ice, and then do their best to capture it. When seals are scarce, the hunter will often wait for his prey for hours during the long, dark nights, concealed behind a heap of snow, which he has piled up for the urpose. A float-stick placed on the reathing-hole serves as a signal to tell when the seal is mounting through its trap-like passage, and gives the hunter time to get into the attitude to strike: or if the night be too dark for him to see the float-stick, the hunter covers the hole with a lid made of a cake of É. white snow. In the centre of this id he punches a small opening with the shaft end of his spear, and then awaits the seal's rising to the upper air. The dark, water bubbling up through the small central hole, which can be seen even in the darkest night, betrays the seal's approach. The hunter does not wait for it to climb out on to the ice, but he drives his spear down through