THE IRISH REAPER'S RETURN. AS surely as swallows come with houses, which in towns are generally - summer, so do the Irish reapers kept by their countrymen. There is come with harvest. We know them in no mistaking the quaintly-cut friezea minute as we see them sitting on the coat and the long, blue worsted stockbenches at the railway stations, where | ings, the battered, weather-beaten hat, they always seem to have an hour or and the bundle, which is all the two to wait for their train, or as we see “luggage” they have. them trooping along to the lodging You must not think, however, that they are the poorest of the poor, for many of them have their bit of potatoground, or their few acres of farm, and they come over to England to get the rent; and so they do not spend a penny that they can help, unless, indeed, the drink, that cheats so many English workmen out of their money, tempts them also into waste and riot on their idle Sundays. The English workman would rather earn a penny than beg a shilling; but Pat, thinking of his rent, does not stick at asking for a crust from the cottager, or a “copper for his lodging” from the gentry. He works hard all day, and at night he is content to sleep on a heap of clean straw in the farmer's barn, which must be much healthier and pleasanter than the close, crowded, dirty lodgings, which the reapers put up with in the towns. The same party of reapers come round to the same farms year after year, the farmers taking them because they work for a lower price than our better-off English labourers, and because, when they have finished their work, they go away; whereas labourers living near home want work when there is not much to be done on the farm. Reaping-machines are greatly lessening the work of the Irish labourers; and as the use of these machines is quickly spreading, perhaps, in a few years à. o arrival of these hardworking sons of St. Patrick will be at an end. In the meantime while we are not blind to their faults and failings, we must admire the way in which they face hardships, and the discomfort of being strangers in a strange land, for the sake of the little ones at home ; and as we see them trudging back to Liverpool, or other sea-port, to get across again to the Emerald Isle, we may picture to ourselves the pleasant welcome that awaits many a rough and ragged, but honest fellow. After long miles of weary walking, he is within sight of his cabin. His children have been looking out for many a day; and now, when little black-eyed Kitty gives the glad news that he is coming along the road, they all scamper off to meet him—and then, when he has kissed them all a dozen times, they tell him that the mother has gone to see a sick neighbour, and will not be back till late, so they make him sit down on the steps of the stile leading to the old mill, and they climb round him and over him, and they crown the old weather-beaten hat with a wreath of leaves, and then they listen while he tells them of the wonders of the sea and of the strange things that he has seen in England. And when they have sat for half an hour in the golden sunset, they set out for the cabin; and there, when the good mother has come home, and when the children have been put to bed, the reaper opens his bundle, and shows his wife the money that he has so hardly earned, and which is enough, to make them easy about the rent, and about feeding the little ones for the coming winter. May there be many such a happy return of the Irish reaper to his home in this month and the next. GLEANERS IN AUTUMN. IF you cannot, in the harvest, Garner up the richest sheaves; Many a grain, both ripe and golden, Which the careless reaper leaves, You can glean among the briers Growing rank against the wall, For it may be that their shadow Hides the heaviest wheat of all. Do not, then, standidly waiting “BRING OUT YOUR DEAD !” OW-A-DAYS, when any one lies dead in a house, those who have occasion to call ring the bell softly— they speak in a lower tone than usual —they do not hurry or push, but they show, by their manner, that they do not forget the feelings of those who are mourning and sad. When the day of the funeral comes, the bearers go in quietly, and carry the corpse to the ve. How unfeeling we should think it if, instead of this, a cart passed down the street, the driver shouting at ever door, “Bring out your dead " Thoug the clergyman says over the corpse, in the churchyard, “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes /* yet we should think it terrible if the remains of our dead friends or kindred were to be carted away just like the common dust and ashes of the house. Yet there was a time in London when it was so. It was about 200 years ago when the Great Plague visited England, and nearly 100,000 persons, of all ages and ranks, died. The sickness, called “The Plague,” was thought to have been brought from Holland. It apfirst in London in May 1665. t spread so quickly, that in July so many people had fled from London that grass was growing in many streets, hundreds of houses were shut up, huge fires were kept burning in squares and open places to purify the air, and the pest-carts for the dead bodies were constantly passing along. As we . see, people who forget God in their joy and peace think of Him in their terror. So it was then. There were on every side piteous cries, “Pray for us!” and on many doors there were painted red crosses, with the inscription, “Lord, have mercy upon us!" The weather during the whole time of the Plague was so calm and bright, that it seemed “as if both wind and rain had been expelled the kingdom;" and during the still, sultry night, the pest-carts passed through the streets of the stricken city, while the bellman uttered at intervals his woeful cry, “Bring out your dead bring out your dead ' " The corpses, without coffins, were hastily brought forth and thrown into the cart by the ghastly, shudderin inmates of the house, or, if they . fled, by some neighbour braver than the rest. When the Plague was at its height, the carts were soon filled; for on one fatal night it is said that 4000 people died in London and its suburbs; and when the carts were full they were driven to one of the pest-houses—receiving-houses for the dead—which were built in open places far from the dwellings of men, where the corpses might be left till the graves could be dug for them. The picture shows the pest-house at Tothill Fields, which was then quite in the country. The Plague was not limited to London; it spread into the country: the infection being either carried by the Londoners, who fled in panic, or else being conveyed in clothes or other goods sent from London to distant towns. When once the infection appeared in a town, the people of the neighbourhood would not go near it, nor suffer messengers from it to come to them. In many towns there still remain the broad stones on which the country people left their vegetables and other produce, and then retired to a distance while the town-buyers took them away, and left on the stone the money, which had been previously washed in vinegar to prevent infection. The stone in the picture is outside the town of East Retford, in Nottinghamshire. The Plague decreased during the winter months of 1665, and seems to have ceased after a fierce hurricane which swept over the land in February |