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THE SAILOR-BOY WHO WOULD PRAY, AND WHAT CAME OF

HIS PRAYING. ON board a man-of-war there was a

V midshipman, who, in spite of the ridicule of his companions, was in the habit of kneeling in prayer at his berth. This was such an unusual practice, that the middies resolved to put it down; so they watched him. The moment he knelt, a volley of caps and shoes flew round him, and some hit him. This was repeated night after night, and morning after morning ; but still the midshipman persevered in his devotions. "At last one of the superior officers informed the commander, who summoned all the midshipmen, and calling the persecuted one to the front, asked him to state his grievance. The lad said he had no complaint to make. His commander said he knew he had good cause for complaint, and told him to speak out. But the praying midshipman persisted in stating he had nothing to complain of. The commander then dismissed them, saying, that he knew how matters stood, and trusted there would be no more of it.

That evening the middy knelt as usual in prayer, but without experiencing the smallest annoyance. While so engaged, he heard footsteps quietly approaching, and was expecting some disagreeable interruption; but, to his surprise, a middy- the youngest on board - knelt down by his side. Shortly afterwards came another, and another, till fourteen of his companions, under the influence of his noble example, were kneeling beside him.

A speaker told this at a public breakfast, naming the ship and other particulars. A gentleman who was present, saw that his neighbour was much moved by the story, but he did not wonder at it, when his neighbour whispered to him, “That lad is my son, and I have only now heard of this for the first time !"

GRATITUDE.—Six years ago, sixteen young girls were sent from the workhouse school in the Portsea Union to Australia, where they were all soon comfortably settled, and turned out well. One of them had the good fortune to inarry a man of considerable property, and on her returning to England a short time afterwards, one of her first acts was to call in her own carriage at the workhouse for the purpose of expressing her gratitude to the schoolmistress for those kind offices which had helped her to get into so comfortable a position in life.

THE DEAD BIRD; OR, BELIEVE YOUR FATHER. By Rev. C. W. Jones.

o: IF you please, father, may I go into the garden with Freddy, and get some groundsel for my Dicky 1” said little Ethel, one fine summer's morning. “Certainly,” replied he, “green food is very acceptable to man and beast this hot weather; and I doubt not, to birds also. We keep poor Dicky in a cage, so that he cannot get any for himself, and we must not forget him. Go, and gather him some groundsel by all means, but let me see it before you give it to him, for I am not quite sure that you know groundsel when you see it, . wise little woman of four years o " So Ethel and Freddy trotted off into #. gon to get some green food for Icky.

“Dicky was a canary bird,
With feathers bright and yellow,
Slender legs; upon my word
He was a pretty fellow;”

and Ethel was very fond of him. He had been given to her as a keepsake from her aunt Jane, who was gone to India. When Ethel and Freddy got into the garden, they began to look for groundsel. They looked first over one flower-bed, and then over another, but could not find any. Freddy was a year younger than his sister, and very soon got tired of looking for groundsel. He wanted to gather some flowers, and Ethel had great difficulty in preventing him from doing what their father and mother had forbidden, and plucking flowers without eave. “No, Freddy,” she said, “you know We mustn't have them,” and so he left them alone. Then he wanted to take to a geranium leaf for Dicky; and, when that would not do, he proposed taking some grass off the lawn.

At last a bright thought seemed to strike him—“Me know where goundsel,” he exclaimed; and, followed by Ethel, he set off to a damp, neglected part of the garden where William the gardener did not look so strictly after the weeds. There they found plenty of weeds, and Freddy seized one and broke it off. It was very bright and green, much brighter green than groundsel usually is, and Ethel doubted whether it was the right thing, but her little brother was so positive about its being “g'oundsel,” that she gave way to him. However, looking at a white milkyjuice which was oozing out of the stalk where

it had been broken off, she said, “We

mustn't have that one, we must pull one up with the root, because Dicky likes to peck the dirt off the root.” So a fresh one was pulled up, and the two children set off to show it to their father. “Here's the groundsel for Dicky,” exclaimed Ethel, coming to the open window. “Let me see it,” said the father, looking up from his newspaper. “No, that won't do,” he continued, “that is not groundsel ; it is spurge—poison.” Ethel dropped it as if it would poison her to hold it in her hand; and without another word set off to look for some real groundsel. Freddy was not so easily satisfied; he looked out of his great round eyes at his father, and seeing that he was busy with his newspaper again, he stooped down, picked up the weed, walked slowly into the house, and toddled upstairs into the school-room. He thought that he knew quite as well as his father, and had made up his mind to give his “g'oundsel,” as he called it, to the bird. There was nobody in the school-room, and Dicky was hanging there all alone, singing as merrily as he ever had done in all his life. So Freddy got a chair, dragged it under the cage, climbed upon it, and pushed the spurge between the wires. Poor Dicky had nobody to tell him what was poison, he only took whatever was given him, and began to peck at the green food without asking any questions. Freddy had just had time to get off the chair and put it back again into its place, when Ethel came running in with a piece of real groundsel. “Oh, you naughty, naughty boy!” she called out, almost crying as she saw Dicky pecking away merrily at what Freddy ind put into his cage; “ you naughty, naughty boy, you have been giving that nasty o to my poor ittle bird, and it will be dead ' " Freddy said no- thing, but turned very red, and stared at the flies upon the ceiling. Ethel dragged the chair back again, climbed upon it, snatched the weed from between the wires, and threw it out of the window. Poor Dicky seemed very frightened, and fluttered about a good deal, but soon settled himself again, and began to peck the groundsel which his little mistress gave him. However, he was very dull all that day, he sang very little, and there was no pocket-handkerchief needed over his cage at lesson time. And when Ethel came into the room the next morning, what a sad sight met her eyes! . There lay her dear little bird on his back at the bottom of his cage quite dead, her dear little bird which her aunt Jane, who was gone to India, had given her for a keepsake! No more merry songs,

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London : WILLIAM MACINTOSH, 24 Patkanoster Row.

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MONTHLY MEDLEY FOR HARRY HOMES,

CONDUCTED BY J. ERSKINE GLARKE,M.A.

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THE BRAVE SWISS BOY.

MY story is of a country very different from that in which we live; where, instead of the gently sloping hills, the pleasant corn-fields, the calm rivers, and the beautiful trees, of our native land, there are great mountains, so high that their peaks are always covered with snow, which never melts even in the midst of summer, dark forests of pine-trees, and immense rocks, from whence torrents and waterfalls rush down into the valleys. I will first tell you something about Switzerland, as this country is called, for, probably, many of my readers have never even heard the name. All the land where it is possible to grow an thing, instead of being, as in England, cultivated by farmers who employ labourers to toil for them, is worked by the peasants for themselves. It is wonderful what a difference this makes in the crops which the land produces, for as each family owns a plot of a few acres of ground, the greatest care is given to make it yield as much as possible. Not a foot of soil is wasted; wherever grass will grow on a mountain-side, you will find it; wherever rye, barley, or oats, will ripen, they are carefully sown. All the family work early and late, with a feeling of honest independence; nothing is allowed to be wasted; even the dead leaves are collected and saved to be used instead of straw in the winter. The labourer pays neither rent nor wages; he eats his own corn, drinks his own wine, and is clothed with his own flax and wool, which are spun, woven, and dyed at home. He has generally a few cows and goats, and, in some parts of the country, these are taken o up on the mountain-sides during the summer months, to feed on the scattered patches of grass, but at the first approach of cold weather they are taken down into the valleys. Each cow has a bell fastened round her neck, in order that the herdsman may find

her in case she should stray from her companions. The villagers make more butter and cheese than they want for their own use: and when they wish to sell it, they are often obliged to take a long and toilsome journey, perhaps of several days, across the mountains to the nearest town. The cottages, many of which are beautifully ornamented with carving, are all built of wood, which is obtained from the trunks of the pine-trees, while the smaller branches are cut up for firing and stored in large quantities for the winter. It often happens in the villages amid the mountains, that a deep fall of snow will prevent the poor people from going out for weeks together, so they are obliged to rovide all they want beforehand. uring the time they are kept in-doors the men employ themselves in carving beautiful little ornaments of w which they sell to travellers, while the women are busy spinning or knitting warm stockings and jackets. Bleak and poor as it may seem to us, the Swiss dearly love their country, and when they are far away in distant lands, anything that reminds them of their home, even a simple song or tune of their native land, will bring tears into their eyes, and make them long to return to their mountains. After this short account of the country and its people, I will begin my story. It is a bright moonlight night in October. Can you fancy a small wooden hut, with great stones laid on the roof that it may not be blown away by the wind, near the top of a mountain far away from any other dwellings? The ground is covered with snow, and the snowy mountains all round in the distance look dazzlingly white in the rays of the moon. It is the Joch Pass between Engelberg and Meyringen, the only safe road for crossing the mountains between those two villages during the summer, but difficult and dangerous in the winter. Yonder lies the way to Meyringen, by that little tarn, or moun

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