With Time's

gray mist; but may we not now learn Some stirring lessons from these ancient myths? The blessed Saviour, when upon the earth, Taught those who followed him from parables. And so, sometimes, untruths may teach us truths. May we not keep an angel by our side,

Who to our hearts divinest melody

Shall make, if we but earnest welcome give?
Believe we not the Saviour's words of love,
"Lo, I am with you alway, to the end?"
True courage and all-conquering faith,
The maiden's steadfast trust to us reveals
And these are lessons hard we well may con
Where'er they may be found. Let's not ferlook
The all-encircling love which filled her soul,
Nor that victorious triumph over death,
Which made his agonizing sting unfelt.
Tells not our tale a lesson, too, of praise?
Cecelia's voice, and sounding strings,
Were ever echoing her Maker's name,
Though living in those dimly lighted times.

Why are our souls in mourning and bowed down?
Nay, let us lift up head, and song and voice,

In glad thanksgivings for our better days. "Consider ye the lilies of the field,"

Said he who spake as man hath never spoke ;

So let us humbly heed the lessons taught By Saint Cecelia, heavenly lily called; And let the far-off echoes of her song Awake responsive notes of love and praise.

THE TWO MOTHERS:

OR THE MISCHIEF AND MISERY OF MAKING BILLS.

BY REV. L. M. LEE, D. D.

CHAPTER I:

"Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands." SOLOMON.

THE fortunes of a family depend very much upon the character of the mother. Her influence is ever active, and always powerful. Wise or ignorant, idle or industrious, she is in many important respects the arbiter of destiny to her family. The lessons she gives, and the example she sets, shape and settle the fortune of her household. If wise, she buildeth her house in honesty of principle, sobriety of habit, and kindness of feeling, and sitteth, to the end of her days, a queen in the magnificence of her own creation. If foolish, she plucketh down, by her disregard of duty, her indiscretion of conduct, and her extravagance of taste, her house, that else might have stood a monument of praise to her piety and maternal affection. How many a mother, when surveying the dissipation of her children, the wasted fortune and broken spirit of her hus

band, and the wreck of every household joy, might say, My own hands have plucked down this ruin on my house! Society, in all its phases, from poverty

"That picks the dunghill's spoil for bread,"

to fortune ample enough for all the cravings of pride and fashion, is full of illustrations of the wisdom of Solomon as to the fortune and fate of a family at whose head a wise or foolish woman presides.

Marriage is the natural condition of men and women; albeit there are many very unnatural marriages in this world. Any how, "it's what we've all got to come to," as the boy said when he saw a Lord Mayor's procession. And it's no lately introduced custom of life either, for people have been in the habit of marrying ever since the first man and woman commenced housekeeping in the neighborhood of the Euphrates. But tastes have greatly altered, and family expenses have somewhat augmented since the good old times when fig leaves answered for summer clothes. It didn't require very hard work to make 'both ends meet" when there was nothing to sell and nobody to buy. But in these days, between marketing, dry goods, and groceries, to say nothing of good cigars, fancy soaps and cosmetics, when one has toiled the whole year through, he often finds the gap between "both ends " a great deal wider than it was a year ago. The effect produced by the discovery that one is "living beyond his

income,' is one of the finest tests of character that the political economist ever sat down to study. We have in our eye two families differently affected by a matter of this kind, whose history may interest, even if it should fail to profit.

CHAPTER II.

CONTRASTS: OR APPLES OF GOLD IN SILVER FRAMES.

IN common parlance there's a considerable difference between a marriage and a wedding. The one is just standing up before a parson; the other is that, and "a real blow out" besides. Economy sometimes dictates the one, and love of show, even at the sacrifice of honesty, the other. After the lapse of years, milliners and tailors, butchers and bakers, complain that wedding clothes and wedding cheer are not paid for. The families we introduce differ in this as in other things: One party was only married the other had "a splendid wedding." Each accorded with the taste of the woman we quote Solomon, who says nothing about ladies. They started in life at the same time, and with equal prospects. menced with a large house, well furnished, but went in debt for it; the other had a small house and plain furni

One com

We pass by the first years of life and housekeeping, with