"Oh! you dear old stockings," she said; "I'll never grumble again if you are full of holes, so long as Bertie gets well. We couldn't spare him anyhow, even if he is noisy and careless ;" and with that she laid her soft cheek against them, and dropped a few tender tears.

Bertie lay very quiet for days and days; but, bye-andbye, he began to whistle and sing and pull things about, and tease Bessie. But one day he said:

"I wouldn't exchange you for anybody's sister that I know. You are just as good, and jolly, and patient, as you can be, and nothing seems a trouble to you. I wonder why you are so sweet?"

Bessie winked some tears out of her eyes, and smiled all over her happy dimpled face.

"I don't know," she answered, "unless it is that I've begun to love you with all my might."

"Hurray! that's a good one, too!" said Bertie, thinking it over soberly.

"The motto was a splendid one, after all," Bessie said to her mother. "I did not imagine at first that there could be so much good in it. And it makes all the hard places so easy and pleasant, and I think even boys are a good deal better when you love them with all your might. I do believe it is that which makes Carrie so hard to get along with; she gets tired of everything so soon, and nothing pleases her, except for a few moments."

Mrs. Thorpe smiled, and kissed her little daughter.

"It certainly does help in the darning of stockings," Bessie declared laughingly.

"It is one of the grand secrets of happy living," said Mrs. Thorpe.

The Diamond-cutters of Amsterdam.

EARLY all the owners of the Amsterdam diamond-mills are wealthy; but the operatives, though they have what are regarded as very good wages in Holland, are quite poor. Like the watch-makers of Geneva they usually inherit their trade, their fathers and grandfathers having been employed in the same business. They are regular as clocks, labouring so many hours every day, and giving the strictest and most absorbing attention to their exacting toil, which is a constant strain upon their brain and nerves, no less than upon their senses and their muscles. They need to

keep their heads clear and their blood cool, to perform all the delicate manipulations necessary. The least dullness of sight or touch, or the smallest variation in handling, might do more damage than a whole lifetime of wages would make good. They very rarely spoil any of their work by any fault of their own; for they are so disciplined and trained to their calling that their hands obey their minds almost with the perfection of machinery.

Diamond-cutting seems to me a most dismal trade. The hundreds of men I have seen engaged in the mills appeared wan and worn, and melancholy, as well they might with their perpetual and monotonous round of cheerless and consuming toil. To them each day is like every other day. The seasons and the years come and go, and go and come, without chance or change. Their world is but a revolving disc; the straining of the eye, the tension of the nerves, a painful pressure of the hand against the little gem which mocks them with its brightness, and defies them with its impossibility of possession. So, in one unbroken repetition of wistful work, their life creeps darkly on, and only when the end comes does their rest seem to begin.

The Poor Dressmaker.

LITTLE orphan girl lived with her grandmother. There were only those two. They were very poor, but very neat and tidy. Perhaps I should say they were rich in one thing; they had a Bible; and in the Bible they found God a tried friend. In the Bible they found Jesus Christ a precious Saviour. In the Bible they found a beautiful garment; that was holiness. In the Bible they found a beautiful ornament; that was a meek and quiet spirit. In the Bible they found a house not made with hands; that was heaven. So the old grandmother and the little girl were not so poor after all. They were richer by far than people with plenty of money who had not found these. The little girl's name was Sarah Martin,

When Sarah was old enough, she had to earn her living and as she was too slender to do hard work, her grandmother thought she had better learn dressmaking. For this purpose she had to go to Yarmouth. Yarmouth was a town three miles from the village where they lived, and she used to walk in in the morning, and out at night. Wasn't she afraid? Sarah was so sweet tempered and good, I am sure nobody would harm her; and then she put her trust in God, and she knew he would take care of her. By-and-by she began to earn a shilling a-day by pretty diligent sewing, and she was very thankful for it.

The court used to hold its sittings at Yarmouth, and one day a woman was going to be tried for cruelly beating her little child. Awful stories were told about her, and everybody's blood curdled at hearing them. She was lodged in the jail. Sarah used to pass the jail going to and from her work; and she, as well as everybody else looked

up to it as they passed, thinking of the cruel creature in

it.

Did Sarah hate her? Almost everybody did, judging by their talk. Did she despise her? Did she call her "horrid,” “awful,” and all the hard names she could think of? No. Sarah loved her. "That is strange," you will say. Well, she did; and I think she was the only person in all Yarmouth that had a spark of love for her. If Sarah did love her, what then? You know love well enough, perhaps, to know that it always wants to be doing something. Love, you may depend, is very industrious, But what could poor Sarah Martin's love do? She thought she should like to go and see the woman. But that great, black, ugly looking jail, who would have a heart to go there? It seemed even to smell wicked. She however stopped one morning at the porch and knocked, and when the jail-keeper came to the door, she asked leave to visit the poor creature who beat her child so. "No," said the jail-keeper, eyeing her, "you can't go." This looked as if her love wasn't of much use; so she turned and walked sorrowfully away to her work.

A few days after, she stopped at the porch again. "It must have been curiosity," you say. You can judge when you know more, Let me tell on. She knocked, and the jail-keeper came, and again he saw modest little Sarah Martin at the door. She asked what she asked before, and he said "Yes," and let her in, and told the turnkey to conduct her to the right cell. "Curiosity!" I daresay, he thought; yet he would not say "No" a second time. Sarah followed the turnkey through the long, dark, damp, passages of the big jail, with their small, high, grated windows, which we should think the cheerful sun would hardly condescend to look into, only that the sun is not at all proud; it visits the lowly just as much as the high, and always the poor prisoners when it can get in-as Sarah Martin has, for by this time she is directly opposite the cell, and the turnkey is rattling his huge keys, and unlocking the big

lock, and the iron door is swinging open, and Sarah is face to face with the bad woman. I wonder if she minds the straw bed, and the dirty coverlet, and the miserable, comfortless look everything has. The woman-she has a horrid expression in her eye-stares at her unexpected visitor. "What do you come here for?" she asked Sarah in a harsh voice.

"I come," answered Sarah, meekly, "because I love you. You are guilty and miserable, and I come to tell you of God's mercy, and the comfort you can find in the grace of his dear Son." Oh, that kind tone, that pitying eye! The woman knew in a minute that she had got a friend; and the poor sinner burst out crying, aud thanked her for coming. What the law and the officers of justice, and the jail and the jail-keeper could not do, Sarah Martin's Christian love did-it softened her hard heart, and paved the way for her amendment. It was a good visit; the first, but

not the last.

She went again and again, and the other prisoners hearing of her, wanted her to come and see them. She always carried her little Bible with her, for that she called the prisoner's friend, and read to them, and instructed them in its precious truths. Old grey-headed criminals wept as they listened to her; thieves, pickpockets, wicked sailors, and bad boys respected her; and as she read, prayed, and felt for them by turns, it seemed as if an angel had come. They saw how blessed it was to be good, and for the first time in their lives, perhaps, longed to be good themselves; their wicked ways never before seemed so wicked. Sarah found a great many of them could neither read nor write, and she felt she must have the privilege of teaching them. Where was she to get the time? "I thought it right," she says, "to give up a day in the week from dressmaking to serve the prisoners." Poor as she was, nobody ever paid her for the time; yet she said, "It was a pecuniary loss, but it was ever followed with abundant satisfaction, for the blessing of God