She found such de

was on me." Oh yes, God paid her. light in his service as nothing in this world could give. The Holy Spirit helped her every step of the way, otherwise it would have been a very hard task.

A poor dressmaker giving up one-sixth part of her working time to do good among the worst of society in a common jail, must make a good many of us ashamed. How backward we are even to make one visit to the needy; how loath even to try to save one poor soul from ruin. How unbelieving about the Holy Ghost helping us, or the Lord Jesus receiving poor sinners, if we do try.

At last the old grandmother died, and left Sarah an income of ten pounds a-year. She then moved into Yarmouth, and took two small rooms in a poor part of the town. But her dressmaking began to fall off; it quite fell off. Ought she not to give up the poor prisoners, and try to get back her business? Prudent people told her she ought. "No," said she with quiet firmness, "I have counted the cost, and my mind is made up. If, while instructing others in God's good truth, I am exposed to temporal want, so momentary a privation is nothing in comparison with following the Lord in thus administering to others."

How she enlarged her labours, and finally gave her whole tirne to them, and refused all pay, and went home every night to her poor little lodgings tired and hungry and cold, and kindled her own fire and made her own tea, and went to bed all alone, and how God blessed and prospered her work, and filled her bosom with sweet peace and contentment, I may tell you another time.

Is not this enough to kindle in you a desire " to go and do likewise," or at least to do a small something for God and poor sinners around you?-Family Treasury.

A Watered Garden.

ISAIAH lviii, II.

"And thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail nct."

HE prophet had been speaking earnestly on the duties of compassion and benevolence to the poor and afflicted, and proceeds to speak of the blessings and rewards which such should secure. To all such, he says,

'The Lord shall guide thee continuously and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones, (that is, He shall re

new thy strength,) and thou shalt be like

a watered garden," &c. In other words, the kind and benevolent Christian shall flourish in all that is good and holy, and shall have within him as a well of water, a fountain of grace and consolation springing up in his heart continually.

Gardens in some eastern countries are watered by irrigation, that is by water conducted in channels or small canals, to different parts of the ground, and turned off or on at pleasure; the person having only to turn a sod with his foot. In Deuteronomy, chapter xi. 10, this is called "watering the land with the foot."

David seems to refer to a garden thus watered, when he says (Psalm i.) that the godly shall be like a tree planted by rivers or streams of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season, his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth, it shall prosper. Let a child be religiously trained and disciplined, and we have reason and revelation to encourage us to expect a godly and useful life; but where scriptural education is neglected, what fruits of righteousness can be expected? An uncultivated soul is like an uncultivated field, overgrown with briars, thorns, and thistles.

T.B.

Tom Bent's Revenge.

OM BENT, of Wentworth Academy, was Myto a tall, muscular fellow of fifteen, whom the little boys all feared, and the big boys all hated. Despite his unpopularity, howhated. ever, he succeeded in browbeating the br whole school, and acted towards his companions very much as his ill-nature indoce e clined him. After every tussel he grew

more and more insolent and domineering until, at last, the younger boys used to separate and disperse in every direction if he were seen coming towards

them.

One little chap, named Benny Clapp, seemed to be the particular object of Tom's spite and malice. Bennie was a delicate, sweet-tempered lad, about eleven years old, who had never been known to do a mean or unkind thing since he entered the school. It was all the stranger, therefore, that Tom Bent should take so much trouble to plague and annoy him.

There seemed absolutely no reason for Tom's ugliness to Bennie, except that Bennie was always especially good to him. Whenever Tom did any particularly mean thing, Bennie would say to his friends:

"I don't think it's all Tom's fault that he is so wicked. Half the time, I don't believe he knows how bad he is. You see he hasn't any father or mother to tell him what's right and wrong; and they say the uncle he lives with treats him awfully."

"He is a great deal bigger and older than we are," Charlie Dean would reply; "and he ought to know better."

"That's nothing," Bennie would add. "I know lots of men that's bigger and older than my father, and they don't know half as much as he does."

So, with a sweet spirit of charity, Bennie would forgive Tom for all his tricks.

Bye-and-bye, the autumn slipped away, and the boys began to get out their skates, grease and sharpen them, look at the condition of their sleds, and generally prepare for cold weather. The school-house stood on a knoll close beside a small winding stream. The water was deep only in certain places, which the boys were well acquainted with, and the tiny river afforded them much amusement as a place to bathe and swim in in summer, and a fine field of smooth, glaze ice to skate on in winter.

Of all the lads there was no one who enjoyed skating and coasting so much as Bennie Clapp. From the first morning when he discovered the water just glazed by the frost, he tried the strength and thickness of the ice every day, until it was safe to test it upon runners. Small and slight as he was, he was the best skater in the school; and was envied for his accomplishments by all his companions. He was skilled in letter-cutting, figure-drawing, and all sorts of fancy devices; and was a perfect adept in "outer edge' and the “ Dutch roll." He would stand on the point of one skate, and describe with the other a circle ten times as perfect as he could draw in school with the aid of compasses and pencil. He was perfectly ready to teach any one all his tricks on runners, but none of the boys could ever learn well enough to rival him.

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"It seems just as if Bennie's feet were hands," Charlie Dean used to say discontentedly, after some failure of his own to make a ring or cut an 8; "they always go just where he wants 'em to, and never sprawl about, and trip him up as other fellows' feet do."

Bennie's proficiency on the ice was one of Tom Bent's chief grievances. By practising in private, and performing in public, Tom tried to outdo Bennie; but he never succeeded. One or two of Bennie's most fantastic and graceul feats, Tom, who was much heavier and clumsier, could