ary THE MISSIONARY BOX, AND HOW THEY FILLED IT. Lucy. What a nice mission box you have got, Emma ! Emma. Yes; is it not pretty? It is quite an ornament to the mantelpiece, I think. Jane. I don't think I ever saw your missionary box before? Emma. No; but after the missionary meeting last week I asked mamma to let me have one, so that I might try to do something for the heathen. You have a missionary box I know, Lucy. Have you one also, Jane? Jane. My mamma has, but we all put money into it. Emma. Now I am so glad you have both come, because you can tell me how to get ever so much money into my missionary box. Lucy. The way I get the money in my box is this: I put in a halfpenny a week myself, and then two or three friends have promised me a penny a week, and I put that down in a book, and when they come to our house I tell them how many weeks they have got to pay for, and bring them my missionary box and they put the money in. Emma. Do not your papa and mamma help you? Lucy. O, yes. My papa often gives me something. Sometimes he puts in a penny and sometimes a sixpence ; and mamma puts all the farthings she gets into the box, and gives me half-a-crown just before I take the box to be opened. Emma. Why, you must get a good deal that way? Lucy. Yes, dear; I had nearly £3 last time, and I hope to get more this year. At all events, I shall try for it, table; and then at family worship we generally sing a missionary hymn, and papa reads some part of the Bible about sending the Gospel to the heathen, and little Teddy goes round with the box, and every one of us puts something in. Emma. What! the servants too? Jane. Yes. Papa has told them not to do it unless they like, but they are glad to do it. Emma. And does your mamma put a half-crown into the box when it is sent in to be opened. Jane. I don't think so, because papa and mamma like us to give regularly every week, and say we shall then not only give more, but feel more interest in what we give the money for. Emma. Well, I must tell mamma all about it, and hear which plan she thinks best, for ur minister said he hoped I would not think my missionary box was only for show and not for use; and I am sure I do want to get a good deal of money in it. Lucy. Mrs. Blank, our secretary, said there were some little girls that asked for missionary boxes, and then forgot all about them until the boxes were called in, and then they didn't know what to do; and then in a great hurry ran about to their friends asking them to put something in. I hope we shall do a little better than that. Dear Reader, have you a missionary box? What plan do you adopt to get it filled? Is it a good plan? Could you not do better this year, and also write a little letter to the editor of the "Juvenile Missionary Magazine," and tell him all about it? I hope you not only give and get, but pray for God's blessing upon what is put into "the Missionary Box." J. F. WAS going home one afternoon, when I noticed just before me a very little girl, not more than seven or eight years old, with a baby in her arms, that was almost as much as she could carry. She had no bonnet on, and was dressed in a poor tattered frock, and her little feet were coming out of the toes of her boots. I noticed that she was looking at the houses up and down the road, and did not seem to know which way to go. It had been growing very dark, for black clouds rolled up over the sky, and presently the rain began to fall. As she felt the rain, she took up her little frock and wrapped it round the baby, that it might not get wet; and then she turned back, and I saw she was beginning to cry. So, going up to her, I said as pleasantly as I could "What is the matter, my little dear ? don't cry." "Oh, sir, I've lost myself, and don't know where I am." 'Well, well, don't be frightened; come under my umbrella, and let me see if I can find out where you live." And then I asked her some questions, but found that she could not tell me the name of the street, or what part of the town she had come from. She said there was some water in front of the house, and a wall; and that at the corner there was a public-house where they sold beer for twopencehalfpenny a quart. When she told me this, I said to my. self, "Poor little thing, I am afraid that your father and mother send you very often to the public-house, since you seem to know so much about it." Knowing that there was a place lower down the road in which we were, somewhat like the place she had described, I said to her, "Well, come along with me, and we will try if we can find your home." So we walked back together, she coming close up to my side to be under my umbrella. I could not take hold of her hand because she had the baby to carry. "I shouldn't mind for myself," she said; "it's only the baby I care for, 'cause he'll get wet." Fe I could have taken up that little girl and kissed her, ragged and dirty as she was, for she thought more of the baby than herself, and that was Christ-like. As we walked along, I found by her answers to my questions, that she lived, when at home, somewhere behind Shoreditch Church, but that she had been at some person's house to take care of the baby-she was but a baby almost herself and had wandered out for a little walk, until, going up one street and down another, she had lost herself. Poor little creature, it is a terrible thing to be lost! I soon found that she knew nothing of the part of the road where I thought she had come from; and now the rain began We to fall very fast, and soon came down in torrents. stood up in a gateway, and soon two or three people gathered round, to whom I told the little girl's story; but So I saw that the none could guess where her home was. only thing to be done was to take her and the baby to the station-house, and get the police to find out. A man ran and fetched me a cab, and we both got in and were soon at the police station. I told the inspector all I had been able to find out about her. "Ah, sir," he said, "we have lots of cases like this: little children only fit to be nursed themselves sent out with others, and then they get lost." I found that a description of the little girl and the baby would before night be sent round to every police station in London, so that if the mother of the baby applied to the police, she would soon find her child. The poor little girl had got wet in our trying to find her home, but I took her down stairs where there was a blazing fire, and then ran out and got her something to eat, and at length left her very contentedly walking up and down and trying to get the baby to sleep. The next day I called at the station and found that she had been there all night, but was owned the next morning by the mother of the baby. I hope that mother was not cross or unkind to the little girl, for I never saw a more careful nurse, |