'Meek souls there are, who little dream
Their daily strife an angel's theme.'

Not necessarily the women whose names are best known in the world are these 'meek souls,' but rather in out-of-the-way nooks and corners we find them, and learn the secret how noble womanhood may consist in simple daily offering up of Self to God.

Yes, that is the root of all true nobility; and it is this nobility which I would set before you in its growth and development. For all noble living things do grow and develop, ever reaching out like a forest tree to greater height and greater breadth as the years roll on.

Surely this Noble Womanhood is worth striving after with all our heart and with all our might. Do you not think so? For remember, that this is the only nobleness that will endure, and be worth having when 'the fashion of this world passeth away.'

CHAPTER II.

TRAINING AND EDUCATION.

AND now we will begin at the beginning, and see how from the first, namely, from the early days of your life, there may be a striving after Noble Womanhood, on the lines I have faintly traced cut.

First, a woman must be trained and educated.
Education (literally, a drawing out) begins in child-

hood.

And this for one chief reason, which I will try to point out to you. I can, perhaps, explain it best by the simile of a tree.

There is a difference that is simply enormous between a tender young sapling and a full-grown gnarled oak-tree. Just look at only one of the branches of each. The branch of the sapling is so soft and pliable that you can bend it easily in your hand. You can twist it which way you like. But the branch of that fine tree, who shall bend that? Ah! no one; bending is altogether out of the question. It has become stiffened, season by season and year by year; so that the force of a dozen men combined could not alter its curve now, though they might, perhaps, break it.

Or look at that ivy, twining and creeping up the wall. When it was a little plant you could have trained it to grow just where you liked, either along the wall or round that old trunk of a tree. Its tendrils were no thicker than cord, soft and yielding; not the tough, obstinate things they are now, clinging with extra

strength when you try to pull them away.

Now, do we not learn something from all this about Training and Education? That in childhood the mind is pliable, easily bent, easily formed? It can be trained just how we will. Those hard, obstinate, well-nigh hopeless things, when of long standingHabits, have scarcely begun to exist at all! What a wonderful opportunity it is! Yes; and an opportunity made for us by God Himself, Who gives it into our hands, the little, tender child-mind, to be trained for goodness and wisdom, or for evil and folly. And not only trained for this present life on earth, but also for that other life which has no limit nor boundary, and which, therefore, we call eternal.

Of Training, which naturally comes first (as it may begin as soon as the child notices what is passing around it), I will not, however, speak first, but reserve it for a future chapter, as you may not have the training of children put into your hands just yet. But of Education I will speak at once, for it nearly concerns those who hear me. Your own education is still fresh in your minds; nay, I go so far as to hope it is not nearly completed yet. Have you ever seen a crystal? How hard, clear, and unchanging it is! the lapse of years makes little or no difference in its form. Now, I do not want that important part of you which is called mind to be like a crystal, or to crystallise, as the expression is. That is, I do not want your mind to be the same when you are forty as when your body left off growing at seventeen or eighteen. No; for the noble woman whom we have before us will be the exact opposite of a dead, changeless crystal. She will go on learning as well as living, ever gathering up to herself new thoughts and new ideas; and not only new, but wiser and better ones, all her life long.

I dare say most, or all of you, went to school for several years of your lives. And what did you go to school for, I ask?

Your eyes open rather widely at this question, for it seems an unnecessary one. 'Why, to learn how to read and write, and to do sums,' says one; And sew,' 'and knit,' and learn Scripture, geography, and grammar,' say several; until quite a long list of different subjects is poured into my ear.

Yes, you have answered rightly. But there is one thing you have left out. thing you have left out. It seems to me that you have not mentioned the very first thing you learnt at school. What was that? Well, I must tell you,—the habit of attention.

You had to begin learning that, the very first time you stood before the large alphabet card which was

propped up on an easel in the middle of the infant class. For a few minutes you were obliged to fix your mind on the lesson before you.

That was a new experience; but it was very good for you, and not hard either: for the lesson grew longer and longer so gradually, that it was not much effort to you to keep your attention fixed, especially if the teacher were bright and animated, and inclined to praise and encourage rather than scold or blame.

Thus you began from the first to learn two things at one and the same time. One was the reading, writing, spelling, or counting; the other the habit of steady application.

The more regular your schooling has been, the more certainly you have acquired this habit, and the benefit of it you are feeling now, without, perhaps, knowing it. You can now, I hope, resolutely fix your mind on whatever work comes before you without weariness, or, at any rate, only a quarter of the weariness that an untaught and untrained girl would feel, to whom merely sitting still would be irksome in the extreme. Do not suppose, then, that any of the quiet hours you passed in school were wasted. No; apart from the actual knowledge acquired, the mere discipline of learning has been most valuable to you.

If you went to a really good school, such as most Government Elementary Schools are in these days, you had the advantage of a thorough education, and not a superficial one. Do you quite understand the difference? By thoroughness, I mean that you mastered one reading-book completely before you passed on to another; you were able to work a certain rule in arithmetic perfectly before you learned a higher one; you were familiar with the spelling of all common words before you went on to uncommon ones; you wrote large hand well before you were allowed to try small hand, and so on. That is the meaning of standards; they are stages of progress through which the child passes, and there can be no better nor sounder system of instruction.

Compare the plan of a good Government school with that of a little, feeble' private' school, where the teacher is some half-educated person, whose sole idea often is to teach her scholars something they can 'show' at home. So they learn a fine, pointed handwriting, that is not easy to read; columns of spelling of long words and sums that look elaborate and difficult, and spread all over the slate! But what is the result? The scholar cannot spell 'hair' and 'heir' with certainty; is confused between 'where' and 'were,' and 'his' and 'is.' She cannot tell you what three yards and a half of ribbon come to at 3d. a-yard; nor how

much a week is 187. a-year; nor make out a bill with any sort of correctness, far less rapidity! And she finds out, or her friends do for her, when it is too late, that she is only surface educated; that is, she knows nothing well; and the little she does know breaks down when brought to the test of practice.

But in a really good school, where the teachers have been taught how to teach, and do not pick up their knowledge of this art (for it is nothing less) by chance, you learn thoroughness and accuracy.

For what you knew you were obliged to know with certainty, or you would decidedly not have passed the Government Inspector's examinations. No slurring over, no half-and-half knowledge, would have saved you; your reading, writing, and sums had to be clear, distinct, and correct. And thus during your school life you learnt more than one habit that may be most valuable to you in after years. (To be continued.)

By LADY LAURA HAMPTON. ROM a child I was very fond of needlework, and I can always remember being sorry for the odds and ends I cut out of silk and calico in my efforts to form dolly's garments, and for the ends of the pieces of cotton I snipped off and threw away as each needleful was finished. In an indistinct childish way they seemed to me not to have fulfilled their destiny; they had been made with the same care as the rest of the stuff, or reel of cotton, and yet, whilst the one part was of use and lasted for years, the other was but made to perish.

Something of the same kind of feeling has clung to me through life, and the other day as I was threading needle after needle with different shades of wool, and forming it into leaves, and stalks, and flowers, on the work. I held in my hand, my thoughts were busy weaving and arranging those feelings into definite ideas. A number of Friendly Leaves caught my eye as I was folding up my work, and it struck me that perhaps some of my musings might be helpful to those who work not from choice but for their daily bread, and enable them to trace in 'the things which are seen' a lesson of the invisible.

First, then, my embroidery seemed to me like life,' both in the individual and universal sense. The outline of the pattern was there, sketched in by

the designer; the knowledge that leaves are green, stems brown, and roses pink, like abstract ideas of right and wrong, was there also to guide, but the subtilty of the shading, the filling in on which depended the beauty of the result, was left to the worker. Then the effect could not be gained at once. Stitch after stitch, shade after shade, had to be laid side by side, the long thread on the right, the tiny stitch on the wrong side of the work, the one like the hidden motive, the other the deed seen of men, and on the tightness or looseness of the stitch the beauty of the work depended.

When I arrived at this point in my meditation my thread was finished, and fastening it off I cut the end and laid it on the table by my side, and glancing from it to the brightly traced flower on my lap, thought, And what does this useless piece resemble? Then, as I gathered it into the scrap-bag, I wondered, Was it useless after all? Had it not as truly fulfilled its mission as the rest? had it not held the needle, and though it had not shared the result, had it not also helped to form the flower?

Now, girls, if we regard ourselves as forming a flower, or leaf, or stem in the great work of life, or if we think of our separate lives as only one stitch in the long scroll of this world's history, do you not think that we can find some comfort in the ideas I have thus briefly tried to set before you?

Settle well in your minds, that whatever your state or work in life, you are placed there as part of God's Design. He has traced some work for you to do, and it is you alone who can fill it in. His Will is that the world should be better, and purer, and more beautiful for your presence, just as the cloth is beauti. fied by the embroidery. Perhaps some of you would laugh if I were to tell you that, be you a maid-of-allwork, nursemaid, sempstress, shopwoman, or whoever you may be, you are as necessary to the completion of this world's history as any king or queen who sat on a throne, or soldier or sailor who fought its battles; but it is true, nevertheless, and as surely as they left a mark on the time in which they lived, so will you on yours. The thread given to you must blend or clash with those around, the stitch you place in the tapestry of life must be smoothly drawn through the canvas or it will pucker and spoil the parts around.

Remember, the beauty of the work consists not so much in the richness of the materials as in carrying out as perfectly as possible the intention and ideal of the person who drew the pattern. The same design has been given to you, and to me, and to the highest lady in the land, to purify ourselves even as Christ

is pure, and in gentleness, meekness, patience, and humility, to be made like unto Him, Who gave us an example that we should follow His steps.

One word to those who may say it is all very well to talk of working for Christ; ladies may work, rich people may work, employers may work, but we are servants and poor, and some very young-it cannot matter what we do. Ah! but it does. No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself;' just as without the little stitches on the wrong side of the work the whole embroidery would fall to pieces, so without the young, the poor, and the employed, the work of life would be at an end, the unity of God's Design be broken. It is the poor and the rich, the employer and the employed, the servant and the master, the young and the old, who are together and one with another filling in, or leaving undone, the piece of work given to each to do. The rule of guidance for all is, 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, as to the Lord and not unto men.'

And if you have recognised your position as a fellow-worker with God, if you are trying by the help of His Holy Spirit to do the will of God in your daily life, do not be discouraged by failures. The thread will break sometimes. The rough rude word, the loud angry tone, the hasty blow, will cause the worker to deny her Lord and to weep bitterly; but if, like St. Peter of old, the tears shed are a sign of true repentance, she too will, like him, hear her Master's Voice demanding a renewed confession of her love to Him, whilst again in loving accents He will bid her 'Follow Me.'

Once more, be not discouraged if you do not see the result of your work. Perhaps some of you have felt like the shreds and remnants we spoke of at the beginning. You have worked, you have helped to form the perfect whole, and yet you are cast aside as useless, your share in the work forgotten. Through no fault of your own you seem a waif and stray on the waves of this life, never long in one place, with no settled home, commencing labours others finish, sowing seed whilst others reap the harvest. Nay, faithless one! it is not so. Above the murmur and bustle of life the Saviour's Voice is ever sounding Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost the broken threads are all in His keeping, and as of old the crumbs of the bread He had blessed filled twelve baskets full, so shall you find at the last day your work complete in Him, and hear His welcome 'Well done, good and faithful servant! thou hast been faithful over a few things, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.'

阿

Window Gardening.

FOR JANUARY AND FEBRUARY.
By THE SQUIRE'S OLD GARDENER.

T is a fact beyond all fear of contradiction that every one loves flowers, and it is also equally well known that there is a sort of softening, gentle influence, that makes itself felt very strongly amongst all those who take pleasure and delight in their cultivation. I have no doubt but that many of our readers remember that this love of flowers is very beautifully shown in the well-known little book called Harry and Archie, in which we are introduced into a back-attic in one of the dingiest alleys in St. Giles's, where we find a brother and sister who have just lost their mother and returned from her funeral. The little lad of fourteen, who is to be parted from his sister, the only friend he has in the wide world, makes this request to her: 'You will water my geranium, Nannie dear, when I am gone, and you will think of me when you do it-eh, dear?' And we find further on in the book, that when he was in his coffin poor Nannie plucked the flowers from the dear old plant and placed them in his hands; because, as she said, he did so love the flowers when he was alive. This, I think, goes far to prove my first assertion, that every one loves flowers; and as to the second, namely, that there is a gentle, softening influence, that makes itself felt in being brought into contact with them, I remember very well that a very dear friend of my own, whose life was spent in trying to do all the good he could to those around him, and who has long ago been called from work on earth to rest in heaven, used for many years to reside with his friends in a house, the back-windows of which looked on a court or yard of wretched houses, tenanted by some of the vilest and worst characters in the town, and where very often it was not safe for any respectable person to enter. Well, my friend was wonderfully fond of flowers of all sorts. He was a tailor by trade, and in front of the shop where he used to sit at work he had a stand, which was always filled with bright flowers of all sorts; and not satisfied with this, he determined to put one up outside his bedroom window at the back. Long and deep were his reflections as to the wisdom of this movement, as he feared that in their mad drunken fits those dwellers in the court would destroy his pet plants; but his fears were groundless, for not only were the plants not injured, but when he used to open his window to water and attend to them his back-door neighbours manifested

quite an interest in them, and then he not only told them their names and how to grow them, but freely gave to all of them cuttings or young plants. And when they saw how carefully he washed and sponged the leaves of his plants, many of them took the hint he gave them and washed their own faces and hands, and then their houses followed, and in fact the whole character of the court was changed, and all by the influence of one man, backed up as it were by a few window-plants. And now, having introduced my subject, I shall be most happy to give a few plain and practical directions, which will, I hope, if carried out, enable those of the readers who may wish to do so to find both pleasure and amusement in the cultivation of plants and flowers in the windows of their houses.

I remember having read at some time a receipt for jugged hare by Mrs. Glasse, and it began thus: 'First, catch your hare, and then,' &c.; and it must be the same with the Window Plants which I am about to write on. I am writing on the supposition that my readers are already in possession of some plants, and one of the chief things to see to now is, that they are not allowed to get bitten by Jack Frost, who often pays us some very sharp visits about this time; and where there are any plants kept in rooms not in use, and consequently without fires, it will be well on any appearance of frost to move them away from the windows, and at the same time to see that they have very little water during frosty weather ; in fact, it is well to be very sparing of water all through the dull winter months, when the plants are kept in a room without fire heat, as most are then, or at least should be, taking their winter rest. It is a very good plan to make a practice of washing the leaves of all such plants as geraniums, primulas, and cinereas, in fact all fleshy-leaved plants, at least once a-week, with a little warm water and a little piece of sponge; or if that is not to be had, a piece of soft rag will do as well. Great care must be taken to keep all decayed leaves picked off, and to see that the soil on the tops of the pots is kept clean and free from moss and weeds, and also to see that it is gently stirred sometimes with an old knife or a pointed stick. I know that this will be thought a great deal of trouble by some, but there are no gains without pains, and as my dear old master used often to tell all of us youngsters, you must love your plants if you wish to see their beauty. I have often, when calling on a friend, or on business at a cottage, noticed the poor plants drooping for want of water; and on calling the attention of their owners to the fact I have been told, with a look of injured innocence, 'Why, it was only