friend. LITTLE JAMIE AND HIS MOTHER. WAS tired of washing dishes; I was tired of drudgery. It has always been so; and I was dissatisfied. I never sat down a moment to read, that Jamie didn't want a doughnut, or a piece of paper to scribble on, or a bit of soap to make bubbles. "I'd rather be in the penitentiary," I said one day, " than to have my life teased out as Jamie knocked my elbow, when I was writing to a So, But a morning came when I had one less plate to wash, one chair less to set away by the wall in the dining room, when Jamie's little crib was put away into the garret, and it has never come down since. I had been unusually fretful and discontented with him that damp November morning that he took the croup. Gloomy weather gave me the headache, and I had less patience than at any other time. By-and-by he was singing in another room, "I want to be an angel;" and presently rang out that metallic croup. I never hear that hymn since that it does not cut me to the heart; for the croup cough rings out with it. He grew worse towards night, and when my husband came home he went for the doctor. At first he seemed to help him; but it merged into inflammatory croup, and was soon over. "I ought to have been called in sooner," said the doctor. I have a servant to wash the dishes now; and when a visitor comes, I can sit down and entertain her without having to work all the time. There is no little boy worrying me to open his jackknife, and there are no whittlings over the floor. The magazines are not soiled with looking at the pictures, but stand prim and neat on the reading table, just as I leave them. "Your carpet never looks dirty," say weary-worn mothers to me. "Oh, no," I mutter, to myself, "there are no muddy little boots to dirty it now." But my face is as weary as theirs-weary with sitting in my lonesome parlour at twilight-weary with watching for the little arms that used to twine around my neck-for the curls that brushed against my cheek-for the young laugh which rang out with mine, as we watched the blazing coal-fire, or made rabbits with the shadow on the wall, waiting merrily together for papa coming home. I have the wealth and ease I longed for—but at what price? And when I see other mothers with grown-up sons, driving to town or church, and my hair silvered over with grey, I think what might have been had I murmured less at the providence of God. Reader (young mother you may be)-had you heard this mother tell her story, you would have said, with the writer, "I will be more patient with my little ones-I will murmur less." TIMELY COUNSEL TO DAUGHTERS. O expect to dam a river with a feather, or stop an earthquake with a plaster, or drown a hurricane with a tin whistle, is about as reasonable as to expect, by argument or advice, to change the inclinations of young people when they are under the influence of the passion which they call love, and are determined to marry the object of their desire. "Say what you will, and do what you will, I will have him!" said one girl, and she did have him, with intemperance, poverty, beggary, insanity, and death to close the scene. 66 Would you marry him if you thought these stories were true?" said a Christian minister to a young relative who was committing her heart to the keeping of one against whom evil charges were brought by mutual friends who had opportunity to know the truth. "No, I would not," said she;-but no one could convince her of the truth of the statements. Twenty or thirty years of pain and sorrow, and broken heart and broken spirits have done the work for her at last. "Would you marry him if you knew he drank liquor?" said a woman to a fair young girl. -was the "Certainly I would-marry him and reclaim him; answer, and she did marry him; and ere she had passed a month with her husband, she was advised by her friends to leave him; and after a year and a half of abuse and sorrow she returned to her father's house a poor, wrecked shadow of her former self,-fleeing from her brutal, drunken, and adulterous husband, to save what little life she had left. Ten thousand girls stand on the verge of the same abyss to-day, and nothing you can say, or I can say, will affect them in the least, except to hurry them on to their terrible doom. Why is it? Partly because they have never yielded their wills to parental control, and have always had their own way; and partly because their parents have never warned them of this danger, till it came upon them like an over-running flood. Parents do not win or encourage the confidence of their children. Old people forget that they were ever young, and young people do not remember that they may yet be old. Mutual confidence is needful to mutual comfort or improvement. If the mother would say to her daughter, in early life,-long before the dangerous period comes," My child, there will come a time when new feelings, impulses, instincts, and emotions will sway you, and when the opposite sex will awaken in you passions which often prove stronger than judgment, reason, and conscience; and, coming under the influences of some young man, you will be liable to lose your self-control, and be swayed by his will, and think his thoughts, and feel his feelings, and say Yes' to his requests, because it is his will and mind that makes you speak the words he desires to hear:- all this will come, and you will be liable to be swept to ruin by the force of an influence which you do not understand and can neither control nor resist; and your only security is to place your future in the hands of God, and watch your paths and thoughts, and avoid even the outer circles of this dangerous whirlpool, by investigating and judging first, and loving afterwards; and only yielding your affections when and where unbiassed judgment will declare that it is safe and right to yield them." If such warnings and instructions as these were given from day to day in early life, how many a young girl would ponder the path of her feet, and walk carefully, that she might escape the ruin that attends so many in their wayward course. Mothers and fathers, begin in season with your children! Prepare them to rightly estimate the new instincts and emotions of maturing life;-not by joking and hectoring them, but by wise and loving counsel. Win their confidence and keep it. Preserve their privacies; shield the secrets of their hearts from the rude gaze and mocking laugh, and let them feel that it is the safest thing they can do to show their first love-letter to their father, or whisper their first tender secret into their mother's ear; assured that they will find for such communications a patient, courteous, reasonable and tender reception, and have the best of counsel, with no danger that their confidence will ever be betrayed. Parents, train your children in time. They have this sea to sail over-see to it that they study the chart and know the rocks beforehand. Tell them the things they need to know, and thus guard against the wreck and ruin that destroy so many of the young. DR. CLARKE'S WIFE. 'N Solomon's portraiture of the virtuous or excellent woman, there is no line more important than that which declares, "The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her." The Divinely appointed unity of husband and wife supposes and requires the most perfect fidelity and confidence on the part of both. A bright example of wifely fidelity is found in Mary Cooke, the wife of the learned Adam Clarke, to whom, at the age of eighteen, she was married "in the Lord," the 17th of April, 1778. Before their marriage, he referred to his ecclesiastical relations, and his liability to be sent wherever the Conference might please, and inquired if she would go with him whithersoever he should be sent. She answered, "Yes. If I take you, I take you as a minister of Christ, and shall go with you to the ends of the earth." At another time, she wrote, "Some propose your being sent to America, or the West Indies; but if the glory of God actuate the proposal, if the good of souls be the motive thereto, should they send you to China or Japan, I should be afraid to persuade you against going. I would rather say, 'Go, Adam, and thy God be with thee. Thy Mary will also go with thee, if she may. Go, and forget all but to win souls to glory.' Dr. Clarke's perfect trust in his wife is seen by his comment on Micah viii. 5: "Trust ye not in a friend; put ye not confidence in a guide; keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom." Upon which he comments thus:— "On this passage, in the year 1798, I find I have written as follows:- Trust ye not in a friend: several of those whom I have delighted to call by that name have deceived me.' 'Put ye not confidence in a guide: had I followed some of these I should have gone to perdition.' 'Keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom :' my wife alone never deceived me. It is now twenty-seven years since, and I find no cause to alter what I then wrote." A pleasing circumstance occurred at one of the Conferences, where it was announced that a subject was about to be introduced which the members were not to disclose even to their wives. Instantly Clarke was seen trying to slip out of the room, when a voice was heard, - “Dr. Clarke is about to leave the Conference." "You must not go out, Dr. Clarke," said the president. "I must, sir," was the reply. "You must not, Dr. Clarke." "I will, sir." More peremptorily the president exclaimed, "You must not!" to which Dr. Clarke replied, "You state, sir, that we are not to tell our wives the subject that is about to be brought forward. I want to hear nothing that I cannot tell my wife. I tell her everything. Those who have talkative wives may refrain from telling them; but mine is not such. What is deposited with her is kept safely." "Very good, Doctor," said the president. "You may stop, as your wife can keep a secret." Happy would it be for many a minister of Christ if such a testimony could be borne concerning the companion of his life. Women have busy minds, and need to be employed. And if no little world of love and joy binds them to their family and their home; if no Divine purpose of holy ministration directs and holds them in their steadfast course, they learn not only to be "idle, but tattlers also, speaking the things which they ought not." This was woman's besetment in Paul's day, when she was left to waste her powers and energies unemployed. The remedy was pointed out by the apostle: "I will, therefore, that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully" (1 Tim. v. 13, 14). Mary Clarke had business enough without gadding and tattling. Blessed with the love of her noble husband and her twelve lovely children, she found better occupation than gabbling or gossiping, hunting for scandal, or busying herself with other people's matters. H. L. H. M "DID HE SAY 'YES,' MOTHER?" AMMA is talking to Jesus," said little Mary, one day, as she heard the familiar voice of her mother praying in another room. And as her mother returned from her worship the little daughter ran to her, and looking up in her face, inquired, "Did Jesus answer? Did he say 'Yes,' mother?" It is a blessed thing to become as little children, and to make faith, and prayer, and blessing, seem like sure and glad realities in this world of cheats and shams. The test of |