Part 5

He never had. He was almost an old man; and it was years since he had thought about it; but Mandy's song brought it all back. Was that the end of it? Oh, no. The organ-grinder kept thinking, and thinking, and "thinking," until by-and-by, he resolved to do. He sought the fountain, and found it, and now, if he knew the tune, could sing, "I've been redeemed." Many a time he says the words over and over.

Is "that" the end? Oh dear, no. It will never end.

When Mandy and the organ-grinder stand up yonder, and she hears all about the song that she sung as she picked over rags, it will not, even then, be the end. Nothing ever ends.

NAILS.

BY REV. C. M. LIVINGSTON.

THEY drove nails through his hands, those very hands that had been so tenderly laid upon the heads of little children and left them a blessing; those dear hands that broke the bread which he had made for the thousand hungry people; those gentle hands that touched and opened the blind man's eyes; hands that were always spread in blessing upon some one.

Just think how much hard work those loving hands had done, and all for others. They never had been idle. They never had stolen one penny from any one; never had hurled a stone at any one, though bad people were often catching up stones to throw at him. They never had struck any one, though he was so tormented and insulted; and once shamefully struck in the face. Blessed, patient hands, yet there were people wicked enough to drive iron spikes through them.

What if they had been your own mother's hands, after she had carried you about so long, and fed you when you could not feed yourself; had done for you what a mother only can do for a helpless child; and her hands were "so" weary, and she was trying to get a little rest; then, what if a band of rough soldiers had come and seized her and put hand-cuffs upon her, and led her away to prison, and condemned her to die, and driven nails through the same hands that had given them bread to eat when they came to her door almost starved to death! But they nailed Jesus to a tree, and let him hang there till he suffered, and groaned, and died. No one pitied him, and took him down, and bound up the wounds.

They drove nails through his feet also. And what had those feet done to deserve such treatment? Had they carried him into a house to rob and kill? "The feet of the wicked are swift to shed innocent blood."

Not long ago, a man walked right up behind his neighbor, and shot him dead, because he hated him. Think you the feet of Jesus ever carried him on such an errand? Think you he ever trod upon a worm if he could help it? Why, he was walking about day and night, over the rough country of Judea, hunting up the sick and those in trouble, to comfort them. Yet they nailed his weary feet to the tree just as they had nailed his hands.

What if it had been said that Mary, who once bathed his feet with tears, and wiped them with her hair, and kissed them again and again; that this very Mary treated him like the others, striking him in the face and spitting upon him! Ah, you couldn't have believed it of her! She loved him too greatly for the wonderful love and mercy of Jesus to her. Ah, what great difference there was among the people in those times! Some loving the Redeemer so tenderly they were ready to die for him; while others could most cruelly put him to death on the cross.

And did you never think what one thing makes some people so cruel, whether they have ever so handsome a face, or ever so much money, or high a place in the world? What makes some fathers so cruel to their families, sometimes swearing fiercely at the little children, or striking the sick mother; sometimes even killing them all, and themselves too? May be you would hardly believe it if I should tell you what happened only a little way from here, some months ago; but dear me, you have only to read the papers to find just such things going on daily.

I hope you love the blessed Redeemer too tenderly ever to drive one painful nail into him. Know what I mean?

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THE SPARROW IN THE SNOW.

HE hopped down cheerily into the snow, Brave little barefoot Brownie— As if snow were the warmest thing below And as cosy as it is downy!

And his brown, little, knowing, saucy head, In a way that was cutely funny, He jerked to one side, as though he said, "'I' don't care if it 'isn't' sunny.

"I don't care! I don't care! I don't!" he said, And he winked with his eye so cheery, For somebody's left some crumbs of bread, So my prospects are not all dreary.

"And what's a cold toe, when I've got a whole suit Of the cunningest warm, brown feathers? I don't care if I haven't a shoe to my foot; I am the bird, sir, for all sorts of weathers.

"'I' don't fly away at the first touch of frost, Like some of your fine-tongued birdies; I 'don't' think everything's ruined and lost When the wind mutters threatening wordies.

"I 'don't' care!" he chirped; "I don't care! I don't care! It might be a great deal colder: But I'm a fellow that knows no fear— Old Winter but makes me bolder!"

Ah, plain, little, hardy, brown-coat bird! Through life I'll try to remember To meet its winters with cheerful word, Like thee to brave my December.—_Youth's Companions._

THE BOY WHO WANTED TO BE A HERO.

A VERY small hero, you think, I suppose? Yes, and weak and pale, and with feet that would not carry even his little body but a very few steps at a time. Perhaps that was one reason why he was so fond of reading about brave, daring boys. When his mother came in from her kitchen, or her garden, or her dairy, to have a little talk with him, he nearly always had a story to tell her about a hero.

"I've been reading about Robert Fulton," he said to her one day, his eyes shining. "Wasn't he splendid?"

"Was he?"

"Oh, yes, indeed! A queer boy, though, in school; he didn't like to study, and was real dull. Isn't that queer, mother, when he knew so much afterwards?"

"Rather," said mother. "I think he must have learned, like other people, to do some things that he didn't like; for he certainly studied hard when he was a man."

"Well, he didn't when he was a little fellow; and his teacher got real vexed at him one day, he was so dull, and gave him a knock on his hand with the ruler, saying he was determined to make him do something.

"And Robert said, 'Look here, I came to school to have something beat into my brains, and not into my hands.' Wasn't that sharp?"

"And saucy," said mother, laughing.

"Well, it's real fun to read about him. He began to invent when he was a little bit of a boy. Once he made a lead pencil, and it was such a good one that all the boys liked it; so he made one for each.

"But, O, mother, wouldn't you have liked to have seen that strange-looking little steamboat when it sailed up the Hudson? You see, nobody believed she would go! They laughed at Robert, and made fun of him, and said all sorts of sharp things about him. But one day in September a crowd came down to the wharf, and waited and watched. I can't help thinking, what if it hadn't moved when the right time came! I wonder what he would have done? Seems to me it would have killed me. But, you see, it did! O, then how they shouted! 'He' wasn't afraid; he knew it would go. Why, when he was only fourteen years old, he invented a way of paddling a boat instead of rowing it.

"He could do ever so many things. Did you know he was an artist? This book says his pictures were splendid, and he earned money by selling them,—lots of money. When he was only twenty-one, he had earned enough to buy a farm, and he bought it and gave it to his mother!

"I'll tell you another thing he did. Once there came a man to New York with a wonderful machine that he said would go of itself,—perpetual motion, you know, mother. Everybody who went to see it had to pay a dollar,—and hundreds and thousands went. For a long time Robert Fulton wouldn't go, though people coaxed him to; he said it was a humbug. At last he went, and he hadn't been standing by the strange machine but a few minutes when he said,—

"'Why this is a crank motion; somebody is turning a crank to make this machine go, and you are an impostor.'

"Then the man was angry; but all the people joined in, and begged Robert Fulton to find out about it, and the man didn't know how to refuse to let him examine it; so he knocked off a few pieces of lath, and found a string around a wheel, and that went back to another part of the machine that was all shut up, and inside of it was an old man turning a crank! Oh, mother, he was a genius and a hero! He was brave, and wise, and did so many grand things! Mother, if your poor little boy could do one 'little' thing to show that he was brave, wouldn't it be nice?"

"Very," said mother, with cheerful voice, pretending not to see the tears in her sick little boy's eyes. "I like heroes very much; I should like one fur a son. I was thinking about it last night. Suppose you make up your mind to be one?"

The little lame boy rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, and looked eagerly at his mother. She never made sport of him, therefore she meant something. What was it?

"Do you see a way for me to be one?" he asked her, and he was so much in earnest that his voice trembled with excitement.

"Yes, indeed I do; I read about a way last night, and I thought it was so good that I copied it for you. The wisest man who ever lived gave this receipt." And mother took from her pocket a bit of paper on which was written these words:

"He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city."

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RUFUS MAKES A POCKET MEASURE.

"NOW what is it all for? That is what 'I' should like to know. Here you have been working over that wonderful box every evening for a week. I believe you are a miser, and that box is to hoard up your treasures in."

Pretty Eva Trumbull fixed her roguish eyes on Rufus, the farmer boy, and waited to see what he would say.

They were very unlike,—those two. Eva was a city-bred young miss of thirteen. She had never been in the country before in her life, and here she was at her farmer uncle's, to spend the whole summer. She liked it all; everything was "great fun." One of the things which she like the best, was to dance around Rufus, the good, faithful boy, who worked for wages in the summer, and for his board and schooling in the winter, and whom everybody liked, because he was honest and earnest and faithful. And Eva liked to tease him, or to try to; he had too much good sense to be easily teased.

It was as she said. For several evenings he had been at work over a mysterious box. It was made of black walnut, carefully polished, and had ten compartments in it, divided by neat-fitting, thin highly-polished boards. It amused Eva very much to see how particular he was about the fit of each little board.

"Just tell me what it is for, before you go any farther; I'm almost dying of curiosity."

"If I were going to die of my own free will, I'd try to do it in a better cause," Rufus said, gravely. He was not so fashionable as Eva, and he did not understand many of the rules of etiquette, but his mother had brought him up not to use slang expressions which meant nothing.

"Why, I just as soon tell you about this box," he said, after a minute. "You'll laugh, of course; but I don't suppose that will hurt me."

"I won't laugh a bit, unless it is something funny."

"Well, it's a money box."

"A money box! I told you, you were going to be a miser."

"Well, I'm not," said Rufus, laughing. "I'm planning to spend it, not to keep it; but I like to be sort of systematic about things. You see, I know just about what I'm worth, now-a-days. There's about six months in the year that I am earning money; and, take it off and on, in one way and another I earn about sixty dollars, besides my hoard. Now it happens that there are ten things for which I need to spend that money, and as nearly as I can calculate, it might be equally divided between them. So thinking it all over, I concluded that the systematic way would be to have a box with ten compartments, all labelled, you know, and drop the money in a dollar at a time maybe, or ten cents at a time, just as I happen to be paid."

"That's a real nice idea," said Eva, admiringly; "but I can't imagine how you can have ten different things, for which you need to spend money regularly. Now I have a hundred different ways of spending money, but hardly any of them are regular." Here she gave one of her merriest laughs.

"Oh, well, it is different with me," explained Rufus. "You see, I don't know much about spending money for things I might happen to like to buy. I have to spend mine for the things that 'must' be bought anyhow; and so it's easier to calculate."

"Still," persisted Eva, "I don't know how you make ten."

"Well, I'll tell you." There was a little flush on Rufus's face, but Eva looked so sober, and so interested, that he determined to trust her. "In the first place, there's mother; I shall paint her name on this first department, and one-tenth of everything I ever earn is to pop in there. Then there's clothes for me, they will take another tenth."

"A tenth for clothes! That will be only six dollars a year, Rufus Briggs! Do you mean to dress in birch bark, that you think you can make six dollars a year do it?"

"Well," said Rufus, in a determined tone, "when a fellow 'has' to, you know, why he 'has' to; besides, that's only for general clothes, I've got a department here for boots and shoes, and another for shirts, and if I have to borrow from one of those departments for the other, why it will do no harm."

But still Eva laughed; she knew that six, or twelve, or eighteen dollars in a year were of no account so far as clothes were concerned. Didn't 'she' wear clothes? She knew what they cost.

"They can't cost more than you've got to buy them with," Rufus said, firmly, and went on with his plan. "There are Mamie and Fannie, my two little sisters, I've given them each a department; of course mother will spend the money for them, but I kind of like to put it in their own names. Then here's the corner for books, I need school books, and paper, and pens, and all such things you know, but they must all come out of this general fund.

"Then here's the housekeeping; I have a corner for that, because mother must be helped, you know; that place where her name is, means for her own private use, and here's the rent corner; mother has hard times bringing that in every month; now you see, I've got nine, and I haven't looked out for sickness at all; that troubled me at first, but then I concluded that if any of us were sick, we shouldn't need so many clothes, nor books, and that it would even itself out; so here's my last corner."

And very carefully Rufus printed the word, "BENEVOLENCE" over this compartment.

"Be—nev—o—lence," spelled out Eva, and now she was too much astonished to laugh. "Why Rufus Briggs! Just as though you could afford to give six dollars a year to benevolence!"

"Why it's only a tenth," said Rufus stoutly; "and it's got to be divided up more than any of the others, there are so many things to give for."

"The idea!" said Eva.

Just then her aunt called her, and she went away thinking about the wonderful box with its many compartments, and only sixty dollars to put into them all.

"And six of them to give away!" she said again, and she thought of the dollar and a half a week that her father gave her for "pin money" out of which she had never given a cent for benevolence in her life. This story is true, and it grew; some day I'll tell you the rest of it.

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TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT IT.

OF all the teachers in the great school, I think the children thought the most of Miss Carley. She was "so sweet!" they said and "so nice!" and "so good!" and all the other words that young people like to use, with "so" before them.

It was when the flowers were getting scarce, that some wise brain whose father kept a conservatory, proposed that they make Miss Carley a floral offering on the very next morning. "Let's every single one of us bring a bouquet in a vase," said the eager little planner, "and set them on her table, and in the windows, and all around the platform. It is her birthday, you know, and she loves flowers 'so' much! Won't the room look too lovely for anything?"

Every child of the seventy-five was delighted, except Trudie Briggs. She went home, sober not to say cross.

"Won't it be pretty?" said little Kate, hopping along by her side. "What flowers are you going to take, Trudie?"

"Cabbages," said Trudie crossly; and her mouth being thus snappishly opened, she talked on. "It is just a plan of Susie Martin's, so that she can show off her father's greenhouse flowers, and her mother's beautiful vases! 'I' shan't take a single thing. What have we got to take? Not even a sweet pea, nor nothing; nothing but weeds, and an old cracked tumbler to put them in. They may just bring their grand flowers. I won't have nothing to do with it."

Trudie studied grammar, but when very much excited, she forgot to use it.

Poor little Kate looked sorrowful; she loved Miss Carley, and wanted to take her some flowers.

The next morning, when she went to call her father to breakfast, she saw the south field, all a-bloom with red clover. She thought it looked lovely; and then and there her resolve was taken. Not a word said she to Trudie, feeling sure that nine-year-old sister would call the red blossoms "nothing but weeds." She slipped out just at school time, and gathered a bunch of the freshest and sweetest, and using her chubby-brown hand for a vase, started in breathless haste for school.

Trudie, being still cross, had waited for her about two minutes, then gone on ahead.

It was just a trifle late when little Kate reached the door, the children were all seated, and Miss Carley's hand was on the bell. How lovely the schoolroom looked! Everywhere that a vase could be made to stand there was one, holding the brightest of fall flowers. In the centre of the table was a wonderful wreath of fine, sweet blossoms, which Miss Carley had promised to wear at recess.

She looked very happy; every child in the room except Trudie had remembered her with flowers, and it pleased her. She turned a smiling face on little Kate, as she came down the aisle, and waited for her, and bent down to receive the red clovers from the chubby, brown hand, while Trudie's face was redder than the clovers. She was actually ashamed of her little sister!

What would Miss Carley say to a bunch of weeds from that hot brown hand!

What she said, was, "You dear child! How sweet they are."

Then she stooped down, and kissed the sweet face of the little giver, and placed every clover carefully in her belt, where she could "smell them all the time," she said brightly. And there did little Kate's gift stay all day, "They were the only flowers she wore," said Susie Martin. "The little darling! Wasn't it sweet of her?" And Susie meant the middle of the sentence for little Kate, and the last part for Miss Carley.

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THEIR FAITH.

"FATHER looks so sad," said Hattie to her older sister Bertha. "I wonder what makes him look so downcast. Is he sick, Bertie, do you think, or has he heard some bad news, or is it that same old headache? I couldn't 'think' of sleeping last night. After kissing him, and looking back, I thought I saw a great tear in his eye, though he quickly brushed it away and tried to appear cheery. But all night long I kept seeing that tear, and wondering if you and I couldn't in some way keep dear, sad papa, from suffering so. O, what can be the matter? What can we do?"

"Pray," was the calm, assured answer of the sister. "'Ask what ye will,' said the last Sunday lesson. His promises are all yea and amen. They are as true as—as—the sun, dear Hattie. Don't you know it? I am sure He'll never let one of them fail."

Side by side, with clasped hands, they knelt, and silently, but earnestly, they asked, "O, Heavenly Father, 'do,'—O, DO bless our own sad father. Help him out of all his trouble. Show us what we can do to help him and cheer him. For Jesus' sake, Amen."

So they prayed, not once only, as too many do, and forget all about it. They prayed "without ceasing." Their sympathy for their father was so great that they thought of little else except how they might help him and comfort him. They lost all wish for dress and gay society. Their pastor and Sunday-school teacher observed that something was greatly troubling them; but though they tried to learn the cause of their sad countenances, the sisters kept the matter locked up in their own breasts.

Meanwhile, however, they were coming nearer to Jesus. It was not long after Hattie noticed that "tear," that both had become converted, and became very earnest Christians.

"I am almost discouraged, Hattie," said her sister, one day, as she still noticed her father's sad look. "I'm afraid He isn't going to do what we want him to. You know it is just three weeks to-day since we agreed together to ask our Heavenly Father to help. But where's the help? O, I'm almost in despair." And Bertha could keep back the tears no longer.

"But I'm not discouraged yet," said Hattie. "Will not God 'avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto Him, though he bear long?' He will, he will, and it won't be long either. Don't cry, Bertie; maybe, before the week is done he will answer."

He did. Very soon that sad-faced father began to smile and rejoice, not simply because he got into good business, and was greatly prospered, and all this through the prayers of faith and loving help of those two dear daughters, but because he gave his own heart to God, and was now a very happy Christian.

HOW SIDNEY GOT THE PLACE.

HE stood on the shore and looked down longingly at the smooth sheet of ice. How it sparkled and glowed in the morning sunshine! He could skim across like a bird; he had his skates strung over his shoulder. What hindered him from crossing the ice? Why, just as he reached the front gate, his mother had put her head out of the window and called:

"Sidney?"

"Yes 'm."

"You won't go on the ice, will you?"

Then he had stopped, and looked back at her appealingly.

"Why, mother, the ice is strong enough to bear a four-horse team, and it cuts off a good mile of walk."

"Can't help it, my son. You won't cross it, will you?"

"No 'm," he had said, sadly.

But the window closed instantly, and his mother went about her work with a quiet face. She knew that when Sidney said no, he meant it.

So the boy, though he looked at the ice, had not the least idea of trying it: he merely told it that he wished he had left his skates at home, instead of lugging them along; and he didn't see why he hadn't.

A dozen or more boys appeared presently from different directions.

"Going across?" asked Sidney.

And half a dozen voices answered that they just were. The skating was prime. The most of them had school books.

"Come on," they said to Sidney.

But he shook his head. "Can't."

"Aren't you going across the lake?"

"No, I'm going 'around' the lake. Mother didn't want me to cross on the ice."

"Ho! Ho!" "Ha! Ha!" "He! He!" These were only a few of the answers. "Why man, the ice is two feet thick!"

"I didn't say it wasn't," he answered good-humoredly. "I only said mother didn't want me to go on it. Good morning!"

Off he went, amid shouts and laughter. You know what ill-bred boys shout at each other at such times:

"Tied to his mother's apron-string!" "Coward!" "Baby!" and all those things.

He whistled, to drown their voices, and tramped on.