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"She remained silent and thoughtful for like, but the expression was not. I toiled a moment, and then seemed to comprehend on the greater part of the day with no better it at once. She told me that a sister of hers, result. The different studies I made were an only one, to whom her father was devot- taken up to the invalid, but the same answer edly attached, died near four months previ- was always returned-no resemblance. I ously; that her father had never yet recov- had exerted myself to the utmost, and, in ered from the shock of her death. He had fact, was not a little fatigued by so doingoften expressed the most earnest wish for a a circumstance that the little lady evidently portrait of her; indeed, it was his one noticed, as she expressed herself most gratethought, and she hoped, if something of the ful for the interest she could see I took in kind could be done, it would improve his the matter, and referred the unsuccessful rehealth. Here she hesitated, stammered, and sult entirely to her want of powers of deburst into tears. After awhile she con- scription. She also said it was so provoking! tinued: It is no use hiding from you what she had a print-a portrait of a lady-that you must very soon be aware of. Papa is was so like, but it had gone-she had missed insane-he has been so ever since dear Caro- it from her book for three weeks past. It line was buried. He says he is always see- was the more disappointing, as she was sure ing dear Caroline, and he is subject to fear- it would have been of such great assistance. ful delusions. The doctor says he cannot I asked if she could tell me who the print tell how much worse he may be, and that was of, and if I knew, I could easily procure every thing dangerous, like knives or razors, one in London. She answered, Lady M. A. are to be kept out of his reach. It was nec- Immediately the name was uttered the whole essary you should not see him again this scene of the lady of the railway carriage preevening, as he was unable to converse prop- sented itself to me. I had my sketch-book erly, and I fear the same may be the case in my portmanteau up-stairs, and, by a forto-morrow; but perhaps you can stay over tunate chance, fixed in it was the print in Sunday, and I may be able to assist you in question, with the two pencil sketches. I doing what he wishes.' I asked whether instantly brought them down, and showed they had any materials for making a like- them to Maria Lute. She looked at them ness-a photograph, a sketch, or any thing for a moment, turned her eyes full upon me, else for me to go from. No, they had noth- and said slowly, and with something like fear ing. Could she describe her clearly?' She in her manner, Where did you get these?' thought she could; and there was a print Then quicker, and without waiting for my that was very much like her, but she had answer, Let me take them instantly to mislaid it. I mentioned that with such dis- papa.' She was away ten minutes, or more; advantages, and in such an absence of mate- when she returned, her father came with rials, I did not anticipate a satisfactory re- her. He did not wait for salutations, but sult. I had painted portraits under such said, in a tone and manner I had not obcircumstances, but their success much de- served in him before, I was right all the pended upon the powers of description of the time; it was you that I saw with her, and persons who were to assist me by their rec- these sketches are from her, and from no one ollection; in some instances I had attained a else. I value them more than all my posscertain amount of success, but in most the essions, except this dear child.' The daughresult was quite a failure. The medical at- ter also assured me that the print I had tendant came, but I did not see him. I learnt, brought to the house must be the one taken however, that he ordered a strict watch to be from the book about three weeks before, in kept on his patient till he came again the proof of which she pointed out to me the next morning. Seeing the state of things, gum marks at the back, which exactly corand how much the little lady had to attend responded with those on the blank leaf. to, I retired early to bed. The next morn- From the moment the father saw these ing I heard that her father was decidedly bet- sketches his mental health returned. ter; he had inquired earnestly on waking whether I was really in the house, and at breakfast-time he sent down to say that he hoped nothing would prevent my making an attempt at the portrait immediately, and he expected to be able to see me in the course of the day.

"I was not allowed to touch either of the pencil drawings in the sketch-book, as it was feared I might injure them; but an oil picture from them was commenced immediately, the father sitting by me hour after hour, directing my touches, conversing rationally, and indeed cheerfully, while he did "Directly after breakfast I set to work, so. He avoided direct reference to his deluaided by such description as the sister could sions, but from time to time led the convergive me. I tried again and again, but with-sation to the manner in which I had originout success, or, indeed, the least prospect of ally obtained the sketches. The doctor came it. The features, I was told, were separately in the evening, and, after extolling the par

ticular treatment he had adopted, pronounced could not ascertain, as my position seemed his patient decidedly, and he believed permanently, improved.

From The Spectator.
LIFE WORK.*

Most people who concern themselves with
philanthropic action at all have heard of the
"Missing Link," the little book which de-
scribed how a new kind of missionary, a
woman of the laboring class, went among
the uncivilized tribes of London, helping,
teaching, and praying, with effect. The
little book, full as it was of stories of human
misery, of poverty so bitter that its victims
lived in daily terror of death from hunger,
and physical suffering so acute that the
senses seemed deadened to all save pain,
excited the sympathy of classes wider than
the one to which it originally appealed.
Money flowed in freely, to the amount of
six thousand pounds. Individual cases were
relieved with a lavishness which the lady
who founded the mission was sometimes
compelled to check, and in some instances
in ways which showed better than money
how quick and real was the sympathy of
those who gave.
One poor woman, for
instance, bedridden for sixteen years, had
been accustomed to lie alone all day and
night, for want of means to secure attend-
A kindly neighbor, who pitied her
desolation, lent her a clock, that "its tick
might keep her company." The sick woman,
with the morbid sensitiveness natural to
such cases, felt comforted by the clock, and
when it broke,-it was an American affair,
made to sell, mourned over the loss of the
accustomed sound. The incident was men-

ance.

tioned casually in the "Missing Link," and,
says the editor, "I could have hung the
room with the clocks" sent for her. The
authoress in the present book continues the
story of the "Missing Link," relating the
growth of the mission, which now employs
one hundred and fifty Bible-women, the new
experiments made, and the teaching which
experience has brought. As a book Life
Work is not equal to the "Missing Link."
It is carelessly arranged, the chapters being
dislocated one from the other in a very per-
plexing way, while the special religious dia-
lect, which is neither English nor scriptural,
nor even conventional, except with a most
limited class, is more annoying than ever.
But Life Work is not to be fairly judged by
its literary character. It is not a book, but
*Life Work; or, The Link and the Rivet.
L. N. R. Nisbet and Co.

By

a report, a record of one of the noblest and most successful efforts ever made to relieve

human suffering, to civilize the savages whom laws and education committees cannot reach, and carry some knowledge of divine truth to wretches who feel, as one woman said, "there is no God for the poor." Errors of taste may well be forgiven to the women who can pass hours a day in the persistent effort to raise a race immersed in crime as well as poverty, and whom their grandmothers would have swept by with a shiver of disgust. For, we are bound to say, though all these narratives are steeped in sectarianism, and bear upon them ineffaceably the mark of a narrow religious culture, there is not one of them with the faintest trace of pharisaism, of any emotion towards misery except intense desire to amend it, of any feeling towards sin, save that those that are sick most need the physician. It is even curious to observe how thoroughly the superintendents conquer their abhorrence of drunkenness, always so specially acute with women, because it is almost the only offence which creates besides moral repugnance, physical terror, and learn at last to regard it as a curable disease. There is much of genuine courage as well as moral worth in this little incident:

"She joined our Mission eighteen months since. Her countenance, bloated and degraded, had on every feature the stamp of vice. I thought her breath polluted the atmosphere around. I shrank from contact sition made at that time, that she should be with her, and longed to sanction the propobanished from our Mission-room as too hardened to get good, and so bad that others objected to sit with her. Thank God, I remembered that I was called to imitate Him who receiveth sinners and eateth with

them.' At first her attendance was most

irregular, and for some months ceased. I met her one day last October in the street, and asked, 'Why have you not been at the Mission-room lately?' 'I'll come now you're back; you'll see me next time.' I did not believe her, for I saw that she had been drinking. She came however. I think that day I told the story of the sinful woman

who washed Christ's feet. Her attention was riveted. She has never missed but one

meeting since, and that was through illness. Do you look round to recognize her? Ah, you will not know her from my description, though her countenance is not so changed as her life."

We must remember, too, that the appear-woman in fifty can cipher in her head, but ance of exaggeration, the popular complaint chiefly because they have lost from poverty of these stories, is often unreal. All sav- the sense of the true value of money, or ages exaggerate emotion, and in one instance rather of the proportion between receipts in particular, educated men are disqualified and expenditure. The first Bible-woman, to form an opinion. The effect of Bible-"Marian," whose efforts were so successful, reading seems to be described with more broke down hopelessly as a directress, and enthusiasm than acumen, but it will be ob- is now an invalid in Suffolk, and generally served that the readers have instinctively any distribution of funds injures untrained addressed their audiences with Christ's words distributors. We suspect, too, though it is and teaching, and not with conventional not stated, that the receivers have more conpietism, and that the teaching is in all cases fidence in the justice of a superior class, a absolutely new. Grown men cannot judge feeling very often perceptible in England, how those words and promises and illustra- and arising, we think, not in the least from tions would affect them if early use had servility, but from an over-appreciation of not made them so familiar, and if they heard that self-restraint in manner which only culthem just as a gleam of hope pierced through tivation can confer. So strong is the relithat permanent sense of wretchedness which ance on the class above, that the reporters, covers as with a film the hearts of English though strongly deprecating that course, savages. The undue importance attached still allow that ladies who never stir from to the habit of swearing-oaths being with their drawing-rooms can still aid in the work, some classes merely interjections with as and nobody who knows the value of sober little moral importance as the cluck a Be- counsel to the very degraded-some of whom chuana puts between his words ceases to seem just as incapable of consecutive thought appear preposterous when it is remembered as if they were drunk-can doubt the fact. that abstinence from oaths is perhaps the All, without exception, regard oral teaching, very best sign of the dawning self-restraint and especially expository reading, as the which is the beginning of amendment. quickest mode of teaching. Thousands who This is not the place to discuss the author's can read wont,-feeling it just as irksome ideas of the mode in which prayer is anas one-half of those who call themselves swered, but we would just suggest to those educated do. The first and quickest way to whom such statements as she puts forward their hearts, however, is sympathy, mere huutterly alienate, that the man who has risen man sympathy, sometimes without any teachfrom stealing food to praying for it, has ing at all. There are very few, we imagine, passed a moral gulf as wide as that which sunk into the depth in which they cannot separates a Pagan from a philosopher. feel what an act like the following means, and, be it remembered, the act itself was not disfigured, as the record of it is, by the quaint dialect:

The managers of the mission are gradually discovering wherein their true strength lies. We infer from an occasional dissonance of opinion that the narratives are written by many hands, but they agree pretty fully upon this great point. The half-educated woman of their own class impresses the uneducated most easily, learns their wants with least risk of deception, and most readily encourages them to hopeful effort. They cannot tell her "it is easy for ladies to talk," and must perforce find at least a reason for dirt. But the funds, except for extreme cases, must remain with the superintendents. If the poor can beg of their teacher, they do beg, instead of learning. The poor, too, are bad financiers, whether Bible-women or profligates, partly, we fancy, for the very simple reason that not one

666

affected at our meeting, whether she would 'I asked a woman, who seemed deeply go to hear Weaver, at St. Martin's Hall. She said, while the tears streamed down her cheeks, "I can't, for I've no boots." I took my own off, saying, "Will these fit you?" They did. She went at once, and becoming still more deeply convinced she was a sinner, tents, and she found Jesus, too, with us― returned to find me still among the penipraise the Lord!'”

"Finding Jesus" is scarcely the expression which the Evangelists would have used, but the old truth remains, that which is godly is of God, and when drunkards become sober and harlots chaste, it matters

little in what form their teacher records her | don misery as any other form of effort. The impressions of the change. Nor is it possi- hospitals do much, but there are hundreds

"In a back kitchen, in a little street not

far from one of London's seats of learning, Lies Catherine H-, on a bed of almost constant pain. The upper half of her window is level with the small paved back-yard of the house, and her eye can only rest on a brick wall. Her aspect is somewhat refined and delicate. When she left the

of cases which they cannot reach where only
a little brain is required to terminate suffer-
ing, and thousands where incurable disease,
which the hospitals will not admit, is sus-
ceptible of marked alleviation. The hun-
gry eagerness with which the sick poor will
bestow their thanks for the cheap pillow
made of paper shredded till it is as soft as
down is sufficient evidence of their want,
and we do not know a form of aid which
aid, class-suspicion.
more rapidly removes the great obstacle to
aid, class-suspicion. Practical sympathy
will not make sinners sane, but it is the
missing link from heart to heart, and the

merely a libel, having its origin in the popular indifference to alms given without such sympathy. The Bible-women tell a different story:

hospital as incurable, she sank, in her own idea, from a state of former respectability, as she was reduced to take this back kitchen three years ago. She did not know that the Lord had prepared for her a friend in the charge of ingratitude so often repeated is landlady of the house, who would kindly pay her all the attention her forlorn, sad state required. She had not a single relative upon whom she could lay claim. She had her right leg amputated when only seventeen years of age, by the late Sir William Brodie, but walked with a crutch, and was able to keep a situation of trust, under one mistress, for a long while afterwards. The mistress died, and then she supported herself by needlework, till, from a succession of abscesses, her right arm became utterly useless. For weeks and months together she is confined to her bed by sores which prevent a wooden leg from being fixed, and the pain of these is so great as to make sleep a rare blessing.

"She has been brought, however, into a happy and resigned state of mind. All the time I have visited her,' says the above Lady Superintendent, I have never heard her express a want.'

There are dozens of such stories in this little volume, all alike suggesting that, wisely or unwisely reported, the labors of this mission form a distinct link between the very lowest class and civilization.

"My poor mothers were very glad to see me back, and had some new troubles to tell me; one was sick, and another's husband out of work, and some had been unkindly treated, which they attributed to my absence, as well as the worse behavior of their children. "If you had been at home, I should only have had to say I would tell you, and that would have been enough for them." Poor things, how my heart rejoiced to see them, and to receive the little proofs of their affection. One brought me a purse, and another took her gold ring off her finger and placed it on mine as a token of love, and they said, "We have been past your door every day to see if your shutters were open, longing to be the first to see you when you came home." One brought me a small case of birds when I was alone, saying, “Oh, that prayer that you prayed when my husband broke his ribs, how it made me cry, and so it did him. We talk about it now sometimes. I wish you would pray with me once more.'

There is one hint given in this work which might be followed up farther, and that is of If, as philanthropists tell us, the next obthe misery the want of mere nursing causes ject of society must be to cure the dislocato the poor. There are hundreds who, ut- tion of classes, if the relief of human sufterly incompetent to teach, would still be fering should be the object of every civiwilling to nurse, and this kind of assistance lized man, if sympathy be better than might be more efficiently organized. A indifference, if, in fine, Christianity, however regular corps of quasi-missionary nurses, emotional, be better than heathenism, howwith access to a doctor or two, and as many ever subdued, then work like this unmistakhospital tickets as could be begged for them, ably deserves the sympathy its reporters do would probably do as much to diminish Lon- | their best to repel