PRAYING FOR SHOES.-PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.

A TRUE INCIDENT.

On a dark November morning,

A lady walked slowly down

The thronged, tumultuous thoroughfare

Of an ancient seaport town.

Of a winning and gracious beauty,
The peace of her pure young face
Was soft as the gleam of an angel's dream
In the calms of a heavenly place.

Her eyes were fountains of pity,

And the sensitive mouth expressed

A longing to set the kind thoughts free
In music that filled her breast.

She met, by a bright shop window,

An urchin timid and thin,

Who, with limbs that shook and a yearning look, Was mistily glancing in

At the rows and varied clusters

Of slippers and shoes outspread,

Some shimmering keen, but of sombre sheen,
Some purple and green and red.

His pale lips moved and murmured;
But of what, she could not hear,
And oft on his folded hands would fall
The round of a bitter tear.

"What troubles you, child?" she asked him,
In a voice like the May-wind sweet.
He turned, and while pointing dolefully
To his naked and bleeding feet,

"I was praying for shoes," he answered;
"Just look at the splendid show!
I was praying to God for a single pair,
The sharp stones hurt me so!"

She led him, in museful silence,
At once through the open door,

And his hope grew bright, like a fairy light,
That flickered and danced before! .

And there he was washed and tended
And his small, brown feet were shod;
And he pondered there on his childish prayer,
And the marvelous answer of God.

Above them his keen gaze wandered,
How strangely from shop to shelf,

Till it almost seemed that he fondly dreamed
Of looking on God Himself.

The lady bent over, and whispered,
"Are you happier now, my lad?"
He started, and all his soul flashed forth
In a gratitude swift and glad.

"Happy?-Oh, yes!-I am happy!"
Then (wonder with reverence rife,
His eyes aglow, and his voice sunk low),
"Please tell me! Are you God's wife?"

-Independen

SHALL WE MEET AGAIN?-GEO. D. PRENTICE.

The fiat of death is inexorable. There is no appeal for relief from that great law which dooms us to dust. We flourish and fade as the leaves of the forest, and the flowers that bloom, wither and fade in a day, have no frailer hold upon life than the mightiest monarch that ever shook the earth with his footsteps. Generations of men will appear and disappear as the grass, and the multitude that throng the world to-day will disappear as footsteps on the shore. Men seldom think of the great event of death until the shadow falls across their own pathway, hiding from their eyes the faces of a loved one whose living smile was the sunlight of their existence. Death is the antagonist of life, and the thought of the tomb is the skeleton of all feasts. We do not want to go through the dark valley, although the dark passage may lead to paradise: we do not want to go down into damp graves, even with princes for bed-fellows. In the beautiful drama of Ion the hope of immortality, so elo

quently uttered by the death-devoted Greek, finds deep response in every thoughtful soul. When about to yield his life a sacrifice to fate, his Clemanthe asks if they should meet again; to which he responds: "I have asked that dreadful question of the hills that look eternal; of the clear streams that flow forever; of stars among whose fields of azure my raised spirits have walked in glory. All are dumb. But as I gaze upon thy living face, I feel that there is something in the love that mantles through its beauty that cannot wholly perish. We shall meet again, Clemanthe."

THE DOCTOR AND THE LAMPREYS.-HORACE SMITH.
When the eccentric Rabelais was physician
To Cardinal Lorraine, he sat at dinner
Beside that gormandizing sinner;

Not like the medical magician

Who whisked from Sancho Panza's fauces
The evanescent meat and sauces,

But to protect his sacred master
Against such diet as obstructs
The action of the epigastre,
O'erloads the biliary ducts,
The peristaltic motion crosses,
And puzzles the digestive process.

The Cardinal, one hungry day,

First having with his eyes consumed
Some lampreys that before him fumed,

Had plunged his fork into the prey,
When Rabelais gravely shook his head,
Tapped on his plate three times and said:
"Pah-hard digestion! hard digestion!"
And his bile-dreading eminence,
Though sorely tempted, had the sense
To send it off without a question.
"Hip! hallo! bring the lampreys here!"
Cried Rabelais, as the dish he snatched;

And gobbling up the dainty cheer,

The whole was instantly dispatched.

Reddened with vain attempts at stifling
At once his wrath and appetite,
His patron cried, "Your conduct's rude,
This is no subject, sir, for trifling;
How dare you designate this food
As indigestible and crude,

Then swallow it before my sight?"
Quoth Rabelais: "It may be shown
That I don't merit this rebuff:
I tapped the plate, and that, you'll own,
Is indigestible enough;

But as to this unlucky fish,
With you so strangely out of favor,
Not only 'tis a wholesome dish,
But one of most delicious flavor!"

SUNRISE AMONG THE HILLS.-DINAH MULOCK CRAIK "His mercies are new every morning, and His compassions fail not." His mercies are new every morning,

Heavy and long is the night,

The sea moans in blackness of darkness-
There may be a wreck ere the light.
Lo! sudden-a gleam on the mountains!
The shadows are fleeing away;

God touches the clouds with sun-fingers
And opens the gates of the day.

His mercies are new every morning,
And oh, his compassions ne'er fail,
To the timid sheep, cropping the herbage,
The mariner breasting the gale;

The child, born to love and to laughter,

The sinner, whom tears cannot shrive,
The mourner, left "sleeping for sorrow,"
The sick man who wakes up alive!
"His mercies are new every morning!"
In the joy of our youth-time we sung;
"His mercies are new every morning!"

We sing yet with faltering tongue,
And we'll sing it till bursts the grand music
That all earth's faint anthems stills,

And we see the day-star arising

Above the eternal hills.

NOTTMAN.-ALEXANDER ANDERSON.

That was Nottman waving at me,

But the steam fell down, so you could not see;
He is out to-day with the fast express,

And running a mile in the minute, I guess.

Danger? None in the least, for the way

Is good, though the curves are sharp as you say,
But bless you, when trains are a little behind,
They thunder around them,—a match for the wind.
Nottman himself is a demon to drive,

But cool and steady, and ever alive

To whatever danger is looming in front,

When a train has run hard to gain time for a shunt.

But he once got a fright, though, that shook him with pain
Like sleepers beneath the weight of a train.

I remember the story well, for, you see,
His stoker, Jack Martin, told it to me.

Nottman had sent down the wife for a change
To the old folks living at Riverly Grange,
A quiet sleepy sort of a town,

Save when the engines went up and down.

For close behind it the railway ran

In a mile of a straight if a single span:

Three bridges were over the straight, and between
Two the distant signal was seen.

She had with her her boy,-a nice little chit
Full of romp and mischief, and childish wit;

And whenever Nottman thundered by,

Both watched from the door with eager eye.

"Well, one day," said Jack, "on our journey down, Coming round on the straight at the back of the town, I saw right ahead, in front of our track,

In the haze on the rail something dim-like and black.

"I looked over at Nottman, but ere I could speak.
He shut off the steam, and with one wild shriek,

A whistle took to the air with a bound;
But the object ahead never stirred at the sound.

"In a moment he flung himself down on his knee,
Leant over the side of the engine to see,