gave us an inspection-crack, from which we swept the neighborhood-saw and were unseen. Soon we heard the least possible sound of a foot on the hay. Turning our head, we beheld the productive but unprofitable hen stealing toward her secret nest. It was the one time too aften. We knew as much as she did.

How rapacious are all conquerors! There was the rounded nest, well sunk in the corner, full, brimful of eggs-thirteen, besides one for a nest egg! As Oriental kings despoil a captured city, rob from a people, pull down their choice architecture and quite discrown its beauty, so we found the nest glowing white as marble, and left it-like hay.

Is there not a Providence for hens? Is there not a fate that follows the most obscure and unwatched violence?

His very example was

We put the eggs safely in our coat-tail pocket, and walked cautiously. It recalled a piece of disreputable carelessness on our father's part, who once sat down on a dozen eggs, and went up as if every egg was a bomb, and every bomb an explosion. But then he was a notoriously absent-minded man. our safety. And yet we dwelt with some inward mirth, as we walked to the house, on the ludicrous figure which our father cut. Dinner was spread as we came in. Some questions came up which diverted our thoughts from the discovery of the nest-indeed, we forgot that we had eggs about us, and drew up to the table and sat down with an alacrity which was only equaled by the spring with which we got up.

I drew my hand from my pocket streaming with liquid chicken, never to be born, and the disgusting secret was out! That woman was a saint! My pockets were duly eleansed, without one cutting word. I can imagine the process, but never like to dwell upon it. Would you believe it, the same thing happened in a few weeks again? It did, and to the very same person! But never since then, no-never! From that day to this we do not remember ever to have even taken an egg.

1. When I see a man who allows himself to be puffed up and flattered, I know that his time will come when he will sit down on his eggs.

2. When I see men who are robbing, right and left, and filling their pockets with unlawful wealth which other men earned, I say, "You will sit down on those eggs yet."

3. When over-cunning men think that they can outwit all their fellows, and are exulting at the success which their shrewdness has achieved, I say to myself, "Fill your pockets! By-and-by you will sit down on those eggs."

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

A TALE OF THE YORKSHIRE COAST.

EAUTIFUL!" mebby it be, bairn,

"BEAUTI

Folk moastly praise t' sea;

But I'se lived nigh hand it ower lang,

It's mäan like a gräve to me.

Dost see yon cottage upon t' hauf,
Where t'reck curls up to t' sky?
I'se bided there these fourscore year,
And there I hoapes to die.

It were a heartsome spot eneaf,

For all it's se dowly now,

When feyther fettled his nets at neet,
An t' childer laked on t' brow.

Feyther, well, he were drouned, honey, I't' year as I were wed,

We put him a stean, for respect, you know, In t' Churchgarth up on t' head.

Muther, she deed at oor awn fireside,
As wer nobbut reet and due;
I addles ma bit an sup frev t' sea,
Winter and summer through.

Ma Mairster säiled for Hartlypool,
When t' mackerel were agäte;

I'd ha like to lig by ma poor auld man;
He wer a trusty mäte.

But never a priest might bless his gräve;
He rowls i't' grate salt sea;

T' rudder yoake an a cassen net
Wer all that cam back to me.

I'd browt him first five stolart sons;
Honey, when I lies dead,

But yan'll hearken t' bidding bell,
An stan at t' coffin head.

But yan I said. How dars I say't?
Will ever t' Noerth wind blaw,

An t' lifeboat launch mid t' boiling surf,
Nor he be t' first to goa?

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As for Susan, her heart was kind
An' good-what there was of it, mind;
Nothin' too big, an' nothin' too nice,
Nothin' she wouldn't sacrifice

For one she loved; an' that 'ere one
Was herself, when all was said an' done;
An' Charley an' Becca meant well, no doubt,
But any one could pull 'em about ;

An' all o' our folks ranked well, you see,
Save one poor fellow, and that was me;
An' when, one dark an' rainy night,
A neighbor's horse went out o' sight,
They hitched on me, as the guilty chap
That carried one end o' the halter-strap.
An' I think, myself, that view of the case
Wasn't altogether out o' place;

My mother denied it, as mothers do,
But I am inclined to believe 'twas true.
Though for me one thing might be said—
That I, as well as the horse, was led ;
And the worst of whisky spurred me on,
Or else the deed would have never been done.
But the keenest grief I ever felt

Was when my mother beside me knelt,
An' cried and prayed, till I melted down,
As I wouldn't for half the horses in town.
I kissed her fondly, then an' there,
An' swore henceforth to be honest and

square

I served my sentence-a bitter pill
Some fellows should take who never will;
And then I decided to go "out West,"
Concludin' 'twould suit my health the best;
Where, how I prospered, I never could tell,
But Fortune seemed to like me well,

An' somehow every vein I struck
Was always bubbling over with luck.

An', better than that, I was steady an' true,
An' put my good resolutions through.

But I wrote to a trusty old neighbor, an' said,
"You tell 'em, old fellow, that I am dead,
An' died a Christian; 'twill please 'em more,
Than if I had lived the same as before."

But when this neighbor he wrote to me,
"Your mother's in the poor-house," says he,
I had a resurrection straightway,
An' started for her that very day.

And when I arrived where I was grown,

I took good care that I shouldn't be known;
But I bought the old cottage, through and through
Of some one Charley had sold it to;
And held back neither work nor gold,
To fix it up as it was of old.

The same big fire-place, wide and high,
Flung up its cinders toward the sky;
The old clock ticked on the corner-shelf-
I wound it an' set it agoin' myself;
An' if everything wasn't just the same,
Neither I nor money was to blame;

Then-over the hill to the poor-house!

One blowin', blusterin', winter's day,
With a team an' cutter I started away;
My fiery nags was as black as coal;
(They some'at resembled the horse I stole);
I hitched, an' entered the poor-house door-
A poor old woman was scrubbin' the floor;
She rose to her feet in great surprise,
And looked, quite startled, into my eyes ·

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