"I don't know how Mrs. Philpots fares, except that it is well; she would not allow herself to fare ill. You see what sort of woman my wife is, Mrs. Garrett. Ten years ago I was a moderately rich man. I rescued that woman from a life of shame, to which she had, I supposed, been driven by poverty. I married her, and cut myself adrift from all my kin by so doing. In three years she had beggared me-how, I know not-I trusted her so blindly. My life since then has been that of a slave; that is all," he said, rising; "it will soon be ended."

Mrs. Garrett, as she looked at his feeble form, could not help thinking it might end even sooner than he expected.

"I thank you," he said at last, with emotion; "you shall never regret this Christian act, you noble woman." He pressed her hand silently, and taking up his napless hat, left the room and the house.

Mrs. Garrett had been silent herself from emotion. As he went through the passage she heard him take up the parcel which he had asked permission to have, and which, with rare delicacy, she had not thought to look at, and then he left the house.

Turning round, Mrs. Garrett saw Kitty, still in her wet things, standing with tears streaming down her cheeks; in the interest of the scene the danger from damp clothes had been forgotten.

"Oh, Kitty, Kitty, you'll catch your death!"

II.

It was a week later, the 23rd of Decem ber. A sad little party was gathered in Mrs. Garrett's sitting-room, for poor Kitty was said to be dying. The room contained a sofabedstead, which was now used for the sick child, and the sorrowing father and mother were on either side of it.

"It almost seems as if I am punished for doing a kindness, Dick," said Mrs. Garrett. "They always say one never suffers for doing good, yet I have been laughed at by Mrs. Honey and you, and looked upon as next thing to an idiot, for believing the old gentleman's story, which you say was got up to get the best things out of the house. But laugh ter's nothing, and whether true or not, he was hungry, and my intentions were the same. I could have stood being mocked at,

but to think my poor angel should be taken from us through it! I'll never do a kind thing again if anything happens to her," said the poor mother in her despair.

"No, don't say that, Kate; rewards and punishments are not given to us in this world like that. If you had done an unkind thing it would have seemed like a judgment; if some good luck had happened, we might have thought it was a reward; but it's neither one nor the other-it was wet clothes that did it!"

“I know, I know.

But my poor Kitty! Oh, I thought Christmas was going to be bad enough for us, but what was our trouble to this? Oh, my poor Kitty, my darling!"

"Let's hope for the best, Kate. While there's life there is hope, and the doctor says if she comes out of this sleep conscious, with care she may get well."

"To think that we should be at Christmas without a dinner in the house-not that we mind about dinners," she said, with a sigh, an odd mixture of housewifely feeling mingling with her grief.

"If the doctor gives us hope for Kitty, it will be a bright Christmas after all," said cheerful Dick.

As he ceased speaking there came a knock at the street door, and, the children being in bed, Dick went to it himself.

A boy handed in a parcel and a note for Mrs. Garrett."

"A parcel for me! Good gracious! who can it be from? It looks like a goose, but no one would send us one. Oh ! if it was, and poor Kitty was able to eat a bit!"

Dick had meanwhile opened and read the

note.

"Why, it's from Mr. Philpots. He says: 'My dear, good woman, I told you you should never lose by us, but I had not courage to give up the one thing that made life bearable to me until the last. That has I am dying, and I send you my violin. It is a treasure; no one knows its value but myself; if I leave it until after my death you would not get it. I did not think the end was so near. Heaven bless and prosper you!-Horace Philpots.'

come.

"Poor old man!" said Mrs. Garrett, "I thought he would not live long; you see I was not fooled by him,"

"No, I suppose he was honest enough, but I don't see what good this poor old fiddle is going to do us; it won't cure

Kitty, nor give her anything to eat if she does get better, which she will do, please God."

"No, but he sent us all he had, poor old man, and it was a treasure to him, so we will take care of it. One of the boys may take a notion to learn the fiddle when they get older."

So saying, she laid it carefully aside, and turned to her watch over Kitty, while Dick Garrett sat brooding over the fire.

"Kate," he said, at last, in a low tone, "do you think our stock of furniture would fetch fifty pounds? They've cost us a pretty sight more from time to time."

"Dick, don't think of selling them; they wouldn't bring twenty pounds, and our home would be gone."

66 I would not think of selling them unless they would bring enough to take us to Canada or Australia; anywhere where a man can bring up his family decently, and not see his wife ground down with poverty and trying to make both ends meet."

"I should be sorry to leave dear old England, Dick."

"So should I, Kitty; I have no fault to find with England, only she's too full-a man hasn't a chance. I am not going because I want a republic or anything of that sort; it's a free enough country for me, and if I had the money to-morrow I should want to go where the old flag waves. Australia or

Canada for me."

here I have not had five pounds from it since last Christmas."

66

'Very sad, very sad! I wish I was a richer man myself a dozen times a day when I see cases like yours; but something must be done for this little lassie or she will sink, and we mean her to swim. However, I will send her a bottle of wine, and you must try and give her plenty of fresh eggs beaten up in milk, and beef tea."

Poor Mrs. Garrett looked almost despairingly as she thanked the good doctor gratefully for the wine, and silently wondered what they could sell or pawn to get nourishment for poor Kitty. Fresh eggs at Christmas! when eggs were so dear, and her illness, short as it had been, had cost so much that Dick had drawn his wages before they were due!

Dr. Graham had walked to the corner cupboard, where the violin was lying; he was an amateur of music, and so passionately fond of it that he was a real musician. He took up the instrument and looked at it keenly; then taking up the bow, he softly drew it across the strings, not to arouse Kitty.

"Where did you get this?" he asked, after examining it minutely.

Mrs. Garrett related to him how she became possessed of it.

"Will you sell it?”

"No, not much chance, worse luck!" The next morning the anxious mother awaited the doctor's visit with anxiety. Kitty had awakened, conscious, in the night, and had gone off to sleep again; and they were indulging in strong hope of her getting better.

When Dr. Graham came and saw her, he said: "She'll come round now, with care, good nursing, and plenty of nourishment; her constitution had run down before she was attacked, poor child. I suppose you have had pretty hard times, Mrs. Garrett."

"Indeed we have, sir; no one knows how hard. You can't do much with twenty-five shillings a week, and thirty pounds a year rent, and no lodgers to speak of; for when we've got them they don't pay. The first floor ought to more than pay the rent, and

And to her repeated entreaties he was deaf. He took the violin, handled it as tenderly as if it were a baby, and, much to Mrs. Garrett's mortification, carried it (for he was not rich enough to indulge in a carriage) himself.

When Dick came home in the evening, after telling him about Kitty, she said—

"Have you been able to get any money, Dick? We must have things to-night for Kitty. The doctor said he would send a bottle of wine; but he sent the medicine, and

the boy said nothing, so I suppose he has forgotten it."

"I've got sixpence, that's all, and that I borrowed; but I've borrowed so often that men are shy of lending me."

"I know, Dick; but that will get beef-tea for Kitty the other children can have bread and treacle for dinner to-morrow."

"Poor children," said Dick; "a pretty bad Christmas dinner for them !"

"Yes, and I've a pretty bad Christmaseve supper for you-nothing but tea and dry bread. Do you remember the nice supper we always had that night, and what fun we used to have after? I am afraid those days will never come again. But what do you think, Dick? The doctor has a friend who is fond of old fiddles, and he has taken Mr. Philpots's; he thinks he will buy it. There! -the doctor's knock, I declare!"-she exclaimed, as a double knock sounded on the door.

Dick got up quickly, and in came the doctor, covered with snow, but looking bright and ruddy from his brisk walk in the frosty night air.

"You are not very merry here, friends, for Christmas-eve," said he, looking at Dick's bare tea and dry bread.

"Not very, sir," said Dick, "yet we're very thankful Kitty is better, and ought to be happy enough. Last night I thought if I could hear that news I should hardly wish for anything more, and here I am wishing the other poor children could have a good Christmas dinner," said Dick, ruefully.

"A very natural' wish, I am sure. Well, here's the wine I promised you," said he, drawing a bottle from under his coat; "and now what do you think your fiddle is worth?"

"I don't know, I am sure. Dick?"

Do you,

Dick looked perplexed; he felt he would not give half a crown for it himself, and yet he thought, as the doctor had taken so much trouble about it, it must be good, and might be worth five shillings, and he did not want to say too little.

"I don't know the value of such things myself, but if five shillings is too much I'll sell it for anything you think right."

"Well, your old lodger left you a little fortune, though you don't seem to know it. Your old fiddle is a genuine Cremona, and worth a great deal; my friend will give you

a hundred pounds for it. Here is a cheque for the money, if you are satisfied; and as it is late, and you want your Christmas dinner, I will lend you a sovereign for to-night, and wish a merry Christmas to you."

He laid the sovereign and the cheque on the table, and giving a glance at his patient, he left the house before the astonished people could do anything but stammer their thanks and wonderment.

Such a merry Christmas-eve as the Garretts had! A fire was lighted in the kitchen, so that Kitty might not be disturbed, and all the children called up, while Dick went forth to make purchases. Such a supper of hot sausages as these extravagant people had after that, and then all hands helped mother to stone plums for the pudding-for of course there must be a Christmas pudding after such luck. And how they all admired the white down on the breast of the goose-a prodigious goose too ; and then they wound up with a snapdragon. Such a merry party as they were, with only one saddening thought, that dear little Kitty was not able to share their fun. But next day, happy Christmas morning, Mrs. Garrett could not refrain from whispering to her: "I'll tell you some good news if you will ask no questions, and not excite yourself, Kitty darling."

Kitty smiled faintly, and her mother told her the news. "And now make haste and

get well, my dear."

Need I say what a jolly day they spent ; how they blessed Mr. Philpots, and how Dick enjoyed himself amid the uproarious fun of his children, in thinking of the great things that awaited them in another land?

He had only one trouble that day, and that was to decide which land it should beCanada or Australia. Nor will it be necessary to state how good, simple Mrs. Garrett crowed over her astute neighbour, Mrs. Honey, who never lost anything by goodnature, and who had laughed and sneered at Mrs. Garrett's simplicity in being duped by the old man's story. "And actually to have treated him to a dinner! What could such soft people expect but to be poor?"

Such comments having been repeated to "soft" Mrs. Garrett, who can blame her if she exulted over her neighbour, even if one should not be uncharitable on the blessed Christmas Day?

dance with practical wisdom to sit down and refuse to work because I have no proof that I, or any one I care for, will be alive next year? The precise point, however, in which I differ from Mr. Le Sueur is this that taking into consideration the recent discoveries of science, and especially those in chemistry and physics, I find it much more easy to conceive the possibility and the probability of Divine answers to prayer than under those theories of matter which were previously held.

The result of recent speculation and research is to consider matter as consisting of atoms uniform in size but differing in weight; and as acted on by forces which, though seemingly diverse, are in reality one. The atoms, so far as we at present know, are of sixty-three kinds.' These are the elementary substances; but we are carefully warned that this name is merely provisional; because, with increasing knowledge, we shall doubtless be able still further to contract the number of elements. Chlorine, bromine, and iodine are doubtless forms of a simpler substance. Silicon and boron have also a remarkable similarity in chemical properties. Carbon is a very Proteus, taking on three shapes, different as lampblack is from diamond, and yet remaining essentially the same. Thus we are led to the opinion that all our present elementary bodies are compounds of one universal substance. Even hydrogen, the lightest known element, and the one to which the weights of all the others are referred, is supposed to be compound. The scientist, reaching out by the spectroscope to the sun and stars, discovers the lines of a substance lighter than hydrogen which the dissociating power of intense heat has been able to separate. This, Dumas (by what Tyndall so happily calls the scientific imagination)2 conjectures to be one-fourth the weight of hydrogen, by this means finding a unit of which all other substances will be exact multiples; and reducing within the limits of errors of observation all the fractions in the atomic weights of our present elements to whole numbers. Thus modern thought tends to the conception of ultimate atoms

of one kind, which, by uniting in different proportions, constitute the immense diversity of the universe-a theory very probable when we reflect that all organic chemistry is merely a register of the metamorphoses of the compounds of carbon.

While our idea of matter is in this way tending towards unity, the unity of the physical forces which control it has been for the most part demonstrated. Not many years have passed since heat and electricity were fluids, and light was something material. Now they are resolved into modes of motion or force, visible sometimes in the effects of light and heat; but often invisible in electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, and attraction. These forces are all imponderable, and act by means of a universal imponderable and invisible medium

the luminiferous ether-which, although its existence cannot be demonstrated, is yet firmly believed to be the vehicle of the forces which act upon the passive atoms in causing their vibrations and combinations. In this manner we are led to conceive how the visible, the material, and the ponderable is dominated and controlled by the invisible, the imponderable, and the immaterial.

But although we may receive the hypothesis because it best explains the greatest number of observed facts, we must remember that it is not a demonstrated, but only a highly probable theory. No one has yet seen, much less weighed or measured, an atom or a molecule. Chemists talk of atomic weights, but these are merely relative weights referred to hydrogen as the most convenient standard. They even go further, and draw diagrams representing atoms by little circles, and affinities by little connecting dashes, but this is simply a graphic method of classifying and remembering chemical reactions and chemical compounds; and while grateful for the assistance it affords us, and by no means denying its objective truth, we must not, to use Sterry Hunt's words, "confound the image with the thing itself." Hunt indeed has gone so far as to say, in his address before the assembled chemists at the centennial of Priestley's discovery of oxygen, "the atomic hypothesis, by the aid of which Dalton sought to explain his great generalizations, has done good service in chemistry, as the Newtonian theory of light did in optics, but it is already losing its (3) American Chemist, vol. 5.