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surprise, indignation, and pity for myself; and, throwing myself on my knees before the empty chest, I laid my face on my hands and burst into a fit of angry weeping. I do not know how long I knelt there. When I was sufficiently recovered to take notice of anything besides myself and my grief, the continued stillness of the house made me pause from my tears, and listen. There was absolutely no sound from below, where I knew that my mother was busy at her endless sewing for the shirt warehouse, her industrious needle making no noise, and the roar of the streets I was too well accustomed to to mark; but near me a sound of half-suppressed and gentle breathing made me start. Unwillingly and sullenly I lifted my eyes, for my tears had been hot and passionate ones, and I had no wish for any one to intrude upon me and them. A little figure dressed in white stood before me, with drapery falling round it, down to and over its feet in simplest folds.

The light of the lamp behind fell upon its cloud of light brown hair, and illuminated the edges of its face, and almost shone through the slight white form. I thought of saints I had seen in pictures irradiated by the sacred glory of the nimbus, and felt awed by its strange beauty. While I looked, the figure laid one small hand softly upon one of mine, and stretched out the other with a loving gesture as if to bless me. For a moment or two my breathing stopped; it seemed to me as if one of God's angels had come to comfort me in my distress. Then tears struck to my eyes again, not hot or bitter ones this time. I opened my arms to take in that little nightgowned figure, which fell at once into them, with a cry of O my Phil, what is the matter?'

It was no angel's voice that spoke to me, but the nearer and dearer one of my little sister; or, am I not mistaken? was it not indeed an angel's voice, though speaking from out the earthly veil that muffles up the brightness of so many of our winged ones?-was she not a God's messenger to me? She had heard my cry in her bedroom, and, half asleep, but with the instinct of love, had risen from her bed, and with naked, noiseless feet had entered my room to find me kneeling in despair before the empty box. I would not let her share my joy when first the precious medal had been mine, I shut her out from my attic selfishly and forgetfully; but now

she was ready to share my sorrow, nay, asking to share it. There were tears in her dear blue eyes, and there was the tenderest caressing accent in her voice, and there was the most attentive pitying face in the world, to listen to the account of my loss, which, indeed, she seemed to understand at once. What other trouble could so deeply have moved her Philip? And then, with kisses and gentlest pattings of my head and shoulders, she sought to soothe me, very much as a mother would soothe her baby, and kiss every and touch of hers had balm in it, and Had took away a portion of my grief.

I not a short time back called my medal my only treasure? With a twinge of self-reproach I remembered the words. In this warm case of flesh and blood close to me, was a treasure worth a hundred medals-my own, dear, loving, little sister. I seated myself on the chair, placed her on my knee, and wrapping her up in the skirt of my old coat to keep her warm, felt inexpressibly comforted and soothed by her presence. We talked sadly of the loss, but the anger was gone out of my heart for the while, and the great wrinkle, as Amy called the frown, was smoothed away from my forehead. We sat thus for some time, I far too much engrossed with my trouble to notice how cold the little feet became, spite of the coat, and my warm hand, and she proposing in her eagerness to help me, that she should sell her bird, her one possession, a linnet a neighbour had given her a few months before, to buy back again my silver prize. Poor little linnet! I am sure she could not have parted from it without many tears, and yet how willingly she offered it up to appease her brother's sorrow, and when I told her Dicky would not be needed, she was so evidently distressed at the rejection of her offering, that I was compelled to promise to accept it. She did not ask me who had been the thief, we both knew only too well; she did not even mention my father's name, but her thoughts were about him when she said, stroking my hair the while, 'Poor Phil! Why should he love that wicked ale and brandy so very much, and you so little?' The why was as great a mystery to me as to her. The question I had often asked myself, but had never been able to answer it. The temptation to drink was, thanks to my mother's care and my love for art and

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the school, that kept all my spare moments fully employed, nothing to me. I had never entered the publichouse more than three or four times, and then only to bring my father away; and what I saw at those times repelled rather than attracted me. The contemplation of the faces of Apollo and Diana in their calm regal beauty, had made revolting to me the animalised, sensuous countenances found at the World's End,' my father's place of resort. The wolfish and swinish visages of some of his companions were to me inexpressibly painful. But my father's school of art in his youth had been among such companions, and at such places as the World's End;' and what an attraction were they and their haunt now to him! Every day he had to pass the 'World's End' as he went to work, and irresistibly morning and evening he slid through its wide, ever-open doorway for another can and another pipe. What to him, when there, were the weary hours my mother passed at home, sewing for a penny an hour, that she might have a little better food to present to him and us, when he ought to have supplied it all in abundance from his wages? What to him Amy's thin face and deformed figure, that needed better air and medical appliances? What to him the impediments he cast in my upward way? So that he might get a little more of the drink he loved, all the world might perish about him. At least, so it seemed. As for myself, had it not been for the hope of soon raising my dear ones from their poverty by my artistic skill, I should have, I think, given it all up long ago. When on Saturday nights I saw my mother's weary eyes, and her thin, stooping figure, how many times I have longed to put in her hand all the money I had earned in the week, and to say to her, 'Here, mother; I'll spend no more at the school, I'll buy no more paints and brushes, I'll give up drawing altogether, and withit my proud hopes for the future, so that you may put away that tedious stitching, and go out sometimes among the green fields, and breathe with pleasure the fresh air., But I knew her reply would be, 'No, Phil.; your two shillings more a week would be a help, but it wouldn't be enough, I must still work, and it would take all the heart out of me to think my boy was unhappy, as he would be without the drawing. Go on with your

school, you will help us all so much better in the end!' and well I knew she would rather have stitched her poor fingers to the bone, than have taken my school shillings. How was it that in those days she was so rarely ill? How was it that she so seldom complained of headache, or weariness, or sickness of any sort? I can scarcely tell. She was wrinkled and worn and hollow-eyed, it seemed almost as if the first blast would blow her away, and yet she was the strongest person in the house. It must have been her loving heart that kept her up like a machine, in perpetual motion, and that would not let her give way. There was, indeed, a wonderful spirit of love and endurance in my mother that has put me to shame many a time in after life when disappointments have tried hard to overcome me and have all but succeeded. But Amy's question,why? was still unanswered, and she was still sitting on my knee, caressing and comforting. Byand-bye, however, she complained of cold, and I carried her to bed, wrapped her up carefully, and left her to sleep, after kissing her hot cheek, and promising once more that if Dicky and his cage were wanted to ensure the speedy return of my medal, he should go.

In the morning my father confessed to the robbery after a good deal of prevarication, and gave me the name of the place where he had sold the medal. There I went at once, but the old dealer in metals who had bought it would give me no tidings of it, and refused to answer my questions. From that day to this I have heard nothing of my school prize. It was lost to me for ever. But almost before I had given up all hope of regaining my lost treasure, I had ceased to mourn for it. Another and much greater loss had fallen upon me. -My little sister Amy! It is many years ago now since I saw you lying in that strange-shaped box, so very pale, and oh! so much longer than you bad ever seemed to me before, wrapt in the same little nightgown in which you had come to comfort me just a week back,-many, many, years ago! But do not think I ever forget it. What a day that was to me. dark and terrible than any thunder-cloud could make it. I was a boy when you died, giving way to passionate tears, to moanings, to bitterest cries; but when they carried you away and laid you under the dark smoke-covered clods of the city, I was no longer a boy, but

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with a man's deep and unspeakable grief at my heart.

Did Amy catch cold that night when sitting so long with me in the attic? It was believed so. In the morning she was ill, and when the doctor came, he told us that her complaint was one well-known in our close, unhealthy, neighbourhood-typhus fever. With her it was quickly fatal. In three days she died. The feverish fancies that possessed her brain during her short sharp illness were all of me and my lost medal. She called piteously on my father not to steal it, but to give it back to her Phil. All her trouble was on my behalf, but when I came nearer her, she did not know me, or understand the words I spoke. One short moment, however, before death, was given to my prayers. With a loving smile she looked clearly into my eyes, a smile that lingered on her lips even when in the coffin, and then she and I were sundered, but not. I trust, for evermore. Peace be with you, my darling!

My father was struck to the heart, and cried sorely over what he called his treasure, when her blue eyes were hidden for ever underneath their lids; though, strange to say, he would not have hesitated to fill those eyes with tears or terror when alive, for the sake of a few more drops of drink, and though he was no doubt guilty of her death, since to feed his own depraved appetite, he had neglected to provide for her the proper food and purer air that might have prevented her fatal illness. He and the drink at the 'World's End' had been truly her murderers, slow murderers, if you will; the work hastened at the end by the thievish blow that deprived me of my medal.

The many who die drink-murdered by sudden and awful deaths, are far exceeded in number by the many who perish by lingering diseases, drink induced; and by the still greater number who expire for want of the necessaries of life-good food and water, good clothing, and good air-withheld from them to supply the means for expensive stimulants, that, like streams of burning lava, ruin and destroy whatever comes in their way. One of these last victims was my little sister, and if I did not sympathise with my father's tears it is no wonder. With silent indignation I passed him by on the day of the funeral, with as little notice as if

he had been a block of wood, and took my place sadly and sternly beside my mother as chief mourner, leaving him to follow or to stay contemptuously at home, which he would. He chose the last, and we found him on our return curled up idiotically in a corner, more drunk than usual. Even on that day he could not refrain. My heart was very bitter within me, and if I did not spurn him with my foot it was because of my mother's presence, and because a certain holy influence that the dead had left was still remaining in the house. My feeling was wrong, completely wrong, and I have seen my fault since, and repented. Then, however, I looked down upon the poor drunkard, proudly, from my little pinnacle of comparative virtue, and said in thought, 'Never could it have been with me as with thee!' Excited almost beyond self-control, I left him with my mother and the neighbours, and rushed upstairs to my studio, there to bide over the time of bitterest grief. But if below had been holy ground, because she had so lately passed through its doors, how much more so was my whitewashed chamber, where she had spent with me so many

happy hours. Insensibly my anger against my father faded away, and her memory alone filled my heart. I took from its hiding-place her incompleted portrait, and placing it before me, worked away at the last touches with a strange, eager yearning to see it finished, that took from me neither firmness of hand nor trueness of sight. Never before, as it seemed to me, had I painted so well, and with so much ease; but the strange facility gave me no pleasure, nor took away a grain of the heavy weight at my heart. That seemed as if it could never be removed. When my self-imposed task was finished, I went downstairs, sensible now of an intolerable headache, that increased as the night advanced, and that at last placed me on a sick-bed. Amy's fever had also attacked me. For a fortnight I hovered between two worlds, then the crisis came, and this world claimed me; I was relieved and saved from that which we call death, for the present, to find my father dying, not of fever, but of the effects of habitual intoxication. Another coffin in a few days bore away another body from our house, and my mother and myself were left alone to cheer and comfort one another. My poor father! to dismiss you în way with a few words seems to mo

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now, half inhuman, though then, I must confess to have had a great feeling of relief that you were gone. Had you

been ever to us, since I could remember, anything but a down-draught and a shame? Had not your presence ever been a gloom, instead of a joy-bringer? Was not the light of your eyes darkness to us, because so often lit by the false glare of drink? Did you not drain the life-blood from us all, to feed the demon to whom you have sold youself? And yet in your youth, I have been told, there were many germs of good in you, that might, if favourably developed, have led you to sobriety, to honour, and long life, to be the blessing of your wife and children instead of their curse. You had health, and good desires, and no mean artistic skill that, might have been educated to your's and society's great advantage, and have proved one means of saving you from the evil attractions of the pothouse. Who can tell how much in this respect I owe to art, and to the art school? And here let me rejoice that I was born on a later day, at a time when Government schools provide for the people, for the poor, such means of education. In my father's youthful days art schools were not. His undeveloped talent, like a seed in unfavourable conditions, rotted where it should have rooted and put forth buds and blossoms; and weeds grew in its place and overspread the garden. Instead of the school of art, with its quiet hours of intellectual improvement, its pursuit after the beautiful in form and colour, its progressive and refining influences, the school of drink drew him into its unhappy circle, debasing and demoralising whatever was good and noble within him. I would that such schools of drink were banished from our land and from all others, and schools of art and knowledge and

virtue substituted everywhere for them. Some day it will be so; but before that happy day arrives, how many more will, like my father, take degrees in drink and crime, in these colleges of vice upheld by the State; how many more households will be desolated, how many more treasures will be lost like mine!

My mother and myself, then, were left alone, as I said, to cheer and comfort one another. Years ago, time drifted us both away from Manchester, -drifted?-bore us away with a flood that led to fortune. My name is now not an entirely unknown one in the great world of art. I am rich beyond my dreams, for my wants are few and my pictures in request. My London studio as little resembles the whitewashed attic of my boyhood, as a vase of Sevres china resembles a pitcher of unadorned red clay; but it wants one ornament the other possessed the living, breathing form of my little sister Amy, my lost treasure. Her blue eyes, however, look at me from out the canvas that hangs above my parlour mantelpiece, and recall to me whenever I glance at them many dear and sweet, and not a few sorrowful memories. The old lady in black silk, who for so many years sat every day at the head of my bachelor table was in the habit of wiping her spectacles afresh whenever Amy's name was mentioned, but not that she might see more clearly to put together band, and gusset, and seam.' She reserved her eyesight at the last, to gaze upon that picture and her son, and to read the letters of a certain Great Book, that was seldom far from her elbow, and where I believe she found certain words she spoke to me not long before her death, Be sober, be vigilant, and hope to the End. Words I never wish to forget, and that I would ask all my young and struggling readers to remember.

SOCIAL SCIENCE SELECTIONS.

AMELIE VON BRAUN.

It is merely by special royal concession that a clergyman may obtain a living in other than his native diocese, nor is it considered expedient for a country clergyman to labour in a neighbouring parish. He must restrict himself to his own often immense but sparsely populated district, and this

frequently is too much for the strength of any one man. A great desire is therefore felt by some for the introduction of home missionaries, so that the Gospel might be efficiently preached throughout the land. One such there has been, a woman, and of her I will now speak, though, in fact, she did not properly

properly belong to the party in the Church which desires home missionary labour. This was Amelie von Braun.

Born in 1811, one of the several daughters of a lieutenant-colonel, whose small means were expended on the education of his sons, Amelie spent the earlier years of her life in spinning, weaving, and perhaps, even, on an emergency, scouring a floor. All her household duties were, however, conscientiously performed, although she devoured every book that came in her way, digesting its contents over her mechanical labours, so that even when thus employed her mind was developing. From the early age of five, she knew that she had a Father in heaven, and though encountering by the way many a difficulty, many an impediment, she yet advanced onward, ever onward, towards her heavenly home.

She was a singularly dutiful daughter, never undertaking anything without the advice and blessing of her father. This also speaks much for the character of the parent. Nevertheless, there was one higher than her earthly father, as she says: From my tenderest years I have thrown myself upon Jesus alone, nor has any undertaking of mine prospered in which I have followed human advice, or obeyed the will of others, in opposition to the warning of an inner voice.'

In 1843 she began to work quietly amongst the poor of Carlshamn, where her family was then residing. She visited the lowest cabins of sin and misery, carrying with her a clean cloth and candles. The cloth she spread on a table, and the candles she lighted, for to the Swedes clean table linen and lighted candles convey the idea of the highest rejoicing and festivity. Having done this, made all beautifully impressive and attractive, she then poured out words of divine truth and kindliness into the hearts of the poor inmates. She produced in this way such an extraordinary effect, that the poor, wretched people used to clean up their miserable abodes in the hope of her coming, that she might see she was expected and made welcome.

For nine years she carried on a large Sunday - school. She laboured, too, amongst the sailors, and the most demoralised class of workmen, and found throughout the experience of her life, men more easy to influence than women.

In 1856 a still more extensive field

of labour was opened to her. She came to Stockholm for the purpose of conversing with religious-minded persons whose views accorded with her own, and especially as regarded certain tendencies which she greatly deplored. Here she was strongly urged to proceed to Dalecarlia, where the Church was much shaken. She hesitated at first, for the distance was great and the people strange to her. At length, believing it to be the Divine will, she went there, and, talking with the people, great numbers thronged to listen. She conversed with them also in private, circulated orthodox works, and was regarded by them as a messenger of God, and, at the urgent entreaty of many, returned to them the following year.

From this time forth she became a religious lecturer amongst the poorer orders generally, over whom she exercised great power. With the cultivated classes she could do less; those she intended to benefit by her pen, and that only after her death, for she feared that excessive partiality on one side, and rancour on the other, might destroy the wholesome effect at which she ained.

Spite of her simple, unassuming manners, which vanquished the prejudices of many, as might naturally be expected, she met with violent opposition; still, without any effort on her part, as one door of usefulness was closed another opened.

Various clergymen warmly espoused her cause, inviting her to their districts during the great festivals of the Church. She would then, after the conclusion of the service, hold meetings in the summer in the open air. These meetings began with a hymn, in which hundreds of deeply affected voices joined. Her discourses continued for two, sometimes even for three hours, the people listening with rapt attention. Her voice was tenderly persuasive, and as she would describe to them the poor prodigal man or woman returning to the Father's house, often giving them her own experiences, many were the hearts which she

won.

She exhorted them also to obey the authority of the law for the Lord's sake, nor did she omit earnest prayer for the Church and its ministers, especially including the pastor of their own parish and his family.

Her journeyings through the woods, and her abode in desolate country cabins, undermined her health, yet she never gave up her work, which she

regarded

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