during the next stage, the men not only went much faster, but invented a new song, the whole burden of which was, ' He has only given them four annas, because they went so slowly! Let us make haste and get along quickly, and then we shall get eight annas, and have a good supper!'

"By-the-by, when the bearers of the palanquins are changed for fresh men, on taking hold they very often cry out,Ah! my brother, my child! But with me they generally make an addition to this Ah! my brother, my child, my elephant!""-Collected from "Manners and Customs of India."

OLD SUSAN AND LITTLE MARY.

My dear Children,

I am going to tell you a true story, and the reason I tell it you is, because it is good for you, and all of us, sometimes, to read of those who are much better and holier than ourselves; it ought to make us feel very humble, and to show us what a degree of goodness we may hope to reach, if we will but strive after it. The little girl who I am going to tell you about, was called Mary, and she had no greater advantages to help her on her way than you have. She, like you, had been baptized into Christ's Church, and had been made a member of his body, a child of God, and an heir of the kingdom of heaven; and she, as

you probably are, was sent to the school belonging to the parish in which she lived. Miss Bertram, the clergyman's daughter, was very fond of teaching all the children there, but none of them were so attentive to her as little Mary ; more than all she took delight in hearing about heaven; that place where there shall be no more hunger, and thirst, and cold, and weariness, but where "all tears shall be wiped away."

"If I were to die, do you think God would take me there?" she asked Miss Bertrain one day, when she had been talking seriously to her."

"Yes surely, if you try to please Him. Are not you his child? and has not God promised that you should live with him for ever.”

Mary had two or three younger brothers and sisters. Her father and mother were very poor; and very often they had not food enough to eat, or clothes and firing sufficient to keep out the cold in winter; perhaps that was one reason why Mary thought so much of another world, that she had very little to make her happy and comfortable in this. "Mother!” she said one day, when the passing-bell was tolling for a dying neighbour," when will my time come?"

"You must not talk of dying yet awhile,” was the answer she received; "what would father and I do without you?"

Little Mary looked up at her mother as she answered, "But I am God's child. Miss Bertram told me so; you will let me go to the funeral?” she added coaxingly, "Old Susan will wish to go and I can go with her.”

Now this old Susan, whom Mary mentioned, had more to do with her being different from other children than any body else; so I must tell you about her too. She was not exactly a poor person, but some time back she had come to live with some relations at a farm-house at Brookland, which was the name of the village where little Mary lived. She was very fond of rambling about alone, and before long she got the character from the neighbours of being mad; indeed, she was quite unfit to go about by herself, so her friends used to give one of the poor children a trifle to go with her, to see that she did not come to any harm, and little Mary, because she was to be trusted, was always the one chosen for that purpose. If old Susan were mad there are many people who might be glad to be mad also, for her strangeness chiefly consisted in having a great love of going to Church. Some said it could not do her much good, for very often she was seen to hold her prayer-book upside down; but she knew all the Psalms by heart, and whereever she went, she was always muttering some portion of them to herself; her fancy seemed to be, that she was never safe, unless she was either in, or under the shadow of the Church, and she would go for hours and sit with little Mary in the porch, or in the Church-yard, repeating all the time her favourite Psalms, while the little girl sat at her feet, sometimes wondering what they meant, but often-for she was a thoughtful child-putting a meaning of her own to what she heard.

The Church at Brookland was large and handsome, and the church-yard was a pretty one; the turf was soft and green, and on one side there flowed a clear stream of water, with the weepingwillows hanging their light branches over it.

When the sky was most blue and cloudless, and the sun shone bright and warm-when the birds, and insects, and flowers alike seemed rejoicing in life, she would ask Old Susan if she thought then it was any thing like heaven. "If God would but take me there before the winter; but by-and-by the cold will come again, and father will be out of work, and we shall be so hungry!"

Mary was likely to be hungry, for very often she gave away some of the bread she might have had to eat, to her little brother and sister. Old Susan often told her that she must "bide her time." "Put thy trust in the Lord," she would say, " and be doing good; dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed."

It was at the time when that frightful visitation, the cholera, prevailed so much, and it broke out at Brookland, as well as in other places. One after another sickened and died, and, at last, little Mary's brother and sister were taken ill with it; then she gave herself up to nursing them, and did what she was able to help her mother night and day. "If it had been but me!" she said to old Susan, when she came to inquire after them. If Mary had been older she would have felt that it was wrong to desire so much what God denied her. Poor child! she little thought in what way

her wishes were to be granted to her. Mr. Bertram was very good to them, and all the sick people, but the children died within a few hours of one another, and there was only one left besides Mary, to the poor parents. But they were not the only sufferers. The pestilence continued raging some time; death succeeded death, till fear was depicted on every face; and even the most hardened began to call upon God. It might be said of them, as it was of the Egyptians, "There was a great cry in Egypt, for lo! there was not a house where there was not one dead." Only little Mary, and old Susan, in the general panic, seemed quite composed; the old and young, both wishing for death, and both being preserved, while others fell around them.

It was sad in the stillness of those summer nights, to hear the bell of the Church toll out, and to see the funeral processions going down the village-street to the church-yard, the moonlight showing out the dark figures of the bearers, and playing upon the white surplice of the clergyman. There were the trees; the countless myriads of stars in the blue heavens, beautiful as when God pronounced them "very good;" and man, the last, the best of His creations, smitten by the breath of His displeasure, returning to the ground from whence he was taken. "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust;" but to be raised again one day, when the heavens shall be no more, raised either to eternal glory, or eternal and unquenchable misery. Children, think of