And the next shall copy his, sweetheart, 295,-FRETTING JENNIE. ANONYMOUS. Little Jennie, fretful, sitting in a tree, Buzzing bee was happy, busy at its work, Jennie grew more fretful when it answered not, Are there not some Jennies, boys and girls, you know 296. THE BRIGHT SIDE. There is many a rest in the road of life, And whose beautiful trust ne'er faileth, Better to hope, though the clouds hang low, For the sweet blue sky will soon peep through, There was never a night without a day, And the darkest hour, as the proverb goes, There is many a gem in the path of life, It may be the love of a little child, Better to weave in the web of life A bright and golden filling, And to do God's will with a ready heart, And then blame Heaven for the tangled ends, 297.-A SINGING LESSON. A nightingale made a mistake- And she hid from the moon. She wrung her claws, poor thing, A lark, arm-in-arm with a thrush, "Oh, nightingale," cooed a dove, You bird of joy and delight, Why behave like an owl? 'Only think of all you have done- From such a bird as you! The nightingale shyly took Her head from under her wing, There was never a bird could pass- The nightingale did not care- And there she fixed her eyes. 298.-FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS. H. W. LONGFELLOW. When the hours of Day are numbered, Wake the better soul that slumbered, Ere the evening lamps are lighted, Then the forms of the departed He, the young and strong, who cherished By the roadside fell and perished, Weary with the march of life! They, the holy ones and weakly, With a slow and noiseless footstep O, though oft depressed and lonely, Such as these have lived and died! 299.-SACRED INFLUENCES. JOSEPH COOK. Looking around the globe to-day, we see an unbroken line of Christian influences in the near future, stretching from the Yosemite to the Sandwich Islands, to Australia, Japan, India, past the Suez Canal, thence to the Bosphorus, to Germany, to England, and then across that little brook we call the Atlantic, only two seconds wide now for electricity. There are no foreign lands. Christianity at this hour reads her Scriptures, and lifts up her anthems, in two hundred languages. One-half of the missionaries of the globe may be reached from Boston by telegraph in twenty-four hours. God is making commerce his missionary. It is incontrovertible that it was predicted ages ago, that a chosen man called yonder out of Ur of the Chaldees should become a chosen family, and this a chosen nation, and that in this nation should appear a chosen Supreme Teacher of the race, and that he should found a chosen church, and that, to his chosen people, with zeal for good works, should ultimately be given all nations and the isles of the sea. In precisely this order world-history has unrolled itself, and is now unrolling. No man can deny this. No man can meditate adequately on this without blanched cheeks. What are the signs of the times which I have recounted on this festal morn, but added waves in this fathomlessly mysterious gulf-current? We know it began with the ripple we call Abraham. It is now almost as broad as the Atlantic itself. What providence does, it from the first intends to do. We see what it has done. We know what it intended. It has caused this gulf-current to flow in one direction two thousand, three thousand, four thousand years. Good tidings, this gulfcurrent, if we float with it!-good tidings which are to be to all peoples! A Power not ourselves makes for righteousness. It has steadily caused the fittest to survive, and thus has executed a plan of choosing a peculiar people. The survival of the fittest will ultimately give the world to the fit. Are we, in our anxiety for the future, to believe that this law will alter soon? or to fear that He whose will the law expresses, and who never slumbers nor sleeps, will change his plan to-morrow, or the day after? 300.-SELECTIONS IN VERSE. WINDING MY WATCH. I wind my watch in the low lamp-light, As the future were mine through this little key. Yet, winding my watch, I well may muse, How an hour will come of the low lamp-light When to wind my watch no need will be, Who will wind it after I cannot know, |