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Without waiting a reply, she hastily left the little shop.

A few minutes afterwards the clerical man, who had registered his name the day before, came wearily in. He sat down upon an old stool in front of the counter, and, leaning his head on one hand, inquired of the merchant whether the answer to his application was ready.

The old gentleman opened his register, and, turning over the pages, read from yesterday's leaf: "Occupation, pastor in a great city; cause of application, fruitless labor."

"It is necessary," said he, looking upon the clergyman with a kind smile, "to make the statement of the cause of application rather fuller. How is it that your labor is fruitless?"

"I have poured out my life," said the pale and weary minister, while a light arose in his eyes, and a faint flush spread over his cheek, "I have poured forth my life upon my flock, if haply by the lavish expenditure of it I might buy them for God. My heart is consumed with anxieties spent in my pastorate, and my brain is dry with thought spent in my sermons. Yet they go all to their merchandise and their handicraft, assenting to my doctrine, and praising my work and my life; but I cannot lift a soul to look up as I look up. I cannot raise one into the atmosphere wherein I live. I cannot feel that they understand my work or my aspirations; their life or their needs; or any one of the great central truths which are the food of my own soul. I am weary and heart-sick, in despite of prayer. I must have a helping hope or I shall die. I must have a compensation."

"My dear sir," said the merchant, "allow me to make one additional inquiry. Since you have found it impossible to lift your parishioners heavenward into the sphere which you, the student and philosophic thinker, inhabit, have you tried, in pure faith and trust, to lower yourself into the grosser sphere of their lives, and there to shed abroad streams of pure light, like a lamp in a noisome cavern? Can you say, that although they do not understand your life, yet that you fully comprehend theirs-their conceptions of business, of money, of labor? Do you know, by placing yourself in their situation, by looking through their eyes,

how life looks to them, that so you may divert their thoughts by natural transitions into diviner and diviner channels? Have you in that way, as Christ did, striven to mingle intimately the current of your life with the muddy stream of theirs? Or, have you not withstood them, meeting them angrily, as one breasts the billows of the attacking sea, and striving in antagonism to thrust them hastily to the right-about? "

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How could I," answered the clergyman, despondingly, "defile the beauty and loveliness with which God had blessed my reveries with the glutinous mud of the trafficking street-with the vile clinging dust of the moneygrubbers?"

My dear friend," said the compensation merchant, seriously, "I regret that you did not more carefully read our circular. You would have observed that you are not one of the class of persons with whom alone our charter permits us to transact business. It is absolutely out of my power to furnish you a compensation. But will you not consider the inquiries which I put to you?"

The venerable man spoke with such an apostolical air of benignity, yet of authority, that the poor wearied clergyman seemed too much impressed for

remonstrance.

"I will endeavor," said he, with a sad humility, "to profit by your advice. I am so spiritless and shaken that I cannot contend with you, nor complain. And I think your questions significant and appropriate to my needs. In answering them, I may possibly find the compensation which I cannot obtain from you."

And he departed, with the same tired and unelastic step with which he had entered.

In a little while there entered the young man whose occupation was not indicated by his exterior. He walked promptly to the counter, and asked for an answer to his application. The old merchant read, as usual, from the register, "Occupation, a thinker and speaker; cause of application, disgust." "Disgust?" repeated he, questioningly,

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disgust? That is not a sufficiently full specifiation of the occasion, my young friend. Will you have the goodness to explain yourself a little more at length?"

Then the young man impetuously

flung back the brown hair from his high forehead, and rapidly told his troubles to the old merchant.

"I have," said he, "no purpose in living; and no pleasure or complacency in it. I tried the business of the law; but it was full of pettifoggery and drudgery. I became an artist; but the artists had each his bagful of little spites, and art was full of drudgery. I would have been a teacher of youth, for teaching was the profession of Christ on this earth, and now that he is gone it is yet the noblest occupation for men ; but I had not enough divinity in me to maintain me under the burden of the work, and it is full of terrible drudgery. Then I became an editor; but the detail and daily recurrence of the drudgery quickly discouraged me; besides that, my honesty was flung back at me as falsehood, by my lying fellow-editors, and even my subscribers dropped off in a direct ratio to the amount of truth I told. Then, I would have become a merchant; but, from the very first day, I was crushed beneath the mindlessness of the drudgery in figures and accounts, and angered by the swindling and falsehood which passed current as shrewdness and far-sighted speculation. So, at last, I have cast aside all those things -have, above all, given up my noble aspiration to teach, and so to live for the good of others, and have fallen back upon the purpose of evolving my own thoughts. I am only a literary vagabond now. I write tales, articles, paragraphs, letters, and sell them wherever I can. I earn money enough, and perhaps I have much pleasure in the expression of my own thoughts in my own way. Yet I am deeply disgusted. I accomplish nothing. I reach forward with an agonizing grasp, to draw myself upwards, but I find no hold. I would fain be a voice, loudly heard in favor of all that is good; but my feeble cries are smothered in the apathetic silence, or the brassy clatter of trade. I would fain make my life a long and strenuous effort in some single noble direction, and thus do worthily some one great work; but the cruel force of daily pressures, and, of late, especially, this disappointing and disgustful sorrow that is enclouding me, hem me in as with a ring of spears; and I am either frantic or stupefied, and in either case helpless and useless. That is my disgust. Is your compensation ready? For a comVOL. V.-30

pensation, I would not grudge ten times the highest market price."

"Let me make one inquiry of you," said the old merchant; "have you ever set yourself steadfastly to understand what work is in truth and right fully, demanded of every man how far he may follow his pleasure, and how far he must merely labor; and have you faithfully endeavored to live the life that was thus indicated to you?"

The young man considered for a moment, and then replied, yet with an air of surprise,

"I cannot bear to waste my strength in mere labor, where no beauty or truth is the result. I have striven to do

what should be lovely and noble in itself; and so to increase my own powers and perceptions about the lovely and the beautiful."

"I regret," answered the old gentleman, "to be obliged to say that our charter, as you would have perceived upon a careful perusal of our circular, prohibits us from transacting business except with persons who come under certain descriptions to which you do not answer. I shall therefore be under the disagreeable necessity of declining to supply you with the compensation which you require. But will you allow me to urge you to make some additional investigations, and to favor us with another call?

The young man's face exhibited anger as the merchant spoke; and he answered with hasty brevity, "I don't know whether I will or not; but it appears to me that if I fulfill the requirements implied in your question, I shall be in a position very independent of any gentleman in your line of business."

"In that case," rejoined the merchant, with another of his singularly intelligent looks, "you would both save your money and enjoy the pleasure of independent philosophizing."

The youth made no answer to this remark, but left the little shop quite thoughtfully, as if the old gentleman had told him something worth considering.

Within a little while there next entered the young girl who had recorded her name the day before in the register. She was slender and graceful, but pale, and with a sad expression upon her delicate oval face. She inquired in low and musical tones for the answer to her application. The old man read from

his book: "Occupation, seamstress; cause of application, sorrow." He looked kindly at the fragile figure of his customer, and said:

"That is a good and sufficient cause for application, if I understand the case correctly; but I must request a fuller specification from you, my young friend. Some sorrows are such as not to admit of compensation."

"Are they?" questioned the girl, "What sorrows?"

"Perhaps," said the merchant, "I should say that they cannot be compensated under our rules of proceeding. I mean sorrows self-imposed and selfsustained."

"I have no such," said the slender girl. "I have no objection to tell you, however, what my circumstances are. I sew, for my living, all day, and often much of the night. Except for the Sabbaths, I have no time to read, to sing, to play, to exercise, or to write; yet I am educated, and even accomplished. I was brought up in wealth, but singular afflictions have destroyed all my friends, until I-whose family circle was never large, but yet the dearer for that-am quite alone in the world; and I have no prospect except of a short, gloomy, and laborious life. I should so love to be singing or playing beautiful music; or to be sketching amongst the scenes of the bright free country; or careering about the fields and lanes on my pony; or rambling in the shady woods or along the breezy hillsides; yet I am only able to live from day to day by stitching in a little close dreary room. I have borne it very well for three or four years, and have eaten the bread earned with my own hands. But yesterday, my employer used harsh and bitter words to me, and defrauded me of a few shillings. And suddenly, as I meditated upon the injustice, a great shadow of agony fell down over me, for I asked whether I must then waste away all the life and happiness which I feel myself able to enjoy. Is there to be no end? I hardly seem to have thought of it before, for I have worked steadily, and refreshed myself, on each Sabbath, for the alternating week. Still, I am wasting and, being stunted in mind and body. Is there to be no end, no happiness, no freedom, ever anywhere again?" She wept quietly as she said the last words, laying her head upon the counter.

The old merchant looked upon her, much moved. "My daughter," he said, "do you live quite alone?"

"Yes; I came with my parents, who were without relatives, from across the sea, and we were very happy for a time. But I lived at home and there only; and when they died I had no friends left. I have labored too hard for friendship; and where was I to find friends of my own degree? I am quite alone." But how have you endured so

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long?"

"I have refreshed my life from the Sabbaths. They have kept me alive; with the faint glow of their peace which shone onward and backward into the weary week, I have endured. But I think I can endure no longer. I must have a compensation for so many years of my sweet youth, all gone."

"But do you love less to think upon the far light and pleasant life of heaven than formerly?"

"Oh, no, no, indeed! but very much

more."

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But," continued the old man, "do you think that the same compensation that has abundantly repaid for fifty years of successless and wasting labor, among savages not at last one single point humanized; for wife and children speared alive by them; for years of learned toil, whose results they burnt; for many, many other disappointments for an old age, in short, of poverty and solitary weakness, coming after a long life of earnest and honest labor-do you think that such a compensation would serve one who is daily losing all the beauty and pleasure which you know you could enjoy?"

As the old man sketched this short outline of a life, she lifted her head from the counter and looked up at him. She seemed to gather strength from the loving kindliness of the smile which he bent upon her. The same mysterious, searching glance which had seemed more or less to discomfit her predecessors, did not put her at fault. She gazed up at his venerable face with a faint and sad answering smile, saying:

"I think so. Oh! yes; I am sure of it. Give it to me, I beg of you, speedily. I shall die for want of it."

The old man continued again speaking, however, rather to himself than to the golden-haired young girl.

"Yes! A peace that enables one to walk above the world, as if sustained

by golden chains dropt down to him out of heaven! Would a mere consciousness of that kind, which fellow-beings could seldom understand, and would seldomer admit or value-would that repay one for years of loneliness and weary toil, either past or future?"

"Oh! yes; oh! yes," said the sad applicant. "Give me peace, give me peace, or something which may fortify me from the fearful shapes which of late crowd thronging around my poor worn heart. Give it me."

And she stretched out her hands, and bent forward in unconscious eager

ness.

"You lack not so very much, my daughter," said the merchant. "Does

it not comfort you, in some small measure, to know that even a helpless old man like me understands your grief, and has felt the like, and that he suffers yours with you?"

"Yes," said she; "I am sure it does."

"For the rest," he continued, "I will name your compensation. And lest you forget it, I will write the name for you. Young people do not always remember what is only told to them."

So he wrote a single word upon a slip of paper, and put it into the young girl's hand.

"My daughter," said he, "it is FAITH. Your deliverance will surely come. Do you not know it?"

It was with a beautiful and quiet intensity of utterance that he bent slightly towards his fair interlocutor, and spoke. The depth of his emotion caused his piercing eyes to become dimmed with tears, and his face flushed, and a slight tremor or agitation fled through his aged frame, as if he had named some name of mysterious power. It was almost as if an inspiration had descended upon him; and I thought I could see the reflection of it in the brighter smile which played across the thin and delicate face of the maiden, as she looked and listened.

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Yes, yes," she answered. "Faith. Still, I had it before. It had only departed from me for a season. Works have long been my portion. For renewed faith, my dear sir, I have to thank you. And what am I to pay for my compensation?"

"Oh," answered the merchant, "you need not be uneasy about that. Some time, you may, if you wish, transfer a

portion of your acquisition to some one as much in need as you were. That will recompense me."

The young girl departed with a much lighter step than that with which she had entered. Having, as before, business which called me to another part of the city, I now requested the old merchant to favor me with one of those circulars to which he referred so often; with which demand he readily complied. "I fear, however," said he, as he handed me the document, "that you will not find it a very successful effort in its peculiar department of literature. It is an experiment of my own, and I have not at all satisfied myself by my combinations of capitals, exclamation points, and shopman-English. I suspect I should have made a much better puff if I had paid the grocer at the corner, or the printer's devil, to compose it for me."

In

I did not haunt the compensation merchant's little shop any more. deed, if I remember rightly, his establishment was shortly after closed. Whether he was forced by a tide of business prosperity to remove to one of several new marble-fronted stores, which were about that time erected near the business center of the city, or whether he was obliged to suspend operations by finding that his wares were not suited to that market, I cannot say. The circular which he gave me contained a business-like statement of the objects of the company for which he was acting as general agent-their charter from the central government, and some rose-colored exemplifications of the probable pecuniary prospects of the concern, which latter vaticinations, from my observations upon the old merchant, I fully believe, and am consequently of opinion that sundry large fortunes have been made by leading stockholders. If any one recollects some person who appears to command large amounts of money, and whose sources of income are unknown, I recommend him, if curious, to inquire whether such wealthy person was not connected with the Compensation Company.

The circular I had fully intended to transcribe in full, as a fitting termination to this short account, and likewise as a conclusion, which, being ready made, would save me the trouble of composing any formal peroration, but I regret to state that I am unable to find it. I re

collect, that upon a hurried application for a proper envelope, for some toy or confectionery intended as a gift, I delivered over sundry scraps of paper, among which it must have gone. I cannot trust myself to replace the statements of the circular from mere memory, lest I do injustice to its careful

provisions; and I experience so much mortification at the loss, and the consequent unavoidable lameness of my narrative, that I find myself totally unable to compose such a peroration as I mentioned. My story, therefore, must apparently conclude here, without any

end.

THE ALPS.

As the traveler approaches the city he has seen the Alps. He has, however,

of Berne from Basle, the whole range of the Bernese Alps, including Mont Blanc, breaks upon his view. The effect is startling. There they stand, those mighty and famous Alps, even as in the ancient days and in the generations of old; huge giants clothed in garments of white, looking down upon successive races and rolling centuries. Thus they stood when Joseph lay in an Egyptian prison and when the Son of Man hung upon the cross at Golgotha. They have beheld Hannibal, Cæsar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, with all their hosts and banners, appear and disappear upon their respective destinies. With a kind of inexpressible fascination, the glance leaps from peak to peak, and measures those broken, inaccessible slopes, those polar regions of rock and ice, towering into the pure, cold, upper air, above the flight of the eagle and the floating cloud. There they lie for ever, huge blocks of parian marble, banks of new-fallen snow, drifted up amid the stars; piles of spotless, dazzling clouds resting on the horizon, or battlements of burnished silver. One feels like Christian, upon the top of the high hill called Clear, gazing, at last, upon the gates of the Celestial City.

Many thoughts and emotions throng upon the mind; souvenirs of history, glimpses of armies, battles, and heroes; Cimbrian hosts and Roman legions; an oppressive sense of the insignificance of man, the fleetingness of life and the glory of Him who "laid the foundations of the earth, when the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy."

The tourist, fortunate enough to catch this passing view on a clear summer day, returns to his country with an idea that

but glanced at one page, in an endless volume. An air of Haydn, a passage of Shakspeare would almost furnish as adequate an idea of their deep and evervarying splendors. Only long familiarity can enable him to appreciate how completely they surpass in magnificence even the apparently glorified representations by poets and painters. I have enjoyed the privilege of studying them about eighteen months. No scenery on earth can compare with them in power over the imagination. They are never the same and never at rest. Magical changes float over them perpetually. Each play of light, each modification of the atmosphere, each advancing hour, the shadow of every cloud, works its soft, slow marvels of grace and splendor. How often have I been struck, mute and spell-bound, by the sudden bursting upon me of this resplendent spectacle, through an opening in the forest, on turning a precipice, or mounting a hill. It is not only that, at each new sight of them, the mind better understands their immensity; but they appear in some unexpected variety, according to the season, day, hour, or point from which they are viewed. They amaze by their exquisite beauty, and overwhelm by their sublimity. Like a grand oratorio or mighty poem, they are full of unexpected discoveries, and sweet surprises which ravish the soul more and more as we understand them better.

The walks about Berne are numberless and perfectly beautiful, but this towering and almost unearthly phenomenon crowns them all with a new and ineffable glory, deeply suggestive of devotional feeling. They recall the land of Beulah, and one seems nearer God in presence of these revelations of his

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