undesired dwelling place. Sometimes, as we sat talking to him, a convulsive spasm would pass over his features. It was the only external sign he gave of the presence of the sharp pangs to which he was liable, and which often kept him awake most part of the night. Yet at times his sufferings were really awful, especially during those periods sometimes protracted for many weekswhen the abscesses were forming. It was on one of these occasions that a departed clergyman, himself no stranger to acute bodily pain, expressed his surprise that a child could so lie in actual torment, and neither cry nor moan, -nothing, literally (except what his mother significantly called the "squeezes up," the involuntary muscular convulsions of his little rent body,) betraying to others the agonies he was enduring. He said he could not bear his mother to know what he suffered, because it made her fret, and he could not bear her to be grieved. If she were ill or unhappy, she said she knew he was sure to be praying for her. "Mother," he would say, you better now?" If she said "yes," he would answer in the sweet simplicity of that faith which always takes God at His word, "I thought so ; then my prayers are heard."

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"Come mother, does your head ache? Do come and lay it down by me, and let me make it

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well." Then with his little wasted hands he would gently stroke her forehead, saying, "Oh mother, what should I do without you ?"

If she wept at unkind remarks, directed sometimes against the harmless child himself, he would say, "Don't never mind them, mother. Be sure to pray for them, and then you will get twice as large a blessing." In every trouble she says he was her best comforter, and the loss is very grievous now.

Generally when we went in, he would pull out his Bible and hymn book, and say a long lesson. He had a great store of little books, which he kept in a tiny bookcase his father had made him, and all clean and nice as when they were first given him. It was the same with his toys, such as his favourite game of Turks and Russians, its miniature cannon and little banners, which a kind friend brought him from a distance. They are all put away now, having proved less fragile than their owner. His memory-stimulated no doubt, by incipient disease of the brain-was really prodigious. He would make nothing of saying three or four hymns, and a chapter in the Bible, without stopping, yet without a mistake; and this not in a careless or irreverent manner, but with a distinct solemnity that was itself most touching. It was eminently so, to hear this favourite hymn,

"The angels stand around Thy throne,"
And wait Thy bidding every one;
Like stars around the full bright moon,
Or clouds beneath the setting sun.

Fair creatures, beautiful and bright,
They do the will of God on high;
His ministers to us on earth

Unseen their white wings gliding by.

Lord, when we say "Thy will be done,"
May heart to lip be ever true;—
Oh give us grace to serve Thee here
As gladly as the angels do.

And if Thou send us pain or grief,
If loss or anguish e'er befall;

Still teach us, though with quivering lip

To say, "Thy will be done in all !"

Or when he repeated the Psalms, those beautiful Psalms, which brood over the green pastures and still waters of our home.

Still more affecting is it now to find his marks standing at the significant passages where some of his lessons closed for ever. As for instance, in his Catechism of the "Shadow of the Cross," stopping at the point where "Young Innocence, with her garments still white, is taken away from the garden;" or, in the ballad he was learning, still more abruptly at the maiden's death-bed and farewell.

"Then farewell all, and do not mourn"
For me when I am gone;

There is a home with Christ for me,

And kind friends many a one.

And the last chapter he ever learnt so close upon his death that it yet remains unsaid-was that part of the second chapter of S. Luke, which describes the presentation of Christ in the temple. It seems to have entered deep into his heart; the holy embrace of the infant Saviour bringing to his two aged servants peace and salvation, and a golden glory to illuminate the dark places even of the valley of the shadow of death. "Oh mother," he kept saying, as he learnt it, "how beautiful! how very beautiful this is." "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace according to Thy word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation."

It was our great poet who said, at once in allusion to his own blindness and the comparative uselessness it entailed, and in beautiful illustration of the different ministries of angelic spirits,

"They also serve, who stand and wait."

So it was that our little sickly boy, in the silent reality of his daily sorrows and unfailing meekness, became transfigured to us as it were, into something a little lower than the angels, for he taught us what it is to say indeed, "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven."

We are sorry to say that there were persons who (whether from mere thoughtlessness, or a vulgar inquisitiveness as to his inner life,) reiterated the unfeeling question, "Would you not like to be playing and running about like other children, instead of lying here a helpless cripple ?" However, the prying indelicacy was uniformly baffled by the child's reply in modest, humble accents, "Oh no, I like to be as I am!" Indeed (if we may say it of one so lowly and so young) his mind was distinguished by a delicate sweetness, a pathetic tenderness of sentiment and manner, an innocent gladness attempered by sanctity, like the veiled beauty of the early morning.

Though Jemmy was of course unable to go to church, he had his own eloquent way of setting Sunday apart from common days. On that day he would not learn anything; it was his "rest."With his Bible and Prayer-book, and gay illuminated pictures, he kept himself employed, or else he lay on his pillow, communing with his own heart, and was still. But all other days he was very busy, sometimes cutting out animals and flowers, or making cotton lace, or weaving beads into bracelets with pink and blue ribbon; or perhaps he would be reading a newspaper or a story book; but whatever it was, he always left on your mind the impression that his was too strong for its frail tenement.

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