that we should carry into their hard lives something of what gladdens ours. This world has little that is beautiful for these hard lives-the lives of those whose daily toil is often far from the bright places of earth and sky, and who live, so many of them, good and patient and kindly and beneficent lives, with so little of the outward brightness that so many of us have to cheer and interest and gladden us. They have indeed a claim on our sympathy. . . . They have the same future before them that we have. Their eyes, like ours, are destined to open one day on 'the land very far off, on the King in His beauty.'

"Let us, by any means that we can, carry into their lives some of that keen and high enjoyment, some of that discipline and refinement and elevation of spirit, which is given to many of us in such overflowing measure. It is, perhaps, little that we can do, little that we can teach; and, compared with other greater things, of little account in itself. But if it is only a witness of our sympathy, of our wish to impart what we delight in ourselves, it carries with it a blessing. The

flowers by the bedside of the sick, the dull hours made bright by reading or song, the efforts, frank, generous, sincere, after unstrained and equal intercourse, as between man and man, are 'the cup of cold water' offered to those whom Christ loves, till, in time perhaps, we may do more.

"Till we, and still more, those who come after us, learn more and more, and are more and more able to teach others, to see in what is most delightful and lovely here the earnests and foreshadowings of that day when He, Who is the Resurrection and the Life, shall make all things new."

CHAPTER X.

THE NATIONAL SIN.

"THE men

That drink the night out, and their earnings there,
And drink their manly strength and courage down,
And drink away the little children's bread,
And starve her, starving by that self-same act
Her tender suckling, that with piteous eyes
Looks in her face, till scarcely she has heart
To work and earn the scanty bit and drop
That feed the others.

To-morrow she will say a bitter thing,

Pulling her sleeves down lest the bruises show-
A bitter thing, but meant for an excuse—

'My master is not worse than other men ;'
But now, aye now, she sitteth dumb and still :
No food, no comfort, cold and poverty

Bearing her down. My heart is sore for her.

How long, how long? When troubles come of God, Then naught behoves like patience; but for troubles Wrought of men, patience is hard. I tell you it is hard.

One draweth near thy door

Whose footsteps leave no print across the snow;

Thy sun has risen with comfort in His face,
The smile of heaven, to warm thy frozen heart
And bless with saintly hand.

'This night, this night,' He saith,

'I stand at the door and knock.

I died for thee: for thee I am alive,
And my humanity doth mourn for thee,
For thou art Mine; and all thy little ones,
They too are Mine, are Mine. Behold, the house
Is dark, but there is brightness where the sons
Of God are singing, and, behold, the heart
Is troubled; yet the nations walk in white :
They have forgotten how to weep, and thou
Shalt also come, and I will foster thee
And satisfy thy soul; and thou shalt warm
Thy trembling life beneath the smile of God.
A little while-it is a little while-

A little while, and I will comfort thee;

I go away, but I will come again.""-Jean Ingelow.

"You don't know what it is, Miss," a drunkard's wife once said to me. "You don't know how hard it is, to sit up night after night, patching, and darning, and mending, thinking however you can make both ends meet and keep the children from starving; while their father's all the time at the public, drinking away all that would make home so comfortable. It's hard to bear, I

can tell you; and if I do make a cross answer to him when he comes back, who's to blame me?"

Poor soul! not thoughts of blame, but pity and sympathy for such a life of hardship, must truly fill one's heart.

"It's hard enough," another said to me, “to work hard all day long, and when I'm tired out, and have got the children to bed, to have my husband come back and knock us about, and be that mad with drink he don't know what he's doing. And then to hear the awful language he uses; the children wake up crying, and no wonder; and I could cry too, to think they should hear such words from their father. He'd never do it or say it if he was sober, not he; but the place is just fearful when he's drunk."

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Forty years of married life I've had," I heard an old woman say, "and that means forty years of more misery than I can well tell you. It was all through the drink. Year after year, and night after night, my husband would come home almost beside himself with it, and the way he treated me, you can guess. Then our sons took to it too, one after