ingly in this channel, a vast amount of good can be accomplished. A vagabond, suspected, despised population, could be converted to decent and orderly citizens and useful members of the community. Forbearance and a warm hearted Christian love will sustain you in your efforts.

If these suggestions should serve to stimulate any one to do good in the way we have pointed out, to her we would say, the emigrant, poor and tattered as he may seem, separated from kindred and country, has a human heart, brimful of affections, to be wasted, or to be exercised upon virtuous and worthy objects.

Written for the Young Lady's Friend.

The following lines were written upon the beach on Martha's Vineyard.
APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN.

BY REV. WILLIAM M. THAYER.

How grand to view the rolling flood
And hear the surge's roar,

When rushing from the distant sea,
They dash upon the shore!

But grander still to think that God
Controls the restless deep;

That He can hush its thundering voice,
And put each wave to sleep.

Yes, Ocean, though thy billows roar,
And fiercely lash the main,
Though louder still the warring winds
Can make thy thunder strains;
With all the varied ways at hand,
Thy mighty power to prove;

If God should utter, 'Peace, be still!'
Thy waves would cease to move.

How easily thou couldst ingulf
Yon gliding ship I spy,

If nought but human power control
The waters 'neath the sky;

But God, who holds thee in his hand,

Can curb thy furious sport,

And bid that ship ride proudly on

To reach its destined port.

How sad the thought, Oh, boundless sea!

That in thy bosom lies,

Ten thousand mortals, bound to friends

By life's endearing ties;

Who, far away from native land,

No friend to hear their cry,

Were merged beneath the billows there,
In agony to die.

There lies the merchant with his wealth
From India's richest store,

And there the sage is sleeping too

With all his ancient lore;

There lies the warrior stained with blood,

In all his princely pride;

And there the sea-tossed mariner

Is resting by his side.

There lies the father, dearly loved,
The idol of his home,

And there the widow's only son

Is buried 'neath the foam.
There lies the partner in his youth,
His winding-sheet the tide;
No angel voice to bear 'adieu'
To his afflicted bride.

But all these bodies, angry sea,
(The thought elates the soul,)
Shall quit thy mighty sepulchre,
As Time's death-knell shall toll;
When Christ shall blow the final trump,
And rend the flaming skies,

Thy floods shall open far and wide,
And all thy dead shall rise.

Then mountain-billows rolling back,
And breaking on the land,

That through the opening sea, the dead
May rise a marshaled band,
And all the ocean wrapped in flames,
One sheet of fire abroad,
Shall picture in sublimer view
The mighty power of God.

Edgartown, Mass., Oct., 1846.

A SISTER'S INFLUENCE.

BY MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY.

THE softening, refining, and elevating influence of a sister's love, upon even wild, high-spirited, or obstinate natures, is often strong, and distinctly visible. Of a young man, who evinced high moral principle, with a tenderness of heart unusually developed, it was once said by an admiring and accurate observer, 'I will venture to predict that he had a good, well-trained sister, and that she was older than himself.' - Letters to Young Ladies.

HINTS TO A VERY YOUNG LADY ON DANCING.

BY A FRIEND TO YOUNG LADIES.

The following communication was written for this work by a distinguished clergyman of this city. May the salutary instruction it contains make a deep impression upon the class of persons for whom it is designed. - ED.

MY YOUNG Friend:

Unless you are unlike most of your age and sex, you have a desire to go to a dancing school, and to become an accomplished dancer. Have you ever analyzed the motive which prompts this desire? Is it that you may the better prepare for heaven? Is it that you may live a more pure, holy, benevolent life, and thus do more good in the world? Is it that you may be more intellectual, intelligent, refined? Is it that you may be the better prepared to perform the responsible duties of future life to be a source of richer blessing to your husband and children? Do you expect, by learning to dance, to benefit either your head, or heart, or conscience, or purse, or health? to secure any real good, either to yourself or to your fellow beings? There can be no doubt as to the answer. Is not the plain truth this? You wish to attend the dancing school, and to become an accomplished dancer, to gratify vanity. You think you shall thus appear better, possess more attractions, engage more interest, and vie with other young ladies in the same chase of vanity. Would you be willing to have such motives weighed in the balances of eternity? Nay, in the sober and just balances of time? A few words, then, upon learning to dance; first, as related to this world; secondly, as related to the future.

I. As related to this world.

1. It will not benefit your health. Dancing has been falsely called a healthful exercise. Taken as a whole, and as it actually exists, it is not. It brings on diseases of the heart, lungs, spine, nervous system, and head, in ten instances, where it benefits in one. It always tends to a premature old age, often produces immediate illness, and not unfrequently sudden death. Few things can be worse for health than the dissipation of the ball room.

2. It will not enrich your purse. Few children count the cost of

dancing. It is the most expensive of all amusements. A single dress for the ball-room often costs what would educate a young lady, at one of our best schools, for a year. Then think of the sums spent upon physicians, in consequence of the colds, coughs, spinal diseases, &c., which date their origin in the exposures and excesses of the ball room. If the sums spent for dancing were devoted to education and the purposes of benevolence, what a happy exchange! Few parents can really afford to educate and furnish their daughters for the ball room; and those who can afford it, can certainly find a better use for their money.

The manners acquired in

3. It will not improve your manners. the dancing halls frequently have an air of ease and grace, but it is as frequently spoiled by an air of affectation. All true manners are, like dress, simple; they attract no attention. Now the manners acquired at dancing schools usually do attract attention. The rolling, twitching, swinging gait; the flourish and airs of entering and leaving a room; the artificial modes of address, and display of fine limbs and figures, cannot have escaped the observer's eye, as constituting no small item of the acquisitions brought from the dancing school. All that is beautiful in walking erect and gracefully; in entering and leaving, and, what is more important, in being present in a room of intelligent and genteel company, in short, all that is implied in the most refined and accomplished manners, may be learned without going to the dancing school. It is a great mistake to suppose that learning to dance will learn you to walk well. the contrary, good dancers are usually bad walkers.

On

4. It will not improve your intellect. What mental faculty will it improve? Will it enable you to reason and think better? Will it elevate and refine your imagination and taste? Will it correct and strengthen your judgment? No, no. Will it then add to your mental furniture? Will it open to you the riches of ancient and modern languages? Will it teach you to solve the problems of mathematics? Will it teach you philosophy, history, botany, geology? Will it teach you to write the English language with elegance and ease, and furnish you with something worth writing? Are not the most fascinated and fascinating dancers usually the most unintellectual ladies?

5. It will not make you more refined. True refinement implies a pure and chaste mind. Dancing has a tendency to defile it. Facts

have long since proved, that in all ages and countries the tendency of dancing has been in that direction. The mode of dress, of moving, approaching, embracing, &c. &c., witnessed, on the floor of the ball room, is enough to convince any intelligent observer, of both the origin and tendency of the amusement. It came from heathenism, to heathenism it tends. It is in its nature essentially vulgar, and no pruning and dressing can make it truly refined or refining. No considerate lady, in her thoughtful moments, conceives that there can be any true refinement in standing up before a man, in a dress suited to expose her form and person, in allowing him to put his arm around her, and in thus beating around with him to the exciting sound of music. It would require but a slight stroke of the pen to make it appear both ludicrous and shameful, especially as sometimes witnessed in the waltz and polka. Refinement!

6. It will not increase your happiness. That there is pleasure in dancing, I do not deny. So there is pleasure in many other indulgences, which yet give more pain than pleasure. The envies, jealousies, rivalries, are not among the least of the tormentors, that attend and follow the ball room. The wasting anxieties that precede, and the cruel disappointments that follow, the exhaustion, languor, ennui, saying nothing of the stings of remorse and painful consciousness of misimproved time and strength, are set off in sad contrast to the few moments of feverish pleasure. Dancing is one of the fascinations, whose pleasures are of course unnatural, and are sought after, as those of gambling and intoxication, with a greediness entirely disproportionate to their intrinsic worth. Some of the unhappiest creatures I have known, have been ladies devoted to the dissipations of the ball room; and certainly some of the happiest I ever knew, had never learned to dance.

That dancing will make you a more affectionate, dutiful, useful daughter and sister; a more devoted, faithful, contented wife; a more self-sacrificing, benevolent, successful mother and guardian of your future household, you will not presume.

If, then, learning to dance does not promise to benefit your health, nor purse, nor manners, nor intellect, nor add to your refinement and happiness, nor yet to make you more useful, we may well interrogate, Why, even in a worldly view, should you wish to do it? There is enough to be learned, and more than you will ever learn, that would give you real and lasting advantage in all these particulars.