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HELEN'S PRAYER.

POOR Helen's trouble is very great. God has called away her dear Mamma, and she knows that she will never see her any more on earth. Her Mamma was ill for a long time before she died, and she used often to talk to Helen, and tell her that she left the younger children to her care, and she must be a Mother to them when she was gone; so now Helen is praying to God to ask Him to make her a good woman, helpful to her little brothers and sisters, who have no one but her to look to, for Helen and the little children are orphans. Their Papa died some years ago at sea, and ever since then their poor Mamma had been ill.

But although Helen feels so very desolate without her darling Mamma, yet she is not selfish enough to wish to call her back to earth and suffering, for she knows that God does all things for good, and begins her prayer by saying, "Thy will be done."

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THE COUSINS.

EDITH REID is cousin to Harry Millingford and to Sydney Dymes, and she can never tell which of her two cousins she likes the best. Harry is going to be a soldier, and he tells her stories of battle-fields, and of the marvellous deeds of daring that have been done by soldiers in all ages; and he boasts that when he is in the army he will rival the bravest of them. But Sydney is going to be a sailor, and he talks of all the wonderful things that he shall see at sea, of the foreign countries he shall visit and the beautiful things he shall bring home. He declares that the British Tar can fight better than any land-lubber, and this makes his soldier-cousin very indignant. He does not like to be called a landlubber in the presence of his pretty cousin. Edith is somewhat of a coquette, and she first pretends to like one cousin best and then the other, when really she likes them both alike.

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SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

SIR WALTER was one of the many great men who lived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was much liked by the Queen, who knighted him, for she always honoured great men; but when James I. came to the throne he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for twelve years. During this time he wrote a "History of the World." This he was well able to do, for he knew more and had seen more of the world than most people who write such histories. He was one of the earliest voyagers to America, which had not at that time been long discovered by Christopher Columbus, and he himself discovered one part of the New World, as every one then called it, and named it Virginia, in honour of Queen Elizabeth. Sad to say, the great and noble Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded in the year 1614, by order of James I., because he attempted to escape from the Tower,

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