did and she ministered to the necessities, mental, moral, and physical, of all who came in her way. Her solitary life never made her selfish, and she re-enforced her home with constant additions from the ranks of her friends.

Goethe has somewhere said, that, "as years accumulate, it is hard to keep ourselves as wise as we were." Sad as this saying is, it is true, because few people replace the enthusiasm of youth with the faith which is born of experience, aided by sincerity and love. But our friend used her rare powers of discrimination in discovering all the excellences of those with whom she came in contact, and with every one whom she visited her sympathy put her into relationship. From the men of highest talent and eloquence in the land, to the inmates of the neighboring poorhouse, she was at home with all, and they all wished to meet her again. This enlarged sympathy is wisdom in a high sense.

Perhaps other people may have had more of the poetic element, but in her its lack was fully made up by the brilliancy and richness of her wit. She wrote in the best "undefiled English;" but, beyond a few excellent translations for the young, she printed nothing. She used to say there was greater need of intelligent readers now than of writers, and she was eminently one. We have been told that a good sermon is not alone in the tongue of the speaker, but also in the ear of the hearer. And she brought to her books what would bring out their contents to the greatest advantage, if they were good, but if not, alas for the author! never was keener critic. Her latest pleasures were in reading, and she said lately, "I can bless every day the inventor of books." "I can hardly begin to tell you how thoroughly charmed and delighted I am with the new volume from the pen of Dr. Channing." "I have accepted it as a gift directly from heaven to serve as my viaticum in my nearly approaching transition through the dark valley. Every word commands my full reverential assent, and seems to bring me into communion with his soul. What happiness lies in reach of the aged, in remembering the wise and good who have gone before them to the better land!"

We take the liberty to extract a few sentences from a private letter, written by one belonging to a later generation:

It is a waste of words to say that Miss Lucy was an uncommon I do not think that I have ever seen a woman for whom

woman.

I had the admiration that I had for her. Her scholarship and her powers of thought were of no ordinary rank; and she possessed the rare power of retaining to the end of her life the vigorous liberality of thought which is so often extinguished in middle age. There were few people half as old as she who really lived in the present as much as she did, withal retaining a freshness of recollection which enabled her to describe the early years of the century with the same distinctness as the events of yesterday. She was a grand specimen of what a woman could be; and while most women will always find in the domestic position of a wife their best life work, such a life as Miss Lucy's shows that the life of a maiden lady may be rounded in the fullest symmetry, and helps us to realize the respect which may have been felt for the prophetess of old. I have more than once, in distant parts of the country, described Miss Lucy as the woman most deserving of respect of any I knew ; and she was certainly one whom it is a great privilege to have known.

MRS. HARRIET RYAN ALBEE.

The following touching notice of a most true and useful life we copy from "The Christian Register: "—

"Lately there passed on from the visible to the invisible things one very pure and noble soul, whom many of us have found a strong helper to our thought of the power of active goodness. In Harriet Ryan Albee we saw one who with one hand touched human life in some of its sorest needs to bless and raise it, who also touched with the other hand the hidden springs of divine help, and drew from thence the motives and the inspiration of her brave, clear spirit, so teaching us at once the holiness of helpfulness and the helpfulness of holiness.

"When I first knew her, eleven years ago, she had already placed her work of charity on a firm foundation. Some of those who hear me now remember how the first conception of her plan dawned on her, and how the young Irish girl, who had begun by taking a dying woman into her own room to nurse to the end, and then had added yet another, found her great, generous heart hungering for a hospital for such, whose need she had been so near as to know it to its depths. Then, with the aid of those true friends who always stood by her, she achieved the Channing Home, - that merciful shelter where Death has seemed to lay aside his dart, and to be

come a waiting angel of God's love. And it seemed fitting that the comfort which she had so unselfishly provided for others should be given to her in the same house of mercy in her own last hours. Amid the perils of an admiration for her service which could not spoil her large and impulsive greatness of nature, and in the quiet cares which home later brought,—in the fulfillment of her voluntary vow of charity as in the God-given duties of a wife and mothshe was the same true, pure, lofty, sunny soul. Dying as she had lived, in the communion of the Roman Catholic Church, she both lived and died in the communion of that catholic church universal in which we gladly reverence her inspiring memory, and look up after her, as we looked up to her when she was here, thanking God for such a life.-H. W. Foote."

er,

GUNNING AND FISHING.

We publish below, from a valued correspondent, an exciting account of a closely contested struggle with a fish. The relevancy of the subject to a Religious Magazine is that it points out to good Christian ministers and others what seems be a healthful and agreeable pastime for the summer vacation. Far be it from us to cast a shadow of reproach on our excellent friends who amuse their summer leisure by such sports. As long as we eat flesh and fish we have no right to find fault with those who take life, that they may supply us with food. But for us Christians to make a pastime of that which is bringing pain and death to our fellow-creatures is quite another thing. It has always seemed to us to have in it an element of cruelty, or at least of insensibility to the sufferings of others. Many years ago we fired a gun three times and brought three birds fluttering in dying agony to the ground. There was the end of that sort of sport for us, and we cannot think of it now without pain and self-reproach. In all such cases our sympathies are with the bird, the deer, or the fish, and not with the man. Perhaps we are over-sensitive, but we cannot help thinking of Him without whose notice not a sparrow falls to the ground.

With these preliminary remarks we subjoin the following account of "A struggle with a muskallonge on the Racket River, at Massena Spring, N. Y.," by Rev. Thomas Timmins.

I had rowed and toiled and scoured the river for hours in the full heat and glare of the midday sun, breasting the stiff breeze and rapid swollen current, owing to heavy rain in the Adirondack region the day before, - hoping almost against hope that my patience and exertions would be rewarded, at last, by a bite, if not the capture of a good sized fish. Whenever I grew a little weary and despairing of success, thoughts of the thrilling stories I had so recently heard came back to my mind, with inspiring effect, of sturgeon, muskallonge, and other monsters of the deeps, taking firm hold and running off with lines, stopping the boats, and even rushing off with the boats down the stream, and other tough fish feats, so sweet on the lips and so both pleasant and exciting to the ears of sportsmen. Did I not see afterwards the powerful muskallonge which a young muscular boatman had by great dexterity, aided by a spring of the fish to escape, landed in his boat, but which he found almost too much for him? For though the man got his knee on the fish, the fish caught the man's hand in his mouth and began knawing it. Suffice it to say that the fight was at last compromised by the fish suffering the man to knock a hole in his head.

Little did I think, or even dream, of ever getting a bite from such sport. The height of my richest hope and highest ambition was a pike, trout, bass, or pickerel. But the fierce grip and savage bite came at length as if to repay my arduous labors. For such another, most willingly would I undergo such labors again. It came in a moment when I was least thinking of either fish or bite, and only of rapidly turning a point and heading the boat against both wind and current. I felt the line jerk, and in a few seconds the boat came to a stand-still. What could it be? My first thought was that the hook had caught to a log, and I moved the boat cautiously. No! or why that strange vibration of the line? In another moment I was undeceived, and filled with almost breathless excitement, as I felt the line being strongly tugged at, and the boat begining to follow it down the river. Soon I unfastened the line from a beam, and a piece of wood, and began slowing pulling it in. But my mind was busy with surmisings of what could be on the line, it was so hard to draw. Before I had drawn in the line five yards, I knew it was a fish, and not a small one, by his coming to the surface twenty yards distant, and making the water fly into the air as he gave a hard jerk to the line. In he came, but rushing about in desperation to get off the line. It was when within three yards of the boat that he suddenly gave a terrific lounge, and in a moment, river,

fish and all things were lost to sight, for he filled my eyes with water and set me dripping from the shoulders. Lifting my hands to wipe my eyes, off went the fish with the line. Hearing the sound of rushing water, and looking round, I saw what I did not notice before in the hurry, that I was within a short distance of the rapids, and in danger of being carried over and dashed among the rocks. Now the visitors at the spring came running along the shore to see the fun, and in advance of them, in a state of wild excitement, the boy attending to the spring.

The fish followed the boat as I now pulled my best, and had high hopes of soon capturing him. "Put your line between your teeth," shouted the boy. Nonsense, I thought; for what do I want to suddenly transform the fish into a smart dentist for, and have him pull every tooth out of my mouth in no time? No, I must fix the line in some other way. Drawing in the fish to within several yards of the boat I rapped the line wround my ankle. Several fierce jerks led me to understand that I had made a little mistake in this, as I felt the line tightening rather more than what was quite comfortable. On the shore the people were in a high state of feeling, and the boy was calling out a number of unintelligible things, out of which I made out, "Give him the line." Throwing the end of it to him, I untwisted and cleared it from my feet, and jumped on shore. And now for the fish. But where was he? Sly, artful dodger! He had ensconced himself underneath the boat, and snug among the rushes, and was gethering new strength to renew the struggle. Slowly from the shore I made the boat glide, disclosing to view a splendid muskallonge, estimated by those around to be nearly four feet long, and more than thirty pounds in weight. But now, without Greek meeting Greek, there came the tug of war. As the line was cautiously drawn in, up the fish sprung right ready to renew the conflict. What a splashing, dashing, and floundering in the water. It was then that we first felt sure of him. But as Burns aptly says,—

"The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft aglee."

And alas! the most sanguine hopes are often miserably disappointed when nearest fruition. It was just when the muskallonge was about a yard from land, with his head slanting toward the river, that he suddenly gave a tremendous flap, and turned a smart summersault, that would have done justice to a professional acrobat; and thereby he tumbled down our hopes from the heights of success,

dashing them all to nothing, and leaving in their place only