inspirations of the poets which he heard declaimed, and saw represented, until his brain whirled with imaginings which the eye and the heart longed to pronounce realities! All that his life had lacked before, all that it had foregone, Tina was now to him. "He pineth not for fields and brooks, Wild flowers and singing birds; For Summer smileth in her looks, The child and its mother had transformed his life of care and anxiety into a paradisiacal existence. But, to return to Pizarro. The drama was enacted with more than usual éclat. Tina's appearance called forth a warm welcome. Pieces of silver and gold were showered upon the stage. Tina already knew something of the value of money -- already comprehended the privations and necessities of her parents. She looked at the glittering coin with wishful eyes, that would not be withdrawn. She had been taught that she must not stoop and gather these showered donations. True, they were intended for her; but stage etiquette, of long-established standing, had decreed that money thrown upon the stage should become the perquisite of the carpenters and property-men. Once Tina put her foot upon a halfsovereign; she thought that no one saw her; her lithe limb quivered with the strong temptation; she might so easily pick it up; it would buy coal for her mother! Then came a sensation of having committed some indefinite wrong; a fear, an oppression; she pushed the shining golden coin away, and avert ed her eyes. Thus early was she tempted; thus early did she learn resistance ! So great were Susan's heart-flutterings when Rolla drew his sword and seized Cora's child, that the anxious mother hid her face. The leathern girdle might not be securely fastened- might break! She could not look! She heard the well-known words, heard the thunders of applause which the tragedian's favorite point always elicited, and then Robin's whisper greeted her ears, "All right, Sue; the birdie's quite safe! See how lovely she looks, and how she smiles at you!" Then Susan dared to look up. Rolla rushed from the stage with the child still held aloft, ran rapidly past Susan, and ascended the steps which led to the bridge without lowering hist burden. Of course, the instant he appeared upon the bridge, the guns of the Spaniards were levelled towards him. They were fired so suddenly that Susan saw the danger was over before she had time for a new alarm. She hurried round behind the flats," to the left-hand wing, where Rolla, after crossing the bridge, had made his exit. She found him dabbling her child's dress and his own with red paint a darkish imitation of not very healthful blood. Susan did not venture to address him. The work was accomplished rapidly and silently. Again Rolla appeared before the audience; Cora received her child, the hero died; soon after, the curtain fell, and Tina, in her blood-stained dress, bounded joyfully into her mother's arms. That same season, she enacted the Count's child, in the Stranger; the petted child, in Grandfather Whitehead; one of the Babes in the Wood, and a number of similar parts. Now and then, Susan experienced the delight of appearing upon the stage with her child. On these rare occasions, what artist would not have thought the face of the hunchbacked prompter, as he watched them both, a study? CHAPTER III. Religious Training. The Precocious Mental Development. School. As the atmosphere of the hot-house forces the flower into rapid development, so Tina's premature training produced a precocious mental expansion. With unwearied devotion, her parents seized every leisure moment to instruct the child. Neither reflected that they were cultivating her brain at the expense of her physique; making large drafts upon the former which must inevitably impoverish the latter; undermining her finely-moulded organization for the transient display of its marvellous construction. To sow the seeds of religious knowledge as early as her infantile mind could receive them, was not to commit a similar error. As soon as she could lisp, she had been taught to fold her hands and bow her knees, and lift up her soft voice in prayer. The Word of God had grown familiar to her ears before she could read, and her puzzling questions often tested the theological knowledge of her parents. As the mother wondered over the child's quick perception in all scriptural matters, she would say to herself, "Children are so much nearer heaven than we! It must be so; for does not Holy Writ tell us that their angels- the angels who watch over them do always see the face of our heavenly Father?" She had no thought of ever sending Tina to school; that is, to any but the Sabbath-school of the neighboring church. There she became a pupil at five years old. One of those saintly young girls, whose life fashion could not fill up and satisfy, who yearned to bestow on others the good gifts she had received, whose heart longed to perform uses and dispense blessings,-finding that her position in aristocratic society closed many avenues to this exercise of good, offered herself as a teacher in that Sundayschool. She was very zealous in seeking out little lambs to bring into the fold of Sabbath-day instruction. She had noticed Tina in church, and one Sunday accosted Susan, and asked her to allow the child to join a class just forming. Susan gladly consented. When she and Robin talked over Miss Amory's proposition, he said, "Perhaps they may teach her more than we know! Let's give the birdie all the knowledge of the other world we can, that it may be a help to her in this. Truth will be a staff for her to lean upon, to keep her feet from stumbling on the rough road. Did you mark, Susan, what the good old clergyman said in his sermon, this morning?— that every day, every hour, every minute, we spend here, has its effect upon our lives in eternity. we are every day building the mansion in which we are to dwell hereafter; that we may lay broad and That |