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SABBATH MORN.

But are you sure that these very suspicions did not lead you to treat her with a coldness and reserve which was the real occasion of the change in her manner towards you? This supposition accords with Mrs. Mulford's own statement. I have heard her, more than once, express regret at this alienation, and say that the first intimation she had of any change in your feelings towards her, was the coldness and reserve with which you treated her, on the very occasion to which you allude. She said that it was so unexpected, that it instantly threw a constraint over her intercourse with you, that she could not by any effort overcome."

"But do you know why she never offered the mantilla to us?"

"No, I do not know; and because I do not know, I feel myself bound to believe, until I know the contrary, that she was not influenced by any unworthy motive. Has she not ever been a kind and obliging friend, and is it right to ascribe to her, in this one instance, a motive inconsistent with her general character?"

"There may be, I admit," replied Mrs. Allen, thoughtfully, "a good deal of truth in what you say: perhaps I have judged Mrs. Mulford hastily and unjustly."

A few days after this conversation, Mrs. Lee met Mrs. Mulford, and related to her the substance of it.

"Is it possible!" exclaimed Mrs. Mulford. "I had thought of that affair of the mantilla, but I did not suppose that she could make so much of such a trifle. To tell the truth, I ought to have been more frank with you both. A few days after you and Mrs. Allen were here, I showed the article to a friend of mine from B. I frankly owned to her, that I wished my aunt had sent me something more in keeping with my circumstances. She admired it very much, and told me, if I was willing to part with it, she would pay me a liberal price for it. To confess the whole truth, my husband was just then a good deal embarrassed in his business, and I feared it might subject us to the charge of extravagance, should I, at that time, wear so expensive an article of dress. If I parted with it, the temptation to wear it would be removed, and its value would be received, and expended for the supply of our real wants. These considerations induced me to accept the offer, though I was reluctant to part with it, as the gift of my aunt. I did not like to own the fact to you and Mrs. Allen, who knew it to be the gift of a friend, and therefore I evaded the confession, by stating that a friend had

taken it home, which was strictly true, though not the whole truth. The reason why I made no after-explanation is obvious. I should think that an old friend, like Mrs. Allen, might have put a more favorable construction upon the act, even if she did not altogether understand it."

"She has been very hasty in her judgment, and if she knew the facts in the case, I doubt not that she would most sincerely regret it. Are you willing that I should communicate to her the explanation which you have given me?"

Mrs. Mulford gave her free consent to this. When Mrs. Allen was informed how she had misjudged her friend, she was deeply humbled, and hastened to seek a reconciliation.

"Henceforth," she exclaimed, "the charity that 'thinketh no evil' shall be the guardian angel to watch over our friendship."

SABBATH MORN.

BY WILLIAM BYRNE.

'Tis Sabbath morn !-The solemn sound of bells
Is borne upon the quiet, holy breeze,
From hallow'd churches, that in yonder dells

Lift up their heads, half-hidden by the trees:
The birds, methinks, sing with a sweeter lay,
And the sun, too, shines brighter on the Sabbath-day!
The streamlet with a clearer ripple flows;

The very flowers a richer perfume yield:
Even the cawing of the stately crows,

That undisturb'd strut o'er the new-plough'd field,
Seems musical to me; while in the grove,
With a more dreamy sound, the rustling branches move.
All toil is o'er: I miss the blacksmith's stroke-
The anvil's ring--the carter's noisy song--
The forge's roar, and e'en its wreath of smoke

Now curls no more yon fir tree boughs among;
The noisy mill, too, for a time doth cease;
And all things tell alone of rest and holy peace.
But now the bells are silent; and appear
Within that sacred building, old and gray,
The honest rustics, who are met to hear

The Word of God, and keep his holy day!
'Tis sweet to see the group assembled there-
The youth, and timid maid, and those with silver hair!
Through the stained windows the glad sunshine streams
Upon the Gothic pillars, worn and old,
And on each fretted arch, until it seems

That they are built of precious stones and gold;
And casting on the floor, in colors faint,
The shadowy outline of some rudely pictured saint!
Though few they are, and simple, there that raise
Their voice to heaven, responding to the prayer--
Nor pealing organ mingles with their praise-

Yet think not thou that God the less is there!
For He hath said, "Wherever two or three
Are gathered in my name, there in the midst I'll be !"

THE REWARD OF TRIAL.

Oh there is something in a Sabbath morn,
As if a charm to this sweet time were given,
To wean the mind from all that's earthly-born,
And lift the heart adoringly to heaven,
Making the spirit strive to break the chain
That binds it to this life of checkered joy and pain!

THE REWARD OF TRIAL.

BY REV. F. JANES.

SOME six years ago, an English physician of the school of Christ found his way to the confidence and affections of the priest-ridden dwellers upon the sunny isle of Madeira. While he ministered to their physical maladies, he took occasion to repeat or read to them portions of God's Word. Those truths, quick and powerful, left traces of their influence all along the paths this disciple trod; and the seed sown in hope and trembling germinated, and in good time bore its ripe fruit. The history of the persecution which arose on these grounds has been spread out before the Christian world, and somewhat surprised the peaceful followers of Jesus, who from early life have known no terror in Bible-reading or spiritual worship. We have had over six hundred witnesses of the bitter persecution that has prevailed there for a long time, who have come to our land for refuge.

When we estimate the loss and gain of such rebellion against human rights, we do not intend to declare an opinion that the Papacy is strengthened, that its troubles will be diminished, that the struggle for free thought will be repressed, that the number in the bosom of the Romish Church who hate the priesthood and pant for freedom will be lessened, or less troublesome to the hierarchy. We do not believe the profit is theirs who persecute and offend Christ's little ones. It were better for them, so far as the future profit is concerned, that they had early found the bottom of the ocean-yea, that they had never been born. The profit of persecution! We are not going into the dialectics of the case, and give a logical demonstration of the necessity to the Church of an occasional persecution, to beat away the rust that corrodes her vital energies, to sharpen her for the conflict and strife of the Christian soldier-to hasten her to deeds of mercy and acts of love-to remove that spirit of slumber, so fatal to Christian progress and usefulness. We might, if we had time and space, say much upon these manifest advantages. But we shall refer, in a few words, to the gain of that

community which, buried in the darkness of Romish superstition or pagan blindness, emerges from its sombre gloom to feel for the light of life; and to the present and future weal of the subjects of such persecution, who grasp with greater tenacity the doctrines of our common faith, and who pursue with redoubled ardor the crown of glory that is held up before them. We do not say there is no loss. There is the sacrifice of property, of social blessings, society of kindred, and often of life itself; but a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory will overbalance the loss even of the life that now is.

We say, then, the general cause of Christianity is benefited by the outburst of persecution in the islands Sumatra, Madagascar, and Madeira, where the courage of the disciples' faith has been strengthened, where the primitive beauty and excellency of Christian faith has been thus published, and where admirers of virtue and purity of conduct have been raised up by hundrede, and the power of the gospel been demonstrated to a scoffing world. We know that sudden death to the good man is sudden glory. Bnt follow those who are cast down but not destroyed-see them at the altar of prayer, with devout feeling, in the fastnesses of the Alps, or in some secluded retreat on a distant island-in the dense grove or in the dark cave. They have a friend who can give them, in their desolateness, more joy than falls to the lot of any ruler, any proud or violent persecutor even more than comes to the rich, who are at ease, or the powerful, who know no opposition. Follow the persecuted who have found a home in this land of Bibles, and see how great has been the profit of the persecution that brought them to the rock of truth, and caused them to build on the Rock of Ages. See those in their Western home who now worship the true God in their own temple-who now worship around their own family altar the Lord who has redeemed them-who read freely their own copy of the Scriptures, and have none to molest or make afraid.

We should fail to sum up the loss to the Mother of Harlots of such persecutions. They weaken their strength, diminish their number, and bring down upon them the righteous indignation of the civilized world. They strengthen the feeble disciple, rouse up the Church to action, to greater fidelity, to more vigorous efforts, to a holier state of living. But with all the blessings that result from the visitations of severe persecution in the present life to the Christian disciple, the great and full reward is not bestowed till all

ILLUSIONS OF MEMORY.

life's conflicts are over, and the fruitions of future joy are poured into the soul. This is not the season or state for reward. The persecuted disciple can well afford to wait for the crown of glory and the harp of gold. He can well afford to wait for the overthrow of the persecutor and his own signal triumph.

ILLUSIONS OF MEMORY.

BY W. WALWORTH.

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MEMORY is a magician. Poets may call it "Sober Memory," if they please, but I do not with them. Memory plays us all managree ner of tricks, some of them kindly and beneficent, such as the good fairies used to indulge in in the olden time; some of them mischievous, like those of the half-malicious Puck. Of course I except the scientific and historical sorts of memory, which are grave affairs enough: chronicling, and cataloguing, and labelling, and putting away facts in regular rank-and-file, like bottles in a chemist's shop, though even there an elf-like freak puts things in confusion sometimes. I refer only to that private sort of memory which is a kind of familiar spirit to every body. I hope it is not getting too metaphysical to say, that as each man has a different nature, so has he a special memory of his own. I would not be metaphysical for the world, for that would make some people put down the paper at once; but it is necessary to step just so far into that dreaded sphere, in order to make what I mean plain. If each man or woman were to add a verse to that song which used to be popular in my young days, beginning, "I remember, I remember," the result would be, that each would sing of a memory different from that of the other. Even if they remembered precisely the same factswhich would, I suppose, happen now and thenthey would give contradictory versions of them. Their memories would be tinged with their fears, and hopes, and wishes, till they assumed all manner of hues; for the wish is not only father to the thought, as Shakspeare tells us, but often parent to the memory also. But I find from my experience amongst my acquaintance, that reasoning about these matters is never satisfactory. We must always keep going to facts for explanations, and here is a fact which illustrates my theory. I was once in a law court, where a trial was going on about somebody's wagon running down somebody's cart. It was a dull affair

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enough, as such trials generally are. The case seemed to turn on the question whether the cart was or was not upon the right side of the street, which, as every one learned in road usage knows, is the left side; and this brought out something far more interesting than the question itself-the contradictions of memory. There were two witnesses, one on either side, who seemed particularly worthy of credence. Both of them were respectable men, both of them apparently trustworthy, both of them seemingly impartialstrangers to the parties on either side-and both of them exceedingly positive, and totally contradictory. Up to a certain point their unanimity was wonderful. They agreed about the color of the horses, of the carts, the time of the day, the part of the street, and all the details of that character; but upon one point it would have been as reasonable to expect the heavens and the earth to come together, as that their statements could be reconciled; and, unfortunately, that was the very point which was important: one said it happened on the right side of the street, the other on the left; and that each of them stuck to, through thick and thin. No amount of crossexamination, ingenious though it was; no quantity of badgering, or coaxing, could move either from that settled point. They would have as soon thought of giving up their faith, or renouncing their identity, as of denying their memory upon that subject. The more each conviction was questioned, the more firmly settled and deeply rooted it became. No one thought that these men were committing perjury. There was too much evident sincerity and earnestness, and too little interest for that; yet one of them

must have sworn to what was not true. The

judge was puzzled, and in his summing-up treated it as a case of mistaken impression, one way or the other, but which way, was left for the jury to decide. The jury were bewildered, and the verdict was neither better nor worse than a piece of guess-work. They might have tossed up a half-penny to decide what was right, with just as much chance of correctness as they had by "laying their heads together," and considering their verdict, and all because memory had been playing tricks with somebody.

Though your memory may not play you such tricks as that-not yet, at least-still, depend on it, it does indulge in some pranks; if it does not, it must either be one of those paragon memories which are perfection and a little more, or a memory not worth having, which leaves the "tablet of the mind" a blank. But there are

ILLUSIONS OF MEMORY.

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very few memories of either of those descrip- them pretty well-memory has been deluding tions. Most memories present us with records which are like yesterday's sum on a schoolboy's slate-a little "sinudged," as we used to say in my youthful days: old Time smears the one, just as the jacket-cuffs do the other. I suppose my experience in this matter is just that of the great part of the rest of the world. A face often flashes past me in the street which strikes me as familiar, and which yet does not bring a single association along with it. I say, "I know that man, I'm sure I know him; let me see, where did I meet him." But that fact, like Glendower's spirits, will not come when called for. I have an impression that I liked him, or didn't like him; that he is a good-tempered or surly, a witty or a dull fellow. Bless me, I know him as well as though I had lived with him for a twelvemonth; but his name, his rank, occupation, habitationthe circumstances under which my knowledge was obtained--they are clean gone! Time has been busy with that yesterday's life-sum, and has rubbed out the working, leaving only the pro- | duct decipherable. Perhaps the rest has vanished into something thinner than "thin air;" perhaps it is put away in some out-of-the-way corner of my brain, which I have missed for the time; perhaps I shall stumble over it, as often happens, just when I do not want it. There is always a consciousness of this, that tells you if `you would only look in the right place you would find it, and that is the most tormenting part of the whole. It is like searching for the lost key, which you are twirling on your fingering to, turning him round, thrashed him with a

all the time, or going over the alphabet to worm out a word which is "on the very tip of your tongue," but will not come any farther. That consciousness keeps you on the stretch-on the rack: you cannot, try as you will, get rid of the subject; you agree with Byron, that "there are thoughts you cannot banish." The face asking to be known, insisting to be recognized, pertinaciously claiming acquaintance with you, haunts you all day, and gets into your dreams at night; and in the morning, possibly your wife says to you, "Mrs. Popjoy was here yesterday, Alfred, and her Mary is going to be married to Mr. Friend." Friend! what Friend?" you ask. "Why, don't you recollect Mr. Friend; that tall young man we met at Popjoy's the last time we were there, and-" but you pay no attention to the rest of the narrative; you heave a huge sigh of relief, and exclaim: "Why, bless me! that was Friend I saw yesterday!" When such things happen, as they often do, you understand

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Again, memory in her elfish quality will now and then play you another trick-will cause you to mistake one man for another. You meet a man in the street with whom you are not very intimate, but you know him well enough to talk to: you shake hands with him, get through the weather, and chat as acquaintances chat, and then you find out that you have been talking to Jones, when you thought you were talking to Green; and possibly, as you have been very general in what you have said, there is no harm done. But I have known a few instances where the results have been very ludicrous, and a few more where they promised to become serious. Something of that sort happened when Powell met Parsons, a little while ago-no, he did not meet Parsons, he only thought he did. After a while, Powell, who is a good sort of fellow, but rather too apt to gossip about what does not concern him, said, 'What a fool Williams made of himself in that affair, didn't he?" "What affair?" said the other, drawing up his athletic figure, and looking down on poor little Powell, who, like most gossiping men, I fancy, would not meet the military standard. Powell felt he was wrong-how he didn't know, nor why; but he was in for it, and went on just as men, when they feel they are in a mess, do. "What affair! didn't you hear? Oh! I thought everybody knew that stupid affair with Miss Brown." Poor Powell had scarcely got so far, when the giant he was talk

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riding-whip which he happened to have in his
hand at the time. Then, and not till then, the
truth flashed on him, that instead of talking to
Parsons, as he thought, he had been actually in-
sulting Williams, whose identity he had, by a
trick of memory, wholly mistaken. When little
Powell tells this story, which he does sometimes
-for he is not a hero, and knows it, and does
not pretend to be one, and is not above acknow-
ledging that he has been horse-whipped by a man
of Williams's size-he wonders, and everybody
else wonders, how he could have been betrayed
into such a blunder; for Williams is dark as a
Moor, and Parsons among the fairest of sandy-
haired men.
Williams is herculean, and some-
what petulant-looking; Parsons, slight, diminu-
tive, and lamb-like. No two could be more dis-
similar; and Powell generally winds up with,
"Well, I was either a stupid dolt, or it was one of
those unaccountable tricks memory plays us!"

Among the most common vagaries of memory

ILLUSIONS OF MEMORY.

are those which make us expect to find things very different to what they are. Though we hardly perhaps can call it a vagary of memory, when, after years of absence, we find things very different to the treasured image we had retained of them. This is rather the effect of our increased knowledge and experience, although, at the time, it affects us like a trick of memory. When I was young, I left a quiet country village, and came up to this great Babylon of modern times, which some one has appropriately enough called "a brick-and-mortar wilderness." The vastness of the place, the breadth of the streets, and the height of the houses impressed me, as they do every body fresh from the green fields, till I got used to it all. Still, when memory wandered, as it often did, to that dear old road at home, bordered by its fields and hedge- || rows, dotted here and there by shady elms, under which men sat to eat their bread and cheese at noontide, it never seemed to me that the road was narrow or lonely; I never thought of it in any other light than as a spacious highway, peopled by hosts of old associations. When I returned, however, I found the old road was only a lane—a mere lane, which I could almost jump across! and the laborers going to and from their work hardly redeemed it from solitude. So it was with the old houses. That old weatherboarded, many-gabled, broad-eaved, white-painted cottage, with green shutters and doors, where my first years had been passed-that house

to persons. A friend of mine used to be eloquent about a lovely child-a girl he knew years ago. From the way he spoke of her, she must have been a cherub (minus the wings, of course) at ten; but old Time plied his pinions, and she became twice ten. He went to see her the other day, not expecting of course to find a little romp in a short frock, ready to rush at him and devour him with kisses-he was a much too sensible man for that-but expecting, I hadly know what-a ́ seraph, perhaps, grown out of the cherub. Ah! that rough hand of reality, how hard it came down upon him! He did not see a seraph at all; he could not even trace the marks of the cherub. He saw a young lady with the smallest of waists, and the stiffest of backs, and the most inflexible of shoulders, and the tightest of corkscrewy ringlets, and a complexion only fit to be seen by gaslight, and hardly then! Ten years had done all this, and brought him all the while visions of beauty. I am afraid it will destroy a faith in him-an innocent, happy, pleasing faith enough-a faith in cherubs, and what might come of them. I greatly fear that when a lovely, rosy-faced child springs to his knee again, he will see in perspective that gaslight Venus of twenty!

Something like that happens to everybody; sometimes for good, sometimes--at least so it appears for evil. It was for evil when young Scarlet went to India, for example, and left his plighted troth with Miss Thwaites. He was a fine, dashing fellow then, and looked well in the

which used to seem to me a spacious mansion-light-blue and silver of the Madras cavalry, and

how small it now looked! I stooped as I entered the door, it seemed so low; and the ceilings, with the great square beams projecting out of them, why, I could put up my hand, and touch them! and the plot of grass before the door now looked no bigger than a table-cloth; and the tree in the middle which it was one of my first youthful ambitions to climb-what a giddy height it then seemed!-had now dwindled into a stunted shrub. Memory had shown me these things through a magnifying-glass, and now experience brought me a pair of diminishing spectacles. It is strange, however, what vitality these delusions have; and how they last and renew themselves! Whenever I visit the old place, I find that my impressions need to be corrected. Somehow, I have expected to find things on a larger scale, and feel a faint sort of surprise at their littleness, yet I know all the while how the matter stands: memory had been deceiving me.

It is not only with things and places that this happens; the same fancies beset us with regard

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she was the belle of the ball-room. When she floated through the quadrille, all gauze and beauty, men quoted that oft spoken line, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." We dare say young Scarlet often whispered that sentiment. But that is twelve years ago, and in twelve years fact and memory have been working and playing in their wonted fashion. Well, young Scarlet went, and if you want to know what he did, you may look at the despatches, where his name is coupled with the thanks of the general a good many times. From more private sources of information, I can tell you that all those twelve years he wrote letters-such letters! as glowing as the sun he was under-to his lady-love. Those letters—just think it—all that large bundle of pen-and-ink ardor and warmth, Miss Thwaites ruthlessly burnt one evening last month! And she herself had written letters, also, during all those twelve years; such letters! full of affection, and as gentle in their lovingness as the pale moonlight of her own native skies. Those let

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