of ardent spirits; while the advantages of entirely abstaining from them, my own experience proves." Mr. Howard ceased, and for awhile silence reigned. The stranger sat absorbed in his own reflections. He had covered his face with his hand, and was now evidently convulsed by feelings which he felt indisposed to display, but which he had not the power to conceal. -The big tear oozed through his fingers, and sobs became audible. Mr. Howard was himself deeply affected, he contemplated in his guest his own former state, and thought of the course which he ran, when " no man cared for his soul." Mrs. Howard, in a kind and affectionate manner, endeavoured to sooth him, while I sat an astonished, yet gratified spectator. At length the sailor recovered himself, and turning to Mr. Howard, said, "I thank you, sir, for the undeserved kindness which I have experienced at your hands, and hope I shall never lose the impressions which your statements have made upon me, or the obligations under which you have laid me. You may well experience some surprise at the emotions which I have displayed, and which I have striven in vain to put from me; but, sir," he continued, "so many points in your narrative compared with my own, has brought to my recollection times and scenes, which a course of reckless impiety had all but obliterated. "It is now, sir, thirty years since I left a home where every indulgence had been experienced. I was then a lad of between four and five years of age. From my birth, I had been of a weakly constitution, for the improvement of which a sea voyage was advised. I was committed to the care of a worthy commander of a fine ship, the friend of our family, and with him I sailed. A few months after leaving the land of my fathers, the vessel was wrecked; a few only of the voyagers were saved, I was among that number, and being of an active turn of mind, I was taken beneath the care of a person who traded in a vessel of his own. The life of a sailor suited my roving disposition, which soon displayed itself, and after a few years, home and friends were almost, or altogether forgotten. I advanced in years, and in nautical knowledge and skill, and was promoted to an office on board the trader, in which I had learned the art of navigation. "Many are the deliverances and escapes which I have experienced from death in all parts of the world. The habits of a sailor are well known, their folly and their profligacy need not any mention from me. I acquired all their peculiar propensities, and displayed all their foolishness. In many ports, I have squandered away what, if properly preserved, would have made me at this day the possessor of hundreds. Often have I gone ashore sober, with pounds in my pocket, when a single glass of rum, which was all I purposed to take, has led to a second and a third, and, thus prepared for it, I have drunk to intoxication, and then, exposed a helpless prey to numbers of both sexes who are lying in constant wait for intoxicated şailors, I have been led or conducted to haunts of vice and infamy, and in a few hours have been deprived of every farthing of the money, for which I had toiled at sea for se veral months. "Reflection and grief are not very common with sailors. They know no value of money, any further than to gratify with it their appetites while on shore, and when their hardearned wages are expended, they only think of another trip to sea, and another spree on shore. I have often ex perienced this, and although I have been vexed on a morning, when I have awoke from a drunken sleep in a strange place, to find that not only all my money has been taken from me, but even the clothes from my back; so that, in a ragged, borrowed dress, in place of a new suit, I have sallied forth to look for another ship. "For the last three years, I have sailed as chief mate on board an American vessel, and with more earnestness than before have for the last two years desired to see once more my native country, and to ask forgiveness of my aged parents, if they are yet alive. Why I should so have felt, I cannot say; the thought even before that period was scarcely experienced by me. An opportunity presented to gratify my wish, and last week, sir, I landed at Portsmouth. I rode on the coach from that place. Yesterday morning, in consequence of frequently drinking by the way, I became a ready victim for those into whose hands I had fallen, when your kindness interposed and saved me from their grasp; but for which act on your part I should now, in all probability, instead of possessing, as I perceive I do, my three years' wages safe, have been pennyless. "I feel, sir, determined never again to taste the drink which had so nearly ruined me. I long now to embrace my dear old parents once more, and then I shall endeavour, in the command of a ship which I am promised, to set before my crew an example worthy their imitation. In addition, sir, to the kindness which you have already displayed towards me, grant me one favour before I leave your hospitable dwelling, allow me to know the name of the kindest friend that I have ever met with, that I may hereafter bless it whenever I hear it." "Most readily," replied the old man, "my name is Charles Howard." "Charles Howard!" exclaimed the sailor, trembling with agitation, and bursting into tears, "Surely it must be so; my feelings have not deceived me, as I listened to your history. I am your brother, your long mourned-for brother Joseph!" He rushed into Mr. Howard's arms, and the brothers wept like children; the meeting was joyous as it was unexpected. A short time furnished full explanation, and the other members of the family being called, a hearty and affectionate welcome was given to the restored prodigal, and by him returned in the true style of a British sailor. A good supper was ordered, at which plenty without intemperance was found. I had the pleasure of being one of the party, and, with others, admired the wonder-working hand of Providence, and rejoiced at the happy recognition. Yes, all is gone! enjoyment, peace, and wealth, While dark despair shuts out the light of heaven. And shun the course which want and misery crown. "TRUTH is strange-stranger than fiction," has often been said and sung. It is a statement, however, eminently calculated to arrest the attention, and encourage the heart of the Christian philosopher. Brilliant and wonderful as are not a few of the creations of the imaginative powers of our fellow-men, arousing every passion of their readers, and elevating them to the highest point of endurance, or bearing them away by their mental enchantments to the unsubstantial regions of ideality; while the magnanimity of their heroes is pourtrayed, or the sorrows of their heroines exhibited; or while a display is furnished of the awful depths of depravity to which some have sunk, even from the apparently most secure standings of virtue, and the superhuman deliverances by which others have been extricated from difficulties and dangers numberless and great-these, and a thousand other such matters of a similar kind, are more than paralleled by the almost daily experience of the men and women by whom we are surrounded, as if such circumstances were intended to furnish us, in living characters, with a demonstration of the fact that in all things God will have the pre-eminence. I have a simple tale to tell, which will in some measure illustrate and confirm the correctness of most, if not all, the foregoing statements. I do not intend to insinuate that it soars into the sickly sentimentalism of giddy fiction, nor is it made up of those wonderful and numberless points of high wrought romantic interest which will petrify with horror, or fire with extacy; no, still it is a case more deserving close attention than any of such a stamp, simply because it is a tale, in all its melancholy parts, alas! too true. In my native town-yes, my native town-who does not feel a charm circling and filling the soul as the thrilling sound, my native town, falls upon the ear? What a sudden draw does it not make upon our memories! It would seem as if time was not merely stayed in its hasty course, but as though its velocity took an inverse direction, and, rushing back to some distant former period, the dead and buried thoughts of other days leaped up again into life, and, by a kind of camera obscura view, the acts and scenes of blythsome boyhood days were made to pass in all the fantastic forms which they then possessed in airy march before us. I feel at this moment the spell upon me; yes, although the blood flows less rapidly through my system than formerly, and although the frosty touch of age has half paralyzed some of my energies, I am not insensible to emotion yet. My mind's eye runs over the scenes of my sportive days, while as yet I had not by experience an understanding of Job's sad saying, "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards"-instinctively I visit the bulky mansion of my grandsire, well known by the name of "The Flag-staff House," in which I am informed I first drew the breath of life, and in which the chief of my juvenile years were spent ;-the humble abode of my spectacled preceptress, too, I behold, from whose eye, peering over the glass which intended to aid its vision, I first learned the meaning of that line, "How dreadful is a woman's frown." My native town: how I should like to describe it with all |