After a few years the world began to admire his pictures, and to seek his company. He was considered a great man, and honors flowed in upon him.

It happened one day, that he came to a great city where there was a large collection of pictures. Among them he saw many of his own. All the people and all the painters praised them. But there was one picture there that won more praise than any of the rest.

It was a picture of a little child holding in his hand several beautiful water lilies. As the painter looked at it, it drew towards evening, and the people one by one disappeared, till he was left alone with his masterpiece. He was thinking of leaving the place, when suddenly he fell asleep, and dreamed that he was standing behind the sheet of water in his native country. He thought that his beautiful lily was in his hand, and that while he looked at it the leaves withered and fell at his feet. Then followed a confused recollection of his conversation with the fairy. After that his thoughts became clearer; and though still asleep, he remembered where he was, and in what place he was sitting. He dreamed that something lightly touched his hand. He looked up, and the fairy was at his side, standing on the arm of his chair.

"Oh, wonderful fairy!" said the painter, "do not vanish before I have had time to thank you for your magic gift. I have nothing to offer you but my gratitude in return; for the gold of this world is useless. to you who have no wants that it can supply. I can

only thank you for your goodness. But tell me, at least, your name, if you have a name, that I may cut it on a ring and wear it always on my finger."

"My name," replied the fairy, "is Perseverance." -JEAN INGELOW. Adapted.

Let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

Galatians vi. 9.

1. Where did the boy and his mother live?
2. How did the boy spend his holidays?
3. Where did he go one day?

4. What did he wish to be?
5. What happened to the lily?
6. How did the fairy help him?
7. What did the boy become?
8. What was his finest picture?
9. Tell about his dream.

10. What was the fairy's name?

UPWARD AND ONWARD

LOOKING upward every day,

Sunshine on our faces;
Pressing onward every day
Toward the heavenly places;
Growing every day in awe,
For Thy name is holy;
Learning every day to love

With a love more lowly.

H

A PICTURE OF MY MOTHER

UPON this old daguerreotype appears

Thy face, my Mother, crowned with wondrous hair. What reconciliation in thine air;

And what a saintly smile, as if thy fears

The Lord had taken from thee and thy tears!

in mute despair

'Tis my delight still to believe thee fair;
And thou wast loved we know,
We saw my Father's eyes, at eighty years
O'erflow with love as oft we spoke of thee
We spoke of thee, I said, not he not he!

He could not speak! . . Oh, peace be with thee,

then,

Madonna-like, thy babe upon thy knee! . . .

My gentle Mother, lost on earth to me,

Shall I not know thee somewhere once again?

-LLOYD MIFFLIN.

NAPOLEON'S REGARD FOR HIS MOTHER

NAPOLEON ever regarded his mother with the most profound respect and admiration. He repeatedly declared that the family were entirely indebted to her for that physical, intellectual, and moral training which prepared them to ascend the lofty summits of power to which they finally attained. He often said, "My opinion is that the future good or bad conduct

of a child depends entirely upon its mother." One of his first acts on attaining power was to surround his mother with every luxury which wealth could furnish. -JOHN STEVENS CABOT.

THE CALL OF SAMUEL

ONE time, in the hill country, among the mountains of Ephraim, there lived a farmer named Elkanah. He and Hannah his wife were comfortably rich. They had fields of wheat and vineyards of grapes, and flocks and herds, and plenty of hay in the barn; but in one way they were poor, they had no children. Sometimes Hannah cried because the house was so empty and still, and there were no voices of children in it. Sometimes she was so sad and lonely that she could not eat; and though her husband tried to comfort her, and said, "Hannah, am I not better to you than ten sons?" still she was full of grief. For children are the best gift which God gives to man, and all the cornfields and vineyards and sheep and oxen in the world are not to be compared with them.

One day Hannah went in to town, to Shiloh; and as she passed the church she stopped and knelt down on the steps and prayed with all her heart that God would give her a son. Now Eli, the minister, was sitting on a bench by the church door. He was an old man, and his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, who had