temperance had destroyed his respect for man, and his fear of God.

Spring at length emerged from the shades of that heavy and bitter winter. But its smile brought no gladness to the declining child. Consumption fell upon his vitals, and his nights were restless and full of pain.

"Mother, I wish I could smell the violets that grew upon the green bank by our old dear home."

"It is too early for violets, my child. But the grass is beautifully green around us, and the birds sing sweetly, as if their hearts were full of praise."

"In my dreams last night I saw the clear waters of the brook that ran by the bottom of my little garden. I wish I could taste them once more. And I heard such music, too, as used to come from that white church among the trees, where every Sunday the happy people met to worship God."

The mother saw that the hectic fever had been long increasing, and knew that there was such an unearthly brightness in his eye, that she feared his intellect wandered. She seated herself on his low bed, and bent over him to soothe and compose him. He lay silent for some time.

"Do you think my father will come ?"

Dreading the agonizing agitation which, in his paroxysm of coughing and pain, he evinced at the sound of his father's well-known foot-step, she answered,

"I think not, my love. You had better try to sleep."

"Mother, I wish he would come. I do not feel afraid now. Perhaps he would let me lay my cheek to his once more, as he used to do when I was a babe in my grandmother's arms. I should be glad to say good-bye to him, before I go to my Saviour."

Gazing intently in his face, she saw the work of the destroyer, in lines too plain to be mistaken.

My son; my dear son; say, Lord Jesus receive my spirit. "Mother," he replied, with a sweet smile upon his ghastly features, "he is ready, I desire to go to him. Hold the baby to me, that I kiss her. That is all. Now sing to me, and, oh! wrap me close in your arms, for I shiver with cold." He clung, with a death grasp, to the bosom which had long been his sole earthly refuge.

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Sing louder, dear mother, a little louder, I cannot hear you."

A tremulous tone, as of a broken harp, rose above her grief, to comfort the dying child. One sigh of icy breath

was upon her cheek, as she joined it to his-one shudderand all was over. She held the body long in her arms, as if fondly hoping to warm and revivify it with her breath. Then she stretched it upon its bed, and kneeling beside it, hid her face in that grief which none but mothers feel. It was a deep and sacred solitude, alone with the dead. Nothing save the soft breathing of the sleeping babe fell upon the solemn pause. Then the silence was broken by a wail of piercing sorrow. It ceased, and a voice arose, a voice of supplication, for strength to endure, as seeing Him who is. invisible.' Faith closed what was begun in weakness. It became a prayer of thanksgiving to him who had released the dove-like spirit from the prison-house of pain, that it might taste the peace and mingle in the melody of Heaven.

6

She arose and bent calmly over her dead. The thin, placid features, wore a smile, as when he had spoken of Jesus. She composed the shining locks around the pure forehead, and gazed long on what was to her so beautiful.

The father entered carelessly. She pointed to the pallid immoveable brow, "See, he suffers no longer!" He drew near and looked on the dead with surprise and sadness. A few natural tears forced their way, and fell on the face of the first-born, who was once his pride. The memories of that moment were bitter. He spoke tenderly to the emaciated mother; and she, who a short time before was raised above the sway of grief, wept like an infant as those few affectionate tones touched the sealed fountains of other years.

Neighbours and friends visited them, desirous to console their sorrow, and attended them when they committed the body to the earth. There was a shady and secluded spot, which they had consecrated by the burial of their few dead. Thither that whole little colony were gathered, and, seated on the fresh-springing grass, listened to the holy healing words of the inspired volume. It was read by the oldest man in the colony, who had himself often mourned. As he bent reverently over the sacred page, there was that on his brow which seemed to say, 'this has been my comfort in my affliction.' Silver hair thinly covered his temples, and his low voice was modulated by feeling as he read of the frailty of man, withering like the flower of grass, before it groweth up; and of his majesty in whose sight, a thousand years are as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.' He selected from the words of that compassionate One, who gathereth the lambs with his arm, and carrieth them in his bosom,' who,

The

The

pointing out as an example the humility of little children, said, Except ye become as one of these, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of Heaven,' and who calleth all the weary and heavy laden to come unto him, that he may give them rest. scene called forth sympathy, even from manly bosoms. mother, worn with watching and weariness, bowed her head down to the clay that concealed her child. And it was observed with gratitude by that friendly group, that the husband supported her in his arms, and mingled his tears with hers.

He returned from this funeral in much mental distress. His sins were brought to remembrance, and reflection was misery. Conscience haunted him with terrors, and many prayers from pious hearts arose, that he might now be led to repentance. The venerable man who had read the Bible at the burial of his boy, counselled and entreated him, with the earnestness of a father, to yield to the warning voice from above, and to break off his sins by righteousness, and his iniquities by turning unto the Lord.'

There was a change in his habits and conversation, and his friends trusted it would be permanent. She who, above all others, was interested in the result, spared no exertion to win him back to the way of truth, and to soothe his heart into peace with itself, and obedience to his Maker. Yet was she doomed to witness the full force of grief and remorse upon intemperance, only to see them utterly overthrown at last. The reviving virtue, with whose indications she had solaced herself, and even given thanks that her beloved son had not died in vain, was transient as the morning dew. Habits of industry, which had begun to spring up, proved themselves to be without root. The dead, and his cruely to the dead, were alike forgotten. Disaffection to the chastened being who against hope still hoped for his salvation, resumed its dominion, The friends who had alternately reproved and encouraged him, were convinced that their efforts had been of no avail. Intemperance, like the strong man armed,' took possession of a soul that lifted no cry for aid to the Holy Spirit, and girded on no weapon to resist the destroyer.

Summer passed away, and the anniversary of their arrival at the colony returned. It was to Jane Harwood a period of sad and solemn retrospection. The joys of early days, and the sorrows of maturity, passed in review before her; and while she wept, she questioned her heart, what had been its gain from a father's discipline, or whether it had sustained the greatest of all losses-the loss of its afflictions.

She was alone at this season of self-communion. The absence of her husband had become more frequent and protracted. A storm, which feelingly reminded her of those which had often beat upon them when homeless and weary travellers, had been raging for nearly two days. To this cause she imputed the unusually long stay of her husband. Through the third night of his absence she lay sleepless, listening for his steps. Sometimes she fancied she heard shouts of laughter, for the mood in which he returned from his revels was various. But it was only the shriek of the tempest. Then she thought some ebullition of his phrenzied anger rang in her ears. It was the roar of the hoarse wind through the forest. All night long she listened to these sounds, and hushed and sang to her affrighted babe. Unrefreshed, she arose and resumed her morning labours.

Suddenly her eye was attracted by a group of neighbours, coming up slowly from the river. A dark and terrible foreboding oppressed her. She hastened out to meet them. Coming towards her house was a female friend, agitated and fearful, who, passing her arm around her, would have spoken. "Oh, you come to bring me evil tidings: I pray you let me know the worst."

The object was indeed to prepare her mind for a fearful calamity. The body of her husband had been found, drowned, as was supposed, during the darkness of the preceding night, in attempting to cross the bridge of logs, which had been partially broken by the swollen waters. Utter prostration of spirit came over the desolate mourner. Her energies were broken, and her heart withered. She had sustained the privations of poverty and emigration, and the burdens of unceasing labour and unrequited care, without murmuring. She had laid her first-born in the grave with resignation, for faith had heard her Saviour saying, 'Suffer the little child to come unto me.' She had seen him, in whom her heart's young affections were garnered up, become a 'persecutor and injurious,' a prey to vice the most disgusting and destructive. Yet she had borne up under all. One hope remained with her as an anchor of the soul,' the hope that he might yet repent and be reclaimed. She had persevered in her complicated and self-denying duties with that charity which beareth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things.' But now, he had died in his sin. The deadly leprosy which had stolen over his heart, 'could no more be purged by sacrifice or offering for ever.' She knew not that a single prayer

for mercy had preceded the soul on its passage to the High Judge's bar. There were bitter dregs in this grief, which she had never before wrung out.

Again the sad-hearted community assembled in their humble cemetry. A funeral in an infant colony awakens sympathies of an almost exclusive character. It is as if a large family suffered. One is smitten down whom every eye knew, every voice saluted. To bear along the corpse of the strong man, through the fields which he had sown, and to cover motionless in the grave that arm which trusted to have reaped the ripening harvest, awakens a thrill, deep, and startling feeling in the breast of those who wrought by his side during the burden and heat of the day. To lay the mother on her pillow of clay, whose last struggle with life was, perchance, to resign the hope of one more brief visit to the land of her fathers, whose heart's last pulsation might have been a prayer that her children should return and grow up within the shadow of the school-house and the church of God, is a grief in which none, save emigrants, may participate. To consign to their narrow, noteless abode, both young and old, the infant and him of hoary hairs, without the solemn knell, the sable train, the hallowed voice of the man of God, giving back, in the name of his fellow-Christians, the most precious roses of their pilgrim path, and speaking with divine authority of Him who is the resurrection and the life,' adds desolation to that weeping with which man goeth downward to his dust.

But with heaviness of an unspoken and peculiar nature was this victim of vice borne from the house that he troubled, and laid by the side of his son, to whose tender years he had been an unnatural enemy. There was sorrow among all who stood around his grave, and it bore features of that sorrow which is without hope.

The widowed mourner was not able to raise her head from the bed when the bloated remains of her unfortunate husband were committed to the earth. Long and severe sickness ensued, and in her convalescence a letter was received from her brother, inviting her and her child to an asylum under his roof, and appointing a period to come and conduct them on their homeward journey.

With her little daughter, the sole remant of her wrecked heart's wealth, she returned to her kindred. It was with emotions of deep and painful gratitude that she bade farewell to the inhabitants of that infant settlement, whose kindness, through all her adversities, had never failed. And when they