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THE VENOMOUS BITE.
"Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round;
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in."

Cowper's "Winter Evening."

A KEEN north wind was blowing quite a gale, and whistling through the doors and shutters of the house, as we sat around a family table on an evening in the month of December last. There had been a hard frost the preceding night, and snow was on the ground, just sufficient to make the roads glassy and dangerous. Of all the cheerful spots at such a time in this cold and fickle climate of ours, a comfortable English fireside is without its rival, especially if we are blessed with happy hearts and contented friends-happy in the consciousness that a kind and gracious God has enabled us to minister to the wants or sufferings of those poorer neighbours whose lot in life is harder than our own. Acts of charity, however small, cheer the rugged path, and soothe many a sorrow in this great battle of life." But it is a kind God who makes these kind friends; for by nature we are so prone to self-indulgence, that but for His constraining goodness, we should view the keenest distresses of our fellow-creatures with indifference if not with neglect. True, gracious charity is a plant of heavenly growth, and, as our sweet poet sings, it is

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Fed by the love from whence it rose at first,
Thrives against hope, and in the rudest scene;
Storms but enliven its unfading green."

We had nearly finished our tea on the evening in question, when the party of little ones had naturally

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fallen into deep conversation about the sayings and doings of their young friends at a neighbouring school which they had just left as daily boarders. Our all-important topic was the approaching Christmas vacation, the enjoyment they anticipated from the visits they were to make, and the amusements in which they hoped to be indulged. As an elder girl was reviewing those past halcyon days in the summer, when they went to the Polytechnic, the Zoological Gardens, and to the British Museum, I inquired, "Which of the three did you like best ?” “Oh, the Polytechnic!" shouted several voices. "But stop a moment; let me ask Barbara, as she is the eldest, what reason she gives for her preferring it to the sight of the living wonders of God's creative hand in those gardens, or the marvellous collections of nature and of art in the Museum ?" 'Well," replied Barbara, "I thought the torpedo so wonderful; then the way the lecturer blew up the steeple was very curious." Torpedo ?" inquired several voices, simultaneously; "what do you mean, Barbara ?" "Why, a box filled with some kind of salt was let down into the water, and we saw that two wires connected with the box were attached at their other ends to an electrical machine. A wee ship came sailing along prettily, little thinking—that is to say, if it could thinkwhat danger was near, and passed over the torpedo, when the man discharged a spark of electricity into the box, and blew the poor ship into atoms. Then he took a nice little wooden church with a fine steeple, and on the top of the weathercock was a wire; he sent a spark from the electric battery on the steeple and it ran down the iron wire; afterwards he took away the wire, and again Not to exhibitions of human folly, but to gain instruction, with diversion, from the wonders of nature and art.-ED.

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directed a spark on the wee church and blew it all to pieces." "Ah, my dear Barbara," said I, "that was a very good representation of the power of lightning, which is really atmospheric electricity." "Well, I never understood the use of the rod or conductor you have often shown me, papa, on the parish church spire till I saw this experiment."

"Well, Amy, so you went to the Zoological Gardens, I hear; of course you made the old bear trudge up the pole to get your bun ?" "Yes, I did indeed; but before he could reach it, the bun fell down into the strong cage, and was munched up by one of his brothers, ere the poor brute could descend, which he did, grunting and puffing all the way." "Which part of the gardens did you like the most ?" I inquired. "Oh, I can tell you which I least cared to go into; it was the reptile house," rejoined Kate. "Oh, those crawling, sneaking, wily serpents make you shudder to look at them; I never want to see them again." This last remark one has so often heard made by grown up persons, but especially by children, that it would seem that the inmates of the department rouse a natural horror in the minds of visitors. The observation of my young friend brought me into a train of thought, and recalled up at the same time a tragical scene, which I will shortly relate. Perhaps the Christian poet had this mutual enmity before his mind, when he writes of the spider and the toad,

"It seems as if their common venom,

Provoked an enmity between 'em." NEWTON. There appears an innate dislike to reptiles of every form, in young, well-trained people. You never hear a child speak in any admiration of a snake or of a viper, but an inward shudder, and feelings of disgust invariably accompany the relation of their

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habits, &c. It was the practice, I have heard, of one of our greatest portrait painters to exhibit his likenesses to children, and he was very attentive to catch their remarks. He gave his reason for so doing by stating that he always found much natural, and of course impartial, good sense in their criticisms. A natural repugnance to a venomous reptile in an unsophisticated juvenile mind is not the effect of education, therefore. Then my thoughts recurred to that peculiar form of delirium we are accustomed to witness in the disease of the confirmed sot, known as the horrors," in which, unlike any other form of delusion, the wretched patient is tormented with the frightful hallucinations of snakes, toads, and such like reptiles crawling over his body; this character of the delirium is always a fatal harbinger. That individual must be grosslydebased in nature who can suffer a venomous serpent to coil about his frame, and even lie in his bosom for hours together; he is either an idiot, or one given up to become Satan's blind slave, and thus sport with death, even as Ahab, of whom it is recorded that, "he had sold himself to work evil in the sight of the Lord" (1 Kings xxi. 20).

This leads me to notice the cause of a most bustling scene which took place in the hospital wards on the morning of October 18th. The keeper of the reptile house in the Zoological Gardens had recently yielded to the sin of gross intemperance. He had been off duty the previous night, drinking immoderately, and, indeed, he was scarcely sober on entering the "house" on the morning in question, about eight o'clock. Urged on by a kind of infatuation or satanic influence, he commenced trifling in the most daring manner with some of the venomous inhabitants of the reptile cages. After allowing an African cobra to

wind its scaly form around his neck and chest, he returned it to the den without receiving any injury. Not so, alas! with its neighbour, the Indian cobra or rattle-snake. He took the viper out, suffered it to move its serpentine form over his body, as he had done with its fellow-snake; and, though he well knew that he was on the brink of a terrific precipice a mere step between life and eternity, from which he could have retreated with impunity-yet, bent on his own destruction, he deliberately seized the brute by the neck, held its head before his face; when the reptile, quick as the forked lightning, darted at his forehead, and inflicted a venomous bite on the bridge of his nose. In a few minutes after the fatal blow he staggered, and could not speak intelligibly. He was in the hospital before the hour expired, and in ninetyfive minutes from the infliction of the wound he was a corpse! Human skill and aid were utterly powerless to touch such a case. What a harrowing scene was there! Oh, my young readers, and what a deadening, benumbing sting is the sting of deliberate, presumptuous sin! How it sears the conscience, distorts the will, crushes the affections! and, if sovereign, invincible grace prevent not, hands over the soul, on quitting the mortal tabernacle, to an endless death of misery and of woe! Under the Levitical law there was no provision made for a presumptuous sin, neither could it be atoned for by a sacrificial offering. (Num. xv. 30.)*

How rarely do we meet with a truly reformed sot, unless grace bestows a new heart and a new spirit to such a fallen son of Adam! He sins pre

*What a mercy that "though this Man [Jesus] is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by Him all that believe are justified FROM ALL THINGS, FROM WHICH YE COULD NOT BE JUSTIFIED BY THE LAW OF MOSES." Truly, the Gospel_reveals a better covenant established upon better promises."-ED.

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