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severely." “He will not pray for me,” said the husband. "He will, I am sure," said the wife. "Then send for him without delay, for I cannot live as I am." Cuff was sent for. He came sore and bleeding, expecting more ill-usage, when, to his great astonishment, he found his cruel master bowed upon the floor of his room crying to heaven for mercy. “Cuff—will you, can you, pray for me?" was the earnest inquiry. "Yes, massa,” was the prompt reply. “I have been praying for you tonight." They prayed and wept together, until the heavy burden was lightened from the awakened conscience, when the repentant master, springing to his feet, and throwing his arms around his slave, exclaimed, “Cuff, my forgiving brother, from this moment you are a free man!" The master formally emancipated his injured slave, and, with his youthful wife, united himself to the assembly of Christians to worship God, whose name he had blasphemed, and whose disciple he had scourged. "Whoso toucheth you toucheth the apple of mine eye."

FRAGMENTS.

Extracted from "Fortin's Remarks upon Ecclesiastical History."

BY T. R. H.

IN the year A.D. 385 lived one named Epiphanius, who had been a monk. One day he invited Hilarion, a monk, to dinner, and a dish of fowls being set before them, Epiphanius helped Hilarion, who said, "Excuse me, father; since I have worn the habit of a monk I have never eaten animal food." "And I," replied Epiphanius, "since I have worn the same habit, have never suffered any one to lie down to sleep having aught against me, nor have I

ever gone to sleep with any resentment against another." "The rule which you observe," said Hilarion, "is more excellent than mine." The same Epiphanius destroyed a picture of Christ, or of some saint which he found hung up in a church, accounting it to be a superstitious and idolatrous ornament; and when about the year 388 a sect arose who offered up cakes to the Virgin Mary as to a goddess, the queen of heaven, he wrote against them, and treated them as heretics and idolaters. But the idolatrous worship of the Virgin became, in process of time, the most triumphant of all heresies, and Epiphanius, if he had lived in later years, would have been put into the Inquisition, and roasted alive, for censuring such idolatrous practices, and for destroying a sacred picture.

THE MARKET BASKET.

'TWAS Saturday night. The busy streets
Were crowded with rich and poor;
All seemed engaged but a working man
Who stood at a gin-shop door.

He watched neat couples wend their way
To well-stored shops hard by,
And as he marked their purchases

He heaved a bitter sigh.

He thought of his dark and wretched home,...
Of wife and children there,

And blushed as he shook his empty purse,
And remembered his cupboard bare.
"Alas!" cried he, "what a fool I must be
To throw all my wages away

At a gin-shop bar, when I earn enough
To buy a good dinner each day?

"For drink I leave my babes to starve,
Their mother grows pale and thin;
My home is comfortless, because
My money all goes for gin.”

As thus he thought, a ragged form
His roving eye descried;
And soon his eldest daughter, Jane,
Came running to his side.

"Where are you going?" he gruffly asked
The little breathless maid.
"O father, I am going to pawn
This basket now," she said.

"It is the one, my mother says,
You bought her years ago;

And when she gave it me she cried,
But why I do not know.

666

Here, take it, Jane," she sobbing said, "We ne'er shall want it more:

Ere your father took to drink, it held
Full many a goodly store.'

"So I am going to pawn it

now,

To buy a loaf to-morrow;
For mother has no money left,
And knows she cannot borrow."

"Stay, Jane," the father gently said,
And tears came thick and fast,
As he took the market basket up,
And thought of all the past.

Come, tell me child," at length he said,
"How think you would it look,
If I, when I come home next week,
Your mother shopping took?

"If this good basket, once again,
Were filled with bread and meat ;
And if instead of buying drink,
I bought shoes for your feet?"

"O father," cried the smiling girl,
"That would be joy indeed;
I know that if you'd cease the drink,
It would to comfort lead."

"Well, so I will, this very night,
So take the basket home,
My foolish steps I trust no more
To tavern doors shall roam."

He kept his word. Next Saturday,
With bosom light and calm,
He took his way to market, with
His wife upon his arm.

Dear lads and lasses, if you wist,
For future weal and peace,
O never taste the drunkard's bowl,
That makes his thirst increase.

THE ONE THING NEEDFUL.

"WHEN Sir Walter Raleigh had laid his head upon the block," says an eloquent divine, "he was asked by the executioner whether it lay aright. Whereupon he returned an answer the power of which we shall all feel when our head is tossing and turning on death's uneasy pillow: "It matters little, my friend, how the head lies, providing the heart be right.""

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