spiteful words to any person. Good words make friends; bad words make enemies. It is great prudence to gain as many friends as we honestly can, especially when it may be done at so easy a rate as a good word; and it is great folly to make an enemy by ill words, which are of no advantage to the party who uses them. When faults are committed, they may, and by a superior they must, be reproved; but let it be done without reproach or bitterness: otherwise it will lose its due end and use, and, instead of reforming the offense, it will exasperate the offender, and lay the reprover justly open to reproof. 9. If a person be passionate, and give you ill language, rather pity him than be moved to anger. You will find that silence, or very gentle words, are the most ex'quisite' revenge for re proaches; they will either cure the distemper in the angry man, and make him sorry for his passion, or they will be a severe reproof and punishment to him. But, at any rate, they will preserve your innocence, give you the deserved reputation of wisdom and moderation, and keep up the serenity and composure of your mind. Passion and anger make a man unfit for every thing that becomes him as a man or as a Christian. 10. Never utter any profane speeches, nor make a jest of any Scripture expressions. When you pronounce the name of God or of Christ, or repeat any passages or words of Holy Scripture, do it with reverence and seriousness, and not lightly, for that is taking the name of God in vain." If you hear of any unseemly expressions used in religious exercises, do not publish them; endeavor to forget them; or, if you mention them at all, let it be with pity and sorrow, not with derision or reproach. 66 SIR MATHEW HALE. 21. THE DEFORMED CHILD. N my school-boy days, there lived an agèd widow near the church-yard. She had an only child. I have often observed that the delicate and the weak receive more than a common share of affection from a mother. Such a feeling was shown 'Exquisite (eks' kwe zit), choice; nice, complete.-2 Often (of' fn). by this widów toward her sickly and unshapely boy. There are faces and forms which, once seen, are impressed upon our brain; and they will come, again and again, upon the tablet' of our memory in the quiet of night, and even flit around us in our daily walks. Many years have gone by since I first saw this boy; and his delicate form, and quiet manner, and his gentie and virtuous conduct, are often before me. 2. I shall never forget,-in the sauciness of youth, and fancying it would give importance to my bluff outside,-swearing in his presence. The boy was sitting in a high-backed easy-chair, reading his Bible. He turned round, as if a signal for dying had sounded in his ear, and fixed upon me his clear, gray eye: that look! it made my little heart almost choke me. I gave some foolish excuse for getting out of the cottage; and, as I met a playmate on the road, who jeered3 me for my blank1 countenance, I rushed past him, hid myself in an adjoining corn-field, and cried bitterly. 3. I tried to conciliates the widow's son, and show my sorrow for having so far forgotten the innocence of boyhood, as to have my Maker's name sounded in an unhållōwed manner from my lips. My spring flowers he accepted; but, when my back was turned, he flung them away. The toys and books I offered tc him were put aside for his Bible. His only occupations were, the feeding of a favorite hen, which would come to his chair and look up for the crums that he would let fall, with a noiseless action, from his thin fingers, watching the pendulum and hands of the wooden clock, and reading. 4. Although I could not, at that time, fully appreciate the beauty of a mother's love, still I venerated the widow for the unobtrusive, but intense attention she displayed to her son. I never entered her dwelling without seeing her engaged in some kind offices toward him. If the sunbeam came through the 'Tåb'let, a little table; something flat on which to write, paint, or draw.—2 Bluff, blustering.- Jeered, made a mock of; ridiculed.— 'Blank, want of expression.- Con cfl' i ate, to reconcile; to gain by kindness.- Un hål' lowed, unholy; impure; wicked.- Appreciate (ap prè'shåte), to ascertain the value of a thing.—o Vån' er åt ed, revered; honored.- - Unobtrusive (un ob tro' siv), modest; not forward.-"In tense', earnest; devoted. leaves of the geraniums, placed in the window, with too strong a glare, she moved the high-backed chair with as much care as if she had been putting aside a crystal' temple. When he slept, she festooned her silk handkerchief around his place of rest. She placed the earliest violets upon her mantel-piece for him to look at; and the roughness of her own meal, and the delicacy of the child's, sufficiently displayed her sacrifices. Easy and satisfied, the widow moved about. I never saw her but once unhappy. She was then walking thoughtfully in her garden. I beheld a tear. I did not dare to intrude upon her grief, and ask her the cause of it; but I found the reason in her cottage; her boy had been spitting blood. 5. I have often envied him these endearments; ford was away from a par'ent who humored me, even when I was stubborn and unkind. My poor mother is in her grave. I have often regretted having been her pet, her favorite; for the coldness of the world makes me wretched; and, perhaps, if I had not drunk at the very spring of a mother's affection, I might have let scorn and con'tumely3 pass by me as the idle wind. Yet I have afterward asked myself, what I, a thoughtless, though not a heartless boy, should have come to, if I had not had such a comforter. I have asked myself this, felt satisfied and grateful, and wished that her spirit might watch around her child, who often met her kindness with passion, and received her gifts as if he expected homage1 from her. 6. Everybody experiences how quickly school years pass away. My father's residence was not situated in the village where I was educated; so that when I left school, I left its scenes also. After several years had passed away, accident took me again to the well-known place. The stable, into which I led my horse, was dear to me; for I had often listened to the echo that danced within it, when the bells were ringing. The face of the landlord was strange; but I could not forget the in-kneed," redwhiskered hostler: he had given me a hearty thrashing as a return for a hearty jest. 'Crys' tal, made of glass; resembling glass. Fes tåoned', arranged like a suspended wreath or garland.—3 Con' tu měly, contemptuous language; haughty rudeness.- Hom' åge, act of submission; respect showed by an inferior." In-kneed, having the knees bent in ward. 7. I had reserved a broad piece of silver for the old widōw. But I first ran toward the river, and walked upon the mill-bank. I was surprised at the apparent' nărrowness of the stream; and, although the willows still fringed the margin, and appeared to stoop in homage to the water-lilies, yet they were diminutive!" Every thing was but a miniature3 of the picture in my mind. It proved to me that my faculties1 had grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength. With something like disappointment, I left the river side, and strolled toward the church. My hand was in my pocket, grasping the broad piece of silver. I imagined to myself the kind look of recognition' I should receive. I determined on the way in which I should press the money into the widow's hand. But I felt my nerves slightly tremble, as I thought on the look her son had given, and again might give me. 8. Ah, there is the cottage; but the honeysuckle is older, and . it has lost many of its branches! The door was closed. A pet lamb was fastened to a loose cord under the window, and its melancholy bleating was the only sound that disturbed the silence. In former years I used, at once, to pull the string that lifted the wooden latch; but now I deliberately knocked. A strange female form, with a child in her arms, opened the door. I asked for my old acquaintance. "Alas! poor Alice is in her coffin: look, sir, where the shadow of the spire ends: that is her grave." I relaxed my grasp of my money. "And her deformed boy?" "He, too, is there!". I drew my hand from my pocket. 9. It was a hard task for me to thank the woman, but I did So. I moved to the place where the mother and the child were buried. I stood for some minutes, in silence, beside the mound of grass. I thought of the consumptive lad, and as I did so, the lamb, at the cottage window, gave its anxious blēat. And then all the affectionate attentions of my own mother arose on my soul, while my lips trembled out: "Mother! dear mother! would that I were as is the widow's son! would that I were 1Appår' ent, seeming; clear; plain.-2 Di min'ù tive, small.-Miniature (min' e túr), a small likeness; on a small scale.- Fåc' ul ties, power of the body or the mind.—5 Recognition (rek og nish' un), knowing again a thing that has been absent; acknowledgment. sleeping in thy grave! I loved thee, mother! but I would not have thee living now, to view the worldly sorrows of thy ungrateful boy! My first step toward vice was the oath which the deformed child heard me utter." 10. But you, who rest here as quietly as you lived, shall receive the homage of the unworthy. I will protect this hillock from the steps of the heedless wanderer, and from the trampling of the village herd. I will raise up a tabernacle to purity and love. I will do it in secret; and I look not to be rewarded openly. C. EDWARDS. 22. SCENES OF CHILDHOOD. "I came to the place of my birth, and said, 'The friends of my youth, where are they?' and echo answered, 'Where are they?' 1. LONG years had clapsed' since I gazed on the scene, Which my fancy still rōbed in its freshness of green— 2. I thought of the friends who had roam'd with me there, 3. I thought of the green banks, that circled around, 4. And I thought of the trees, under which we had stray'd, 5. All eager, I hasten'd the scene to behold, Render'd sacred and dear by the feelings of old; 'E lapsed', passed away.-Sun' dered, separated.—3 Eg' lan tine, a species of rose; the sweet-brier; according to Milton, the honeysuckle. |