THE LOST BOY.

From America.

WHEN I was a boy at school, a rumour flew through the village that a boy nine years old, who had gone out with a party of girls and boys the day before, had not returned with them, and was supposed to have got lost. It was Sunday morning, and the news was first whispered throughout the Sunday school. We forgot lessons, and were all excitement; for the missing boy was one of our scholars. All at once the church bell began to toll out as for fire-three quick, sharp strokes, repeated as rapidly as possible. Every boy seized his hat and sprang for the doors. In a few minutes the whole village was in the streets.

"There is no fire-but a boy is lost in the woods! Turn out-turn out!" was the reply that answered every inquiry.

The mother of the lost boy was a widow, and all the men sympathised with her. The bell continued to ring out its alarm; and an energetic man in a loud voice called the people to form in rank before the church. In a few minutes three hundred men and grown lads were in line. He then divided them into sections and ordered them to go by different roads into the woods, which almost surrounded the town, and meet at a given point. They marched at quick step and in silence to the skirts of the village, and there they sepa rated to scour the woods. In a little while they had disappeared, each section on its designated search, many of the men armed with guns, which they were to fire off when the

boy should be found. A vast number of volunteer boys would also have gone into the dark wilderness, but for the peremptory order of the leading captain that they should stay back, lest one of them should also get lost.

The search continued all day, Sunday. There was no preaching and no church-going. People walked the streets restless, listening for guns; the old minister spent most of the day with the widow, doing his best to console her. At one o'clock all the parties met at the school house, and no one had met with success. They adjourned one hour to din

ner and parted again. Every acre of two leagues of dense wood was traversed, and night came on; but with the darkness they lighted pine torches and still continued the search; and many vowed they would neither eat nor sleep till the boy was returned to his mother, or his dead body was found for decent burial.

Nor in the village did an eye sleep. Every farmer was in the woods; and no supper table was set! The villagers were all gathered upon Powder-House hill that overlooked the vast wood. They could see the far-off gleam of the torches, and once in a while the shouts of the searchers came to their ears!

At length, about eleven o'clock at night, a gun was heard far in the depths of the forest! It was followed by a loud shout nearer, and then another shout, then a dozen guns were discharged, and in a moment the whole forest was resounding with the cheers of three hundred men, and reverberating with the joyful discharges of musketry. From Powder House hill the villagers answered them back, and but one

voice was heard filling the air, "He is found he is found! Tell his mother he is found!"

But the word had already reached her ear, borne along the village streets from one to another! In ten minutes, led by the mother, the whole population were hastening to meet the party. They beheld by the light of a hundred torches, the recovered boy borne on a branch by four men. He was placed, pale, yet smiling, in his mother's arms, when, with a shriek of joy, she fainted. But she soon recovered, and the whole procession, two by two, marched on by torchlight. The procession was extended by all the women, and all the boys and girls in the town, and stopping before the widow's house gave three cheers! when with a final "hurrah," that noble band dispersed, each to his own home.

The little wanderer was found in a hollow log asleep, with a few uneaten blackberries in his hand. He said he had wandered "about and about and about; he sometimes cried and sometimes ate berries, but he could'nt get any water; he thought about the bears and wolves, and he got into the log and slept there, and when the next day came he wasn't afraid of the bears because it was Sunday," and he added, with amusing simplicity, "I hadn't never mocked no bald head, like the forty boys did in the Bible."

Oh! how glad would that mother be to receive her lost boy again. How would she weep over him tears of joy such as only a mother can shed.

"When she her infant charge receives,
Her heart o'erflows with joy;

THEY tell me that the summer is fast hastening along,
And they bid me now enjoy it, for soon it will be gone:

And they tell me winter's coming with its biting winds severe,
And that with its frost, and hail, and snow, 'twill very soon be here.

Then while I have sweet summer time, while shines the sun so bright,
I'll roam where scenes of nature in their loveliness invite;
The meadow with its flowerets, and the hills with blue bells crown'd,
And the shady wood and forest, where the linnet's notes resound.

O, summer with its genial sun brings plenty, peace, and joy,
For fruitfulness my vision meets where'er I turn my eye;
The fields are yielding precious grain, the meadows fragrant hay,
The orchards groan beneath their fruit-plumbs cluster on the tree.

How good of God to let us know the joys of summer time,
The sweetest season of the year in this our changing clime;
How good of God to give us strength to roam amid its flowers;
To drink the draft of summer's joy, ere fades its fragrant bowers!

But if my joy depended upon the summer's sun,

How quickly would my time of joy and happiness be gone!
For summers pass-the flowers decay-and all is changing here;
A fading fruit is all that time's most favoured plant can bear,

But only in this world are change and variations known;
My hopes are center'd in the joys which are before the Throne,
From which proceeds the crystal tides of heaven's refreshing river,
And where a bright eternal sun shall sweetly shine for ever!
Newport, I. W.

A. M.

THE GOLDEN GATE, JERUSALEM.

EVERY remaining ruin of this celebrated city attracts the attention of the traveller, though he may not be able to ascertain its history correctly. As the city was walled all round it had numerous gates, which went by various names; the one in the picture being called the "Golden Gate." But who built it, and why it was so called, we are not informed.

While we ought not to indulge any superstitious reverence for places or things, we may yet regard, with mournful interest, these last remaining memorials of that once favoured city, where kings, and prophets, and righteous men, in long succession dwelt, and where the Son of God himself taught the people in words of wondrous wisdom, wrought some of his mighty miracles, and died for the salvation of a lost world. Nor so long as the bible remains in the hands of any people can they ever forget Jerusalem, and the "mighty