liked to a killed him.

He haint never got over the 'fect of it to this day; 'an he never will, for that matter,' she added, vigorously using her knife on the fruit in her hand. “Yis, ef I do say it, he's master good, perhaps a leetle grain rough sometimes," this was said in a monotone, as if to herself, "but he's jest as sweet as ken be at the coxe. He thinks a sight of me. Well, I shood believe I'm suthin dretful, ef he didn't after all these years we've lived together. It's eight and forty years sense we wus merried."

I responded promptly to this burst of confidence. Aunt Jemima and her whilom guest and patient were getting to be like old friends.

(To be continued.)

LEAVES FROM A PASTORS, MEMORY.

I have been turning over the records of Memory. What scenes were recalled-- sad and joyous,--death chambers and festivals, bridals and burials,--glad consecrations of in. fancy, and heart-rending lamentations over the polluted prodigal, exultant faith, triumphant hope, trembling scepticism, and groaning despair. The mysteries of Prvidence never deepen and darken around me, and are never so fringed with auroral light as when I read in that book of the soul, for thought changes like the mingling of the autumn leaves with the tender grass of spring-time. My mind was most forcibly arrested by the history of one whose circumstances gave the first discipline to my powers to make the spirit of truth a comforter. I have no doubt but that in her obscure home a direction was given to my whole ministry, and there I learned in sorrow whatever I have taught in prayer or word.

It was in the first year of my min

I

istry that I noticed a female attendant on my Sabbath evening lectures, who never came at any other time, and never missed attendance then, however stormy the evening might be. A light, buoyant figure, an interesting and intelligent countenance, a shadow of sorrow on her face lighted with the sweetness of amiability and strong affection. She took a deep interest in the meetings, and left our place of worship alone, directing her steps to a retired part of the village, near the marshy grounds, where only the poor choose their homes. I inquired if any one knew her, and found she was a stranger; yet the rumor was that her husband was very sick and very poor. sought out the dwelling then, and was received with a smile that made me acquainted at once. The house was one of the most humble of the abodes of the poor, but the neatness of every portion betokened the good taste and habits of the mistress. Two young children were there; and on a lonely bed, in the front room--the kitchen and the sitting-room--lay a man in the last stages of consumption. My heart wept for the wife and mother. It was plainly evident that poverty was a new thing to her. I soon learned the wildness of her grief, as she thought of that emaciated one being doomed to an early grave. The rattling cough knelled the death of hope, and the hectic of the cheek was as the last rays of the setting sun. I knew I must win her confidence before I could truly console her; for words have power only when they come from a heart that we think sympathizes with us. It was my first trial; and I well remember how hushed in spirit I feltwhat a presence of God was around me, what a holy air seemed floating about me, and how upon my heart was moving the inspiration of a

diviner life. I can give no man the rationale of my feelings and thoughts, but I know I found myself possessed of power I never dreamed I owned, "granted me according to the good hand of my God upon me."

I repeated my visits daily. The children loved me, and lisped my name with infantile sweetness. Their little faces became starry when I entered,

"For the poor make no new friends, But, oh! they love the better, far, The few our Father sends."

It was a new life to those little ones, so near and yet so far from those relatives who ought, in this time of their parents' wants, to have been familiar visitors in that darkened home.

In a little while, when we were alone in a room, separate from the sick man, I learned the history of Emelia, as I will call her. I give it as my purpose requires it.

Emelia was one of the most lighthearted and gay of her sex, attractive in person and manners, and not a few sought her hand in the dance, her smiles at the festival, and her society in the twilight walk. When the sober thought of marriage came, two of her suitors were prominent rivals--one wealthy and the other poor; the one a grave, sedate, retiring man, and the other full of vivacity, abounding with the hilarity of early manhood and the exuberant love of a devotee. Her friends chose for her the former-she chose for herself the latter. She married her choice. How often did she say, "I did it because I loved him. I couldn't help it.' The estrangement of her family was the immediate consequence. She had foreseen this, but she could not do violeuce to her af. fections to avert it; for what is woman's life but love? Like the Israelites, who bounded over hill and dale with the burden of the Ark as a

light thing, while the Philistines sunk under its weight, so woman, when made strong by the love of those whose burdens she bears, can walk with a martyr's joy, where otherwise she must sink in death.

Emelia was married. Sickness came to her husband, and the straitened circumstances consequent thereon, rendered him gloomy and dispir ited, so that the social glass was changed for the solitary potation, frequently repeated. Stimulating the system when most it needed to be kept quiet, developed a rapid con sumption, and the light of life to her was now in an eclipse. He was irritable and passionate, and from this sprung the harshest of all the trials she was called to endure. Having ended her work for his comfort and the neatness and necessities of home, tired in heart and limb, she would sit down at the window, look toward the chapel, and read from the book the hymns she had heard sung in our worship. She often spoke of how much to comfort and instruct was embodied in the sacred hymns; how many sermons they recalled, and how pleasant it was to her to associate with them the tone with which she had heard this and that hymn read. How eloquently did she refer to the sweet seasons of devotion enjoyed around our altar, the heavenward hopes there kindled, the strengthening thoughts which invigorated the spirit as spring air and odors come to the convalescent. She would look out on the open space before us, so repulsive to the mere outward vision, and her face would be radiant with heavenly thought, as though the sublimest scenes were there exhibited to wing the imagination for the loftiest flights of poetry. But notwithstanding these hallowed influ ences, I noticed the outlines of a darker picture, a foreshadowing of

coming evil; and I watched the revelation with great anxiety and thoughtful questionings. Once, when some service was required by the husband, and was not done as perfectly as he thought it might have been done, he spoke with a snappish anger and a curse, that startled me and made her burst into tears. I instantly sat down at his side, on the edge of the bed that nearly touched the floor, and tried to open to him the wrong he had done himself and her, lying there, as he was, at the very verge of the grave, she wasting her life for him, and her whole happiness in his keeping-how could he think of speaking in that manner to her? It was the first time I ever spoke "as with authority"—the authority of an outraged moral sense, speaking from impulsive sympathy. I tried to think that it was this irritability that caused the gathering gloom, for if he could speak thus in my presence, what might he not say when I was away? Great are thy wrongs, O woman! thou must look serene and cheerful in society, while the barbed arrows of "the careless

word " are ranking in the deep wounds which inhumanity has made.

But her great sorrow was the desertion of her friends. In vain I strove to banish the fear, it grew more and more manifest that Emelia was becoming crazed. I called on some of her near relatives, and exposed the poverty of that home, the sickness of the father, the wants of the dear children, and the grief of the bewildered mother. One morning when I made my usual call, Emelia bounded to meet me, but it was with a maniac's impetuosity,

but the words stuck in my throat and choked me. No apology was possible. To desert the companion of our infant years, to turn aside from the once sportive fawn, now that she is in weakness panting for life,-the thought was horrible, the reality was despair. It seemed to change everything to funeral gloom, and the eyes of poor Emelia rolled in their sockets; and, as she twined her fingers in those locks that once played with dalliance on her roseate cheek, I saw

she

was verging on the maniac's fate. I took her hand in mine and prayed. Yes, I prayed. That humble home became the vestibule of heaven, the audience chamber of God. She was calm and peaceful. The faint smile resumed its place, her eye was mild, and she spoke once more without hurried speech. Morning after morning I entered that home and found Emelia wild; as soon as I entered, she would burst forth with a torrent of lamentation, bewailing the desolation where one love was dying, and the loves which she had sacrificed for that one, no more to be enjoyed. Again I took her hand in mine and prayed; she was calm as before; and so for a month or more, the prayer of the morning tuned her spirit for the day. I noticed when the last signs of the triumph of the disease had come, madness was upon her, and the power prayer had more to wrest.e with, and though it conquered, it was with a wound remaining.

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The Sabbath evening had again come,-precious season for pious aspiration and hallowing devotion! Emelia had not for some weeks been with us. We missed her, and this reminded us of her circumstances; so that when we left the chapel, I turned towards her home with a good friend. Death was doing his work. What to Emelia, as there she stood

by the bed, was the irritability of that husband in his sickness? What were the harsh words he had spoken? What the forsaking of the calmer joys of home and hearth for the cup of enchantment and of devils? All these memories vanished, and her young feelings all came back again, in all their freshness. There lay the lover of happiest years, and she lived only in the aroma of sweetest memories, amid the hopes long since dissipated. All the kind things he had ever spoken; all the little attentions he had ever shown her; all the pride she took in choosing him in his poverty, when no one could question the pureness and depth of her love; all those years filled up with pleasant industry, the morning adieu and the evening greeting; all that was grateful in the past, now floated before her fancy, and she was above the clouds, and could speak only of love, all magnifying love, that glorified the good and dissipated the evil. From that height of feeling, the soul could but say with the poet:

"The earth is full of love, albeit the storms

Of passion mar its influence benign
And drown its voice with discords. Every
flower

That to the sun its heavingbreast expands
Is born of love. And every song of bird
That floats melifluent on the balmy air
Is but a love-note. Heaven is full of
love;

Its starry eyes run o'er with tenderness, And soften every heart that meets their gaze,

As downward looking on this wayward world

They light it back to God."

But the last hour was come. Poor Emelia put her hand up to lay her hair away from her temples, as though its shadow was obscuring her vision, making bright things dark. We tried to sooth her. But the truth could not be hidden. The balance was turned. The laugh

In

burst forth,--the bubble of hope she had played with had broken, and all was vacancy. The hour he died she was raving mad. Then relatives came and bore her away to the home where she was cradled. I prayed that her spirit might there be soothed and peace once more return. vain was the prayer. A lucid moment came, and with it a world of thought, and she plunged through the window for an escape, dashing aside the glass as the swimmer throws the glittering waves before him. She was saved as by a miracle, and was removed to a retreat for the insane, where the kindliest care was blended with the most Christian

philosophy. The husband was buried, and the children found those who wept with them. They had disappointed no proud hopes, and their innocence won them love.

Six months passed and the dead lay before us for burial. It was a hard task for me to go in and look upon that cold face, and think what varied expressions it had worn--to see the eyes veiled, and to look on the lips that for the first time refused to welcome me. None knew her sorrows as I had known them, and I felt in the great throng alone. I would have loved to have been left alone for a while with that daughter of sorrow, and mused on all the past of our familiar, spiritual communion. But I was impelled to speak, to appear calm, while grief was surging within me. In one thing I felt happy,--the children were too young to know the sorrows of their mother; and they must have marvelled that I looked so grave when I met their playful prattle, and was told how much they talked of me.

On the day of Emelia's death her reason seemed to return, and, calling to the physician, she cried out, laying her hand on the region of her

heart," Doctor, there's something cracking here.' She fell to the floor -dead. Is a "broken heart" the mere figment of the poet's brain, the creation of the novelist? Oh, no! A little forgiveness, if she seemed to "love not wisely, but too well," might have prevented all this.

I must turn from these bewildering memories to other leaves of the records, for my heart is sad, and I would go forth cheerfully to my daily round of duty. Ah! here is the balm in these other leaves of memory,

"That like the plants that throw A fragrance from the wounded part, Breathe sweetness out of woe."

Julia, as I will call her, was an invalid, and the rounds of duty brought me not unfrequently to her home. Many visits had not been paid before I discovered that some sorrow of heart, not arising from her sickness, nor from religious doubts, was weighing her spirits down. I resolved to know what it was, as to know was essential to my ability to cure. Her life, I knew, was brief; that she could not but a little while remain with her kindred, and I prayed that her last days might be serene. I obtained her confidence, as true Christian sympathy never fails to win its way to the heart of the afflicted, and she told me one of those stories which are at

tributed only to the fancy of the fictionist. I could be willing that the pictures of ideal excellence, of perfect men and women, which the novelist gives us, might be considered as having no counterpart in real life, if the portraitures of the darker traits of humanity could also be regarded only as dreams, too dark for the light of day. But it cannot be. Milton made his paradise out of all the beauties that earth afforded, as some gem having all the beauties of all other gems, and so from realities

were the elements of the most repulsive picture drawn. The wonders of reality transcend the marvels of fiction, and the wildest imaginings of the oriental fancy grow tame in the presence of some of the revelations of actual life. Dark and fearful are the stories of unforgiveness which this Book of Memory could unfold. Only once did I ever break down under any service in the pulpit, and that was after I had performed two burial services for the same person, who was married against her parent's will, and died with their faces averted from her. In vain were all persuasions to incline them to look upon her in death, or to step across the way to mingle in the funeral assembly.

"Do go!" said I, with the tears I could not check.

"No," was the stern response; "you cannot know the circumstances."

"My dear sir, I cannot imagiue any circumstances that should keep a parent from his dead daughter, and permit her to be buried without a look."

"Well, you will please pray with us, as we shall not go over to the service."

I arose and talked, and at the same time was inwardly asking for God to prepare my heart for prayer. I prayed; and when I left that house I was soul-sick. I performed another service, and then attempted to preach, and broke down in the attempt. Should the whole of that history be written, "a Romance!" would be the cry of the reader; but, alas! Romance and Reality are very near neighbors. It is hard to tell one house from the other when you are fairly in.

But back to Julia and her sorrow. She had married without her father's consent, and though but a small