"Hallowed-be-thy-name!"

The light has come upon the benighted way. Dead.

Dead, your majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, right reverends and wrong reverends of every order. Dead, men and women born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.

Mother's Vacant Chair.

I go a little farther on in your house, and I find the mother's chair. It is very apt to be a rocking chair. She had so many cares and troubles to soothe, that it must have rockers. I remember it well. It was an old chair, and the rockers were almost worn out, for I was the youngest, and the chair had rocked the whole family. It made a creaking noise as it moved, but there was music in the sound. It was just high enough to allow us children to put our heads into her lap. That was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries. Oh, what a chair that was! It was different from the father's chair-it was entirely different. Perhaps there was about this chair more gentleness, more tenderness, more grief when we had done wrong. When we were wayward, father scolded, but mother cried. It was a very wakeful chair. In the sick days of children other chairs could not keep awake; that chair always kept awake -kept easily awake. That chair knew all the old lullabies, and all those wordless songs which mothers sing to their sick children— songs in which all pity and compassion and sympathetic influences are combined. That old chair has stopped rocking for a good many years. It may be set up in the loft or the garret, but it holds a queenly power yet. When at midnight you went into that grog-shop to get the intoxicating draught, did you not hear a voice that said, "My son, why go in there?" and louder than the boisterous encore of the theater, a voice saying, "My son, what do you here?" And when

you went into the house of sin, a voice saying, "What would your mother do if she knew you were here?" and you were provoked at yourself, and you charged yourself with superstition and fanaticism, and your head got hot with your own thoughts, and you went home, and you went to bed, and no sooner had you touched the bed than a voice said, "What, a prayerless pillow!" Man! what is the matter? This! You are too near your mother's rocking-chair! "Oh, pshaw!" you say, "there's nothing in that. I'm five hundred miles off from where I was born-I'm three thousand miles off from the Scotch kirk whose bell was the first music I ever heard." I cannot help that; you are too near your mother's rocking-chair. "Oh!” you say, "there can't be anything in that; that chair has been vacant a great while." I cannot help that. It is all the mightier for that; it is omnipotent, that vacant mother's chair. It whispers. It speaks. weeps. It carols. It mourns. It prays. It warns. It thunders. A young man went off and broke his mother's heart, and while he was away from home his mother died, and the telegraph brought the son, and he came into the room where she lay, and looked upon her face, and cried out, "O, mother, mother! what your life could not do your death shall effect. This moment I give my heart to God." And he kept his promise. Another victory for the vacant chair. With reference to your mother, the words of my text were fulfilled: "Thou shalt be missed because thy seat will be empty."

It

How Tom Sawyer Whitewashed His Fence.

[Tom Sawyer, having offended his sole guardian, Aunt Polly, is by that sternly affectionate dame punished by being set to whitewash the fence in front of the garden.]

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him, and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the farreaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a treebox, discouraged.

He began to think of the fun he had planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free boys would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and they would make a world of fun of him for having to work-the very thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly wealth and examined it-bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an exchange of work, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an hour of pure freedom. So he returned his straitened means to his pocket, and gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. At this dark and hopeless moment an inspiration burst upon him! Nothing less than a great, magnificent inspiration.

He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in sight, presently-the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been dreading. Ben's gait was the hop-skip-andjump-proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong,-for he was personating a steamboat. As he

drew near he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned far over to starboard and rounded to, ponderously, and with laborious pomp and circumstance-for he was personating the "Big Missouri," and considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat, and captain, and engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing on his own hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them:

"Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!" The headway ran almost out, and he drew up slowly toward the sidewalk.

"Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!" His arms straightened and stiffened down his sides.

"Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow! Chow!" His right hand, meantime, describing stately circles for it was representing a forty-foot wheel.

"Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chowch-chow-chow!" The left hand began to describe circles.

"Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead on the stabboard. Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ow-ow! Get out that headline. Lively, now! Come-out with your spring line-what're you about there! Take a turn round that stump with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now-let her go! Done with the engine, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! Sh't! Sh't! Sh't!" (trying the gaugecocks.)

Tom went on whitewashing-paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben stared a moment, and then said:

"Hi-yi! you're a stump, ain't you?"

No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist; then he gave his brush another gentle sweep, and surveyed the result as before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom's mouth watered for the apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said: "Hello, old chap; you got to work, hey?"

Tom wheeled suddenly, and said:
"Why, it's you, Ben; I warn't noticing."

"Say, I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But, of course, you'd druther work, wouldn't you? 'Course you would!"

Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:

"What do you call work?"

"Why, ain't that work?"

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered, carelessly: "Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know is, it suits Tom Sawyer."

"Oh, come now, you don't mean to let on that you like it?" "Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it?

a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”

Does

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth-stepped back to note the effect—added a touch here and there—criticised the effect again, Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said: "Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little."

Tom considered-was about to consent-but he altered his mind:

"No, no, I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's awful particular about this fence-right here on the street, you know if it was the back fence I wouldn't mind, and she wouldn't. Yes, she's awful particular about this fence; it's got to be done very careful; I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it in the way it's got to be done."

"No-is that so? Oh, come, now, lemme just try, only just a little. I'd let you, if you was me, Tom."

If

"Ben, I'd like to, honest Injin; but Aunt Polly—well, Jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn't let him. Sid wanted to do it, but she wouldn't let Sid. Now don't you see how I'm fixed? you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it—” "Oh, shucks! I'll be just as careful. Now lemme try. SayI'll give you the core of my apple."