When in the first piercing chills of November Aunt Esther meekly petitioned for new flannels, Mrs. Crosby took refuge in a novel form of scientific dogmatism. It's "This habit of wrapping up in flannels in cold weather is all nonsense. Look at me, full of blood, hearty, weigh a hundred and sixty, I don't wear flannel. always your thin, weak people who think the most of flannel. Let the flannel alone, I say, and they 'll be the better for it." "But I'm cold," protested Aunt Esther. "Stir around then and quicken your circulation. People who work aren't cold." But when Aunt Esther essayed some household task she broke a dish or spilled the water, and Gertrude Estella pettishly pushed her into a chair, declaring old people more hindrance than help. One stingingly cold night in December Aunt Esther lay wakeful, with a more than usually vivid sense of the bleakness of that narrow, prospectless point of existence known as solitary old age. Old and shriveled and tremulous though she was, her heart cried out like the heart of a fair little child for its mother. All affections, all aspirations, all interests dead in her heart as the rustling flower-stalks in a garden, yet still that cry, O mother, mother!-earliest and latest of the universal human cries, after all but the illy-recognized yearning of the soul for God! The wind from beneath the doors and from the base-boards sucked up through the thin straw of her mattress; the snow sifted in around the loose windows. Through an unfrosted pane in the upper sash she saw the frost particles sparkling in the clear air; she saw the happy stars far off in their purple home. She drew the hem of the cold cotton sheet closer and cried, "O, mother, mother, I'm so cold and so tired, and ache so; O do come and help me!" Then, frightened because she'd been praying to her mother, with half-formulated hope that God had n't noticed it, with some confused notion of atoning to Him, she folded her blue, bony hands as her mother had taught her in the warm, summer twilights of long ago, and continued: 66 "O Lord God, in the greatness of thy majesty, look down upon me in pity and not in anger. Forgive my transgressions and remember not my iniquities; and whenever it shall please Thee to take me from Time into Eternity, O take me to be with Thee in Heaven! This I ask for Jesus' sake." The voice grew less strained on the last clause, as if she was getting back to something familiar and comforting. For a minute or two she lay still, looking out on sparkling air and up to the heavens, repeated a hymn, and then fell to groaning with rheumatic pains. Mr. Bob Crosby's sleeping apartment adjoined Aunt Esther's. When cats quarreling beneath Mr. Crosby's window annoyed him he hurled a boot at them. He now resorted to the same expedient, striking his side of the partition opposite Aunt Esther's head. A few minutes' quiet followed. Then the incorrigible human began turning again, creaking her old bedstead and moaning. A bound upon the adjacent floor, a stumbling across the dining-room, and Mrs. Crosby's broad figure, a shawl over her shoulders, presented itself in the door-way. "What do you mean by such a noise,keeping people awake at this time o' night?" "Lie still and you won't think about your pains." "The cold comes in around this window." Mrs. Crosby impatiently strode across the room, and stretched the dress obliquely from a nail in one casing to a nail in the opposite. "Now I hope I shan't hear anything more from you," remarked she, retiring with a bang of the door. The over-awed, old creature curled down, and lay shivering and whispering ejaculations until the moon went down and darkness folded her in,—shivering and watching the advance of cold morning, until Mr. Crosby was heard astir breaking up kindlings and puffing at the cold with the vigor of a man who habitually gives expression to his physical discomfort. Then she crawled up and put on the cotton dress, into the waist-lining and sleeves of which fine snow had sifted. Two days afterward a neighbor coming in and perceiving Aunt Esther to be in the first stages of rheumatic fever, Mrs. Crosby was under the openly-deplored necessity of sending for a physician. coarse, but this child had known its touch of tenderness. "I don't want God; I want my mother!" cried Estella, in response to some awkward effort of Aunt Esther's at consolation. But the second night, spent by her own passion, she threw herself on Aunt Esther's bosom crying, "If you know anything comforting tell me. I must find something." "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the The Doctor upon his return met Mr. earth, so are my ways higher than your Jarves. ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts, proclaimed the voice of Aunt Esther without a tremor. 66 "I think, Esquire Jarves," said he, "you'd better go up to Crosby's and see about Aunt Esther. She ought to have a fire in her room, and I'm afraid she has n't been suitably clothed." But," added he, recollecting Mrs. Crosby's annual bilious attacks, and Gertrude Estella's predisposition to inflammation of the throat, "don't say a word from me." Mrs. Crosby complied with the letter of Mr. Jarves' orders by building a fire in Aunt Esther's room every day,--the amount of fuel consumed varying with circumstances, and by procuring flannel the wool whereof was mostly an outside fuzz, disappearing in the first washing as if it had been a soluble salt. Yet Aunt Esther recovered. But death came,-not until August; then with no rustle of wing, no stealthy footfall. Rhetorical figures seemed strangely inappropriate beside Mrs. Crosby's deathbed. Midsummer haze lay out on the newly-mown fields; a katydid in the tangle of petunias in the yard piped cheerily; but the moon lighting up the strong, hard outlines of that face was the same that looked one windy February night on poor George moaning prostrate on the ice, the same that fell athwart the frosty, December sky, through which Aunt Esther believed her prayer penetrated to Heaven. But love lightens even death. A girl knelt at Mrs. Crosby's side, clasping to her lips, burying in the warmth of her bosom in unreasoning anguish a hand, the coarse muscles of which had forever relaxed, Aunt Esther's memory was stimulated by the occasion. Text after text fell from her lips,-stimulated by their own power carrying Stella's whole conscious being out in love and confidence to the Being beyond the mystery and shadow of death, bringing submission, bringing desire to henceforth know and do His will. Bob Crosby sitting alone in the diningroom overheard the texts and stole out into the warm night,-across the stubble-fields, beneath the shadows of way-side maples, through the shed-yard where the moonlight struck a spot where once had lain a stain upon the ice; three words followed him :death, eternity, God. Beneath the voices of katydids, of cicadas, and of frogs in the distant swamp came a moan, penetrating, mysteriously incorporating itself within his own soul. The great volume of midsummer sound, unfathomable heavens, out-stretching fields belonged to a Power demanding harmony with itself, demanding righteousness. The moan belonged to him alone.-alone as he should be at death,-alone as when caught up unclothed spirit before Holiness and Might. He stole into the barn. A flood of pure light from the open doors revealed even the hay-seeds in the cracks. He crept upon the newly-filled mow and threw himself face downward. He thrust his fingers in his ears; but the moan came. The moan belonged to him. Then, independent of all nerves of sensation, with ten-fold intensity came again the Power, demanding harmony, demanding righteousness. Bob threw himself off the mow, and out again-better rather insect voices and silent heavens over motionless fields. When at length after many painful, uninstructed days Bob obtained a clear view of truths complementary to those of God's holiness and man's deflections, the upheavals in his moral nature had been too radical to admit any languid appreciation. Bob didn't hesitate for fear he "shouldn't hold out." He was ready, also, to "begin at Jerusalem" in making known the gospel. "I tell you brethren," said he springing to his feet, and forgetting that he wasn't in the "Crosby district" prayer-meeting, "we don't look at this thing in the right spirit. We ought to consider it more as if 't was ourselves was paupers. There may be those who've come on the town by their own fault, but what would become of us if the Lord treated us according to our faults? "There are those, though, who aren't to blame for being poor, and it's a blamed shame to have 'em trucked around from family to family without no stiddy home. "I don't want you to think I hold that I've always done right in this matter. I've got enough to repent of,-all I can bear, anyway, brethren, and it's because I don't want nobody else to have so much that I want a change.” "I tell you, Uncle Titus, it's of no use for you and me to expect happiness in another world if we don't live differently in this. Dying ain't going to bring any such great change that if we don't try to follow Christ here we shall want to there!" "Um!" ejaculated hardened, whisky-sod- part of the hall crowded up, groups around den old Titus. The warrant for North Upton's next March meeting contained on the petition of Bob Crosby an article:-To see if the town will effect any change in its manner of providing for paupers. But North Upton had just built a town hall which payers of poll taxes only especially exulted in as twice as imposing as the hall of South Upton, a town containing twice the amount of taxable property. It had also built a new iron bridge, the abutments of which might have withstood all the floods of sacred record and profane legend, and North Upton must economize,— on school-teachers' wages, and the paupers ;— there was no alternative. A motion was made to pass over the article in the warrant. Esquire Jarves, who not being on the Board this year was more favorable towards reform than in prior terms, had been solicited by Bob to make a speech upon the occasion. "If I had your command o' languidge I would have something done," Bob had observed. When it was known that Bob Crosby was making a speech, stragglers in the back the outside door or lingering on the stairway broke and came in, and sovereign voters were seen issuing from the side-door of the wooden structure labeled “Hotel,” wiping their mouths as they ran. Bob had had no preconception of how easy it is to make a speech when once a man is launched. The motion to pass over the article was withdrawn. North Upton voted to purchase a farm, although it would give the Board a great deal of "trouble" to find the right man to place thereon, and more "trouble" to look after him when he was placed. Aunt Esther did not live to see the change. She died peacefully in Mrs. Crosby's best chamber, Estella supporting her tenderly,— Bob coming in with the physician whom he had brought for a third visit that day,—her last connected words; "God having provided some better thing for us—" And again at the last, "Provided for-" They buried her in the village cemetery in the Cargill lot. Two or three weeks afterwards a daughter of Samuel's came to Bob was terribly disappointed in the North Upton to look up her step-grand'Squire's "languidge." mother. Elizabeth A. S. Chester. DIVES AND THE ANGEL. AN angel came to Dives as he slept, A Presence with severe and searching glance, Who stooped and questioned him "How have you kept The promise of your rich inheritance? "How is it that you still join field to field, And house to house, and make your treasure more, While want and misery remain unhealed, And wretched children beg from door to door? "While pallid women, finer-souled than you, "Has Heaven, which dowered you as its almoner, Found you a faithful servant, just and true? How many hearts, with gratitude astir, Are happier to-day because of you?" "Hear, Lord!" replied the rich man, "I implore! "To bring the heathen to Thy feet more near, "Unfaithful steward! false and self-confessed, "You make a virtue of your selfishness And hold the joy of giving poor and cheap, By offering to another's sore distress That which you do not want and would not keep! "The work-girl who divides her scanty store With one more poor, is princelier far than you— A penny from her slender purse is more "Your fortunate fingers hold the golden keys Which make it a delight and joy to live; The jeweled gates of luxury and ease Swing wide, and yield you all that life can give. "You dwell within a palace grand and proud, Fair as though conjured by a wizard's spell, In wretched huts where beasts would scorn to dwell. "You clothe yourself in raiment rich and fine, "Is it because you earn reward and praise By purer heart and life, and nobler deeds, While he goes stumbling in its thorns and weeds? "What is it that you fling the poor a crust What is it that you give because you must “Then, when at last Death's chill compelling clutch "The selfish worm within the apple's core, "Is it your virtue then, that you forsake A credit-letter on the world beyond. "Beware! for noting all your narrow greeds, Elizabeth Akers Allen. THE HOWGATE SCHEME OF ARCTIC DISCOVERY. The approaches to the North Pole are so well guarded on every side that at present, at least, it is no summer-holiday excursion to run up among the ice-floes and icebergs that belt even the seventy-eighth parallel. From this line to the eighty third parallel, though the journey may be accomplished in ordinary seasons with the aid of steam, it must yet be an extraordinarily open summer to enable the best equipped ship to reach that point without severe struggles. Indeed, if we were to accept as final the honest decision of the officers of the last English expedition in regard to one if not all the routes to the Polar seas, the question would be settled; and the national treasury might close its vaults with unswerving firmness against any and every effort to secure even a silver |