their way to church. She had reserved the secret of the thirty dollars and the broadcloth till Monday morning; then she brought them and presented them to her father. When he had listened to the whole story of the lambs, which he had only partly heard before, he said, "I will take the coat, Lucy, and I shall wear it with pleasure; but I will not touch your money. I have seen what small hands can do; you shall see what large ones can do. They can pay my debts, and they can support my wife and children, and they shall do it. With this thirty dollars you can buy school-books, and go a year to Mrs. Laninan's school; and this is what I wish you to do with it."

Lucy did as her father wished. A year, two years, three years, passed. It was on Lucy's seventeenth birth-day, in the early part of May, that Mrs. Dale invited her neighbors in to tea. They were a respectable-looking company of ladies, but none looked more respectable, healthy and happy than Mrs. Dale herself. Nowhere was there a neater house, a more comfortable table, or brighter, cleaner children. After tea, they went out into the court-yard, and from thence to the garden. They admired the flowers, and wondered at the forwardness of the beans and peas, and the large heads of asparagus sprouting from the new bed. But when they saw the strawberry patch in full blossom, the long rows of raspberry-bushes, tied up at intervals to separate stakes, and the old cherry and peartrees, which had been trimmed of their dead branches and were now white with flowers, they were eager to know how such a change had been brought about. "You must ask Mr. Dale and Willie. They are in the garden every morning before breakfast; and Willie says we shall have fruit for every day in the year, which will be very healthy, and very pleasant too, you know, Mrs. Fanning.”

About this time there was a district-school meeting; and, after some discussion, it was settled that Lucy Dale should be asked to take charge of the village school. In the rural districts of New England this is quite a distinction, none but very respectable and superior young women being placed in

this dignified and responsible station. The subject was discussed by the Dales next morning at breakfast.

"I am proud that our Lucy has had the offer," said Mrs. Dale; but, husband, how can we spare her time from the family?"

"Well enough," said the father. "Old Mr. Sparks owes me for a job of joinering, and he wants one of his girls should come and work for you this summer for pay. And I can afford it, too, wife, for business is brisk, and you know when Willie and I set about a thing we are not slow; are we, Willie?"

So Lucy, in her clean pink calico dress, with her silver watch at her side, and with groups of merry children running before her to hang up green boughs and arrange bouquets of flowers, went every morning to the cheerful school-room; and the visiting committee pronounced her the best teacher they ever had. In the morning, she helped her father in the garden, or her mother about the house; but there was no more cheerful parlor in the village than Mr. Dale's of an evening. He himself sang a beautiful tune; and his BlackEyed Susan, and Auld Robin Gray, often drew tears from those who heard him. Mrs. Dale had a good voice for a second, and Lucy a sweet treble, and they sang a great many beautiful trios together. On Saturday and Sunday evenings, these were changed for psalms and hymns; and a beautiful thing it was, on a quiet summer evening, to hear such a sweet harmony stealing on the air.

One evening, in the autumn of this year, Willie had been gazing very thoughtfully into the fire, when he suddenly looked up at his mother and said, "Mother, I don't wonder that our Lucy and Emily Fanning should be such good friends, for every body says they are the two nicest girls in the village of Elmington; but I do wonder what makes Harry Fanning come here so much. Now that he has gone into company with his uncle, and they are doing such a large business, I should think his time would be wanted in the store." Mrs. Dale smiled, and Lucy blushed, and Willie opened his eyes very wide, as if some new thought had just entered his mind.

PARENTS.

Parents must never put away their own youth. They must never cease to be young. Their sympathies and sensibilities should be always quick and fresh. They must be susceptible. They must love that which God made the child to love. Children need not only "government," firm and mild, but "sympathy," and tenderness.

THIS distinguished painter was born in Springfield, Pennsylvania, 1738, being the eldest of ten children. In his seventh year he gave the first indications of a taste for drawing. He was placed to watch the infant of his sister, while his mother gathered flowers in the garden. "As he sat by the cradle the child smiled in sleep; he was struck with its beauty, and seeking some paper, drew its portrait in red and black ink. His mother returned, and snatching the paper, which he sought to conceal, exclaimed to her daughter, 'I declare he has made a likeness of little Sally!' Then clasping the boy in her arms, she fondly kissed him." Our Engraving presents him at this first effort in art. When eight years of age, a party of Cherokee Indians noticed with indications of pleasure the rude sketches he had made of birds, beasts, fruits and flowers. From them he learned to prepare red and yellow paint. To these his mother added indigo. Hair stolen from the back of a favorite cat supplied him with brushes, till a box of paints and pencils were presented him by a friend. In his ninth year he visited Philadelphia, and there executed a view of the banks of the river.

Before he was fourteen, he painted the portrait of a beautiful lady, the sight of which brought crowds to sit for their likenesses.

About this time he enlisted as a soldier in the army; but was called from his first and last campaign, by a messenger announcing the dangerous illness of his mother. She died; and with her departing spirit vanished the charms of home. He forsook his father's house, and established himself as a portrait-painter in Philadelphia, in the eighteenth year of his age. His extreme youth, the peculiar circumstances of his history, and his undoubted merit, secured abundant patronage. From Philadelphia he went to New York, where he remained till a favorable opportunity offered for visiting

Europe. At the age of twenty-one we find him in Rome, studying the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo, with such intense anxiety as to bring on a long fit of sickness. He was elected a member of the academies of Parma, Florence and Bologna, to the former of which he presented a painting of great excellence. In 1763, he went to London, where he was introduced to King George III., whose royal patronage he enjoyed for more than thirty years. He rejected the distinction of knighthood proffered him by the king. In 1792, he was elected President of the Royal Academy of Arts. His life was long and laborious, and his productions very numerous. During his stay in England, he painted and sketched in oil upwards of four hundred pictures, mostly of an historical and religious character, for which he received one hundred and seventy thousand dollars. "No subject seemed too lofty for his pencil. He strove to follow the sublimest flights of the prophets, and dared to lessen the effulgence of God's glory, and the terrors of the judgment day. In his 'Death on the Pale Horse,' he has more than approached the masters of his calling. It is indeed fearful to behold the triumphant march of that terrific phantom, and the dissolution of all things beneath his dissolving tread."

In person, West was above the middle size, of fair complexion and sedate aspect. In disposition he was mild, liberal, generous. He died peacefully, in the eighty-second year of his age, and was buried beside other distinguished artists in St. Paul's Cathedral. His two sons and grandson were chief mourners, his wife having made her exit before him. The pall was borne by noblemen and ambassadors, while sixty coaches brought up the splendid procession.

In the case of this distinguished artist, we see the importance of encouraging the first efforts of youthful genius. Had the child received no caresses for "the likeness of little Sally," the world perchance had never heard of "Christ Healing the Sick," and the many other wonderful productions of Benjamin West.