had a baby; and such a baby! None of your flabby city abortions; but a flesh-and-blood babya baby to make one's mouth water-ay, and eyes, too! Such a baby as might have been born in the Garden of Eden, had the serpent never crept in; born of parents fed on strawberries and pomegranates-pure in soul, pure in body, and healthy and vigorous as purity alone can be.

Such a baby! such eyes-such a skin-such bewildering lips-such a heaven-born smile; my eyes overflowed as I looked at it. I was not worthy to hold that baby, but my heart yearned for it, and I held out my hands invitingly.

See! the little trusting thing leaps from its father's arms and sits smiling on my knee. Ah! little baby, turn away those soft blue eyes from mine; is it not enough that my soul is on its knees to you? Is it not enough, that for every bitter word wrung from my tortured soul by wrong and suffering, I could cry: "God be merciful to me a sinner ?”

And yet, little baby, I was once like thee. Like thee, I stretched out the trusting hand to those who ah, little baby—I am not like thee now; yet Jesus "took

stay with me, and perhaps I shall be.
a little child and set him in the midst."

of my hand, and lead me to heaven.

Take hold

Going? then God be with thee, as surely as he has been with me, in thy pure presence. I shall see thee again, little baby, if I heed thy teachings; thou hast done thy silent mission.

FANNY FORD.

CHAPTER I.

Ir was a mad freak of dame Nature to fashion Mary Ford after so dainty a model, and then open her blue eyes in a tumble-down house in Peck-lane. But Mary cares little for that. Fortune has given her wheel a whirl since then, and Jacob Ford is now on the top. Mary sees the young and the old, the grave and the gay, the wise and the ignorant, smile on her sweet face; as she passes, men murmur "beautiful," and women pick flaws in her face and figure. She can not sleep for serenades, and her little room is perfumed, from May to January, with the rarest of hot-house flowers. Lovers, too, come wooing by the score. And yet, Mary is no coquette; no more than the sweet flower, which nods, and sways, and sends forth its perfume for very joy that it blossoms in the bright sunshine, all unconscious how it tempts the passer-by to pluck it for his own wearing. A queenly girl was the tailor's daughter, with her Juno-like figure, her small, wellshaped head, poised so daintily on the fair white throat; with her large blue eyes, by turns brilliant as the lightning's flash, then soft as a moonbeam; with her pretty mouth, and the dimple which lay perdu in the corner, with the flossy waves of her dark brown hair; with her soft, white hands, and

twinkling little feet; with her winsome smile, and floating grace of motion.

Percy Lee was conquered.

Percy-who had

withstood blue eyes and black, gray eyes and hazel. Percy-for whom many a fair girl had smiled and pouted in vain. Percy the bookworm. Percyhandsome as Apollo, cold as Mont Blanc. Percy Lee was fettered at last, and right merrily did mischievous Cupid forge, one by one, his chains for the stoic. No poor fish ever so writhed and twisted on the hook, till the little word was whispered which made him in lover's parlance, "the happiest of men."

Of course, distanced competitors wondered what Mary Ford could see to admire in that book-worm of a Percy. Of course, managing mammas, with marriageable daughters, were shocked that Miss Ford should have angled for him so transparently; and the young ladies themselves marveled that the aristocratic Percy should fancy a tailor's daughter; of course the lovers, in the seventh heaven of their felicity, could afford to let them think and say what they pleased.

The torpid sexagenarian, or frigid egotist, may sneer; but how beautiful is this measureless first love, before distrust has chilled, or selfishness blighted, or the scorching sun of worldliness evaporated the heart's dew; when we trust with childhood's sweet faith, because we love; when care and sorrow are undiscernible shapes in the distance;

when at every footstep we ring the chime of joy from out the flowers. What can earth offer after this sparkling draught has been quaffed? How stale its after spiritless effervescences !

Percy's love for Mary was all the more pure and intense, that he had hitherto kept his heart free from youthful entanglements. Fastidious and refined to a degree, perhaps this with him was as much a matter of necessity as of choice. In Mary both his heart and taste were satisfied; true, he sometimes wondered how so delicate and dainty a flower should have blossomed from out so rude a soil; for her father's money could neither obliterate nor gild over the traces of his innate vulgarity; in fact, his love for his daughter was his only redeeming trait--the only common ground upon which the father and lover could meet. The petty accumulation of fortune by the penny, had narrowed and hardened a heart originally good and unselfish; the love of gold for its own sake had swallowed up every other thought and feeling. Like many persons of humble origin, whose intellects have not expanded with their coffers, Jacob Ford overrated the accident of birth and position, and hence was well pleased with Mary's projected alliance with Percy.

แ

Weil, to be sure, Lucy, beauty is a great thing for a girl," he one day said to his wife. "I did not dream of this when Mary used to climb up on the counter of my little dark shop in Peck-lane, and sit playing with the goose and shears.”

"Nor I," replied Lucy, as she looked around their handsome apartment, with a satisfied smile; nor I, Jacob, when, after paying me one Saturday night for my week's work, you said, 'Lucy, you can be mistress of this shop if you like.' I was so proud and happy: for, indeed, it was lonesome enough, Jacob, stitching in that gloomy old garret. I often used to think how dreadful it would be to be sick and die there alone, as poor Hetty Carr did. It was a pity, Jacob, you did not pay her more, and she so weakly, too. Often she would sit up all night, sewing, with that dreadful cough racking her."

"Tut-tut-wife," said Jacob; "she was not much of a seamstress; you always had a soft heart, Lucy, and were easily imposed upon by a whining story."

"It was too true, Jacob; and she had been dead a whole day before any one found it out; then, as she had no friends, she was buried at the expense of the city, and the coffin they brought was too short for her, and they crowded her poor thin limbs into it, and carried her away in the poor's hearse. Sometimes, Jacob, I get very gloomy when I think of this, and look upon our own beautiful darling; and, sometimes, Jacob--you won't be angry with me?" asked the good woman, coaxingly, as she laid her hand upon his arm-" sometimes I've thought our money would never do us any good."

"Pshaw!" exclaimed Jacob, impatiently shaking off his wife's hand; "pshaw, Lucy, you are like all