ping, is the pain I experience whenever I am forced to take part in it, at the snubbing system practiced by too many shop-keepers toward those whose necessities demand a frugal outlay. Any frivolous female fool, be she showily dressed, may turn a whole storefull of goods topsy-turvy at her capricious will, although she may end in taking nothing away but her own idiotic presence; while a poor, industrious woman, with the hardly-earned dollar in her calico pocket, may not presume to deliberate, or to differ from the clerk as to its most frugal investment. My blood often boils as I stand side by side with such a one. I, by virtue of better apparel, receiving respectful treatment; she-crimsoning with shame, like some guilty thing, at the rude reply.

Now, gentlemen, imagine yourselves in this woman's place. I have no need to do so, because I have stood there. Imagine her, with her fatherless, hungry children by her side, plying the needle late into the night, for the pitiful sum of seventy-five cents a week, as I once did. Imagine her, with this discouraging price of her eye-sight and strength, creeping forth with her little child by the hand, peeping cautiously through the glass windows of stores, to decide unobtrusively upon fabrics and labeled prices, or vainly trying to read human feeling enough in their owners' faces to insure her from contemptuous insult at the smallness and cheapness of her contemplated purchase. At length, with many misgivings, she glides in amid rustling silks

and laces, that drape hearts which God made womanly and tender like her own, but which Fashion and Mammon have crushed to ashes in their vice-like clasp; hearts which never knew a sorrow greater than a misfitting dress, or a badly-matched ribbon, and whose owners' lips curl as the new-comer holds thoughtfully between her thin fingers the despised fabric, carelessly tossed at her by the impatient clerk.

Oh, how can you speak harshly to such a one? how can you drive the blood from her lip, and bring the tear to her eye? how can you look sneeringly at the little sum she places in your hand, so hardly, virtuously, bravely earned? She has seen you !— see her, as she turns away, clasping so tightly that little hand in hers, that the pained child would tearfully ask the reason, were it not prematurely sorrow-trained.

Oh, you have never (reversing the order of nature) leaned with a breaking heart upon a little child, for the comfort and sympathy that you found nowhere else in the wide world beside. You never wound your arms about her in the silent night, drenching brow, cheek and lip with your tears, as you prayed God, in your wild despair, dearly as you loved her, to take her to himself; for, living, she, too, must drink of the cup that might not pass away from your sorrowsteeped lips.

It is because I have felt all this that I venture to bespeak your more courteous treatment for these unfortunates who can only weep for themselves.

A MUCH-NEEDED KIND OF MINISTER'S WIFE;

OR, A HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPE FOR SOME PARISH.

I ONCE had a narrow escape from being a minster's wife. No wonder you laugh. Imagine a vestrymeeting called to decide upon the width of my bonnet-strings, or the proper altitude of the bow on that bonnet's side. Imagine my being called to an account for asking Mrs. A. to tea, without including the rest of the alphabet. Imagine my parishioners expecting me to attend a meeting of the Dorcas Society in the morning, the Tract Society in the afternoon, and the Foreign Mission Society in the evening, five days in the week--and make parish calls on the sixth-besides keeping the buttons on my husband's shirts, and taking care of my "nine children, and one at the breast." Imagine a selfconstituted committee of female Paul Prys running their arms up to the elbows in my pickle-jar-rummaging my cupboards-cross-questioning my maidof-all-work, and catechizing my grocer as to the price I paid for tea. Imagine my ministerial progeny prohibited chess and checkers by the united voice of the parish. Christopher!

Still, the world lost a great deal by my non-acceptance of that "call." What would I have done? I would not, on Saturday afternoon (that holiday which should never, on any pretext, be wrested

from our over-schooled, over-taught, children), have put the finishing touch to the crook in their poor little spines, by drumming them all into a Juvenile Sewing Society, to stitch pinafores for the Kankaroo heathen. What would I have done? I would have ate, drunk, slept, and laughed, like any other decent man's wife. I would have educated my children as do other men's wives, to suit myself, which would have been to turn them out to grass till they were seven years old, before which time no child, in my opinion, should ever see the inside of a school-room; and after that, given them study in homoeopathic, and exercise in allopathic quantities. I would have taken the liberty, as do other men's wives, when family duties demanded it, to send word to morning callers that I "was engaged." should have taken a walk on Sunday, if my health required it, without asking leave of the deacons of my parish. I would have gone into my husband's study, every Saturday night, and crossed out every line in his forthcoming sermon, after “sixthly." I would have encouraged a glorious beard on my husband's sacerdotal chin, not under the cowardly plea of a preventive to a possible bronchitis, but because a minister's wife has as much right to a good-looking husband as a lay-woman. I would have invited all the children in my parish to drink tea with me once a week, to play hunt the slipper, and make molasses candy; and I would have made them each a rag-baby to look at, while their well-meaning, but

I

infatuated Sunday-school teachers, were bothering their brains with the doctrine of election.

what I would have done.

That's

"GIVE me two cents, I say, or I'll kick you!" I turned to look at the threatener. It was a little fellow about as tall as my sun-shade, stamping defiance at a fine, matronly-looking woman, who must have been his mother, so like were her large black eyes to the gleaming orbs of the boy. "Give me two cents, I say, or I'll kick you," he repeated, tugging fiercely at her silk dress to find the pocket, while every feature in his handsome face was distorted with passion. Surely she will not do it, said I to myself, anxiously awaiting the issue, as I apparently examined some ribbons in a shop-window ; surely she will not be so mad, so foolish, so untrue to herself, so untrue to her child, so belie the beautiful picture of healthy maternity, so God-impressed in that finely-developed form and animated face. Oh, if I might speak to her, and beg her not to do it, thought I, as she put her hand in her pocket, and the fierce look died away on the boy's face, and was succeeded by one of triumph; if I might tell her that she is fostering the noisome weeds that will