His Only Friend

Long miles the two comrades have wandered together,
From hot city streets over meadow and moor,

Till, wearied, one pillows his head on the heather,
God pity him! hungry and homeless and poor.

Forgetting his troubles, the worn feet extended,
The aching limbs resting, his sleep is profound;
But he is not alone as he sits there-befriended
By Waif, who is ready to spring at a sound.

No peril shall menace the form of the sleeper
Unchallenged by one who is boldly awake—
A dear little sentinel, proud to be keeper

Of him whose last meal it was his to partake.

The clumsy paw touches the hard hand, caressing
Its brown knotted palm; and the shaggy head, pressed
Within the arm's circlet, lies soft as a blessing

Against the true heart in the thin, faded vest.

They've been famished and chilly and tired together;
Companions, have shared the sharp word and the blow,
Have faced a harsh world in the wildest of weather,
And they know not to-day by what pathway to go

Poor comrades, so faithful! perhaps just before you
Is shelter, a home that will open its gate.

All hardships have endings; kind heaven is o'er you;
The brave and the honest may conquer their fate.

The Angels' Watch.

When golden stars are in the sky,
And all the earth has gone to sleep,
God sends His angels from on high,

O'er little children watch to keep.

They fill the night with heavenly songs,
Sweet dreams their blessed music brings;
Until at dawn in rising throngs

They wake us with their rustling wings.

The Portrait.

A throng of men and women,
Gay, gallant, debonair,
No hint of burdening heartache,
Or weight of sordid care
In the surging crowd of faces,
The flutter of carven fans,
The courtly commonplaces,

In that gathering of the clans.

But from the wall a portrait,
With keen judicial eyes,
Surveyed the sea of people

As a star might from the skies.

Apart, alone, unnoted,

The portrait looking down,
Read the sorrow and the secrets
Of half the smiling town.

The Comfort at the Core.

There came to me a day of dole, when chill across my path
A wind of sorrow, smiting, swept; it seemed a wind of wrath.
So icy was its blighting, so sore and deep its pain,

That I bent before the blast, and thought I could not rise again.

But in the very secret of the anguish, as I lay,

My pillow wet with heavy tears, there broke a dawn of day;
Another day, another dawn, and life grew full once more
Of blessedness, for lo! I found God's meaning at the core

Of the great and weary trial; God sent the pang to me,

And gave Himself, that dreary time, my star of life to be.
Since when I lift my head and walk serene through care and loss;
The flowers of life immortal are garlanding the cross.

And aye, in hours of loneliness, my heart sets wide its door,

And God's strong angel shows me pain has comfort at the core.

Comfort One Another.

Comfort one another,

For the way is often dreary,
And the feet are often weary,

And the heart is very sad.
There is heavy burden bearing,
When it seems that none are caring,

And we half forget that ever we were glad.

Comfort one another,

With a hand-clasp close and tender,
With the sweetness love can render,
And the looks of friendly eyes.
Do not wait with grace unspoken,
While life's daily bread is broken-

Gentle speech is oft like manna from the skies

CHAPTER LII.

Open Secrets.

ARY EMILY CLAYTON found it hard to realize that she was an old woman. She never did realize it in the least, even when her tall grandchildren, the prettiest girls in Massachusetts, clustered around her, and the only way she could be made to understand that she was on life's downhill grade was by compelling herself to think back, back, over the long, long past.

When she was a little maid in a blue checked gingham frock and a sunbonnet, carrying her dinner to school in a tin pail, she was the gayest, most heedless, most light-hearted lassie in the county. She was a vain little girl, for she remembered that she used to look in the glass, and think herself pretty, as indeed she was. Once a boy gave her a gold pencil case, and her mother said she must give it back, which she did to her intense mortification. That boy died fifty years ago, in his young manhood.

Then she looks back, and she sees herself a slim young girl, with bands of smooth hair, and bright near-sighted eyes, and a way that charms and pleases people and helps her to make friends. She isn't in love, except with being loved, so she makes a great mistake, and too early says yes to the wooer who comes, brave and debonair, and begs her to wear his name, and share his lot " for better, for worse till death us do part."

Nevertheless, though she discovers in part her mistake before she is married, she will not draw back, and Richard Clayton never dreamed that he was a disappointment, that he failed of being her perfect hero. She made him the most loyal, the most loving, the most devoted of wives, and on his dying bed he blessed her, and, so had their hearts by that time grown together, that never at any moment of her long widowhood, did she recall a time of incompleteness, never did she cease to idealize the husband of her youth, when he had passed on before her. But it was not in her temperament nor her disposition to grieve incessantly nor forever; she was elastic, and it was her fortunate fate to renew her strength after periods of depression.

At forty, at fifty, at sixty, Mrs. Clayton found it in her power to receive new impressions, vividly and joyously. At sixty-five she set about learning Hebrew, a difficult task, but not an insuperable one to a woman who had been a student