the native city of David, but of David's Son and Lord. For it was written in the prophet, "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." It came to pass as the prophet foretold. The well-spring of salvation was opened there; and thence the water of life has flowed for man. Happy is he who draws therefrom for his soul's supply. "Whosoever," says our Lord, "drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." As the water so bravely brought to David was the blood of those mighty men, who won it for him by their swords at the peril of their lives, so is the water of life the price of the blood of the Son of God. The three worthies gained the water from Bethlehem's well, by overcoming the enemies of Israel; and Christ hath made the water of salvation ours, by conquering the enemies of his spiritual Israel.

Then let the "mother in Israel" train her children to repair often and habitually to this well-spring of life. We may hope that they will never forsake its "still waters." But should they yield to the impulses of a sinful heart, and to the allurements of a deceiving world, so far as to forsake "the Fountain of living waters," and waste their time and strength in hewing out to themselves broken cisterns, let us still hope for them and pray for them. It may be, that sobered by misfortune, or depressed by affliction, they will be convicted of their guilt and folly. Faint with exhausting thirst, and nigh unto death, they may remember a mother's teachings, and cry out with earnest longing, “O, that one would give me to drink of the water of the well of life, hard by the gate of heaven!" With the wish may come the blessing; and they may at last lift the healing cup of salvation to their parched and fevered lips, and so drink that their souls may live forever.

FILIA FORMOSA.

BY REV. E. PORTER DYER.

ON lady's bosom never yet one floweret found repose,

Whose boasted beauty might compare with Sharon's sacred Rose;
The lily breathes its fragrance sweet, the pink its perfume there,
Yet wafts no incense up to God, like that of humble prayer.

The light of beauty's smile may send its sunshine through the soul,
And mirth and music fascinate, and pleasure crown the whole;
But there's a light which streams from Heaven, enrapturing the heart
With purer, deeper, holier joy than earth can e'er impart.

The brow, as alabaster fair, may gleam 'mid raven curls,
And witching beauty be the boast of vain and thoughtless girls ;
But nought to me is beauty's brow, or form adorned with grace,
If Jesus' image on the heart I strive in vain to trace.

Give me the modest maiden blush which shuns the passer-by;
Give me the brow, where love, enthroned, lends lustre to the eye;
Give me the lip which never curls at Jesus' name in scorn;
Give me the meek and lowly heart, of God's own Spirit born.
Since all the bloom which pleasure gives must in the grave be hid,
And beauty's light so soon is quenched beneath the coffin-lid,
Can it be wise at Fashion's shrine to bend in worship long,
Forgetting that the soul should learn to sing a deathless song?
O ye, who in your maiden prime with pride the mirror seek,
Put on that beauteous ornament, a spirit calm and meek;
Then, though the giddy multitude may spurn the chaste attire,
ONE FAIRER THAN THE SONS OF MEN your beauty shall desire.
Hingham, Mass.

THE DAUGHTER'S LOVE TO HER FATHER.

Of all the knots that nature ties

The sacred secret sympathies,

That as with viewless chains of gold

The heart a happy prisoner hold,

None is more chaste, more bright, more pure,

Stronger stern trials to endure,

None is more purged of earthly leaven,

More like the love of highest heaven,

Than that which binds in bond how blest
A daughter to a father's breast.

DE RANCE.

SARA MAY, OR HOW TO BE SOMEBODY.

BY MRS. H. C. KNIGHT.

"Now she has come home to stay!" shouted the little ones, clapping their hands, as the mail-coach stopped before the door, and Mr. May handed out his eldest; they ran out to meet her as she ran up the steps, while her father was directing about the luggage. Kiss followed kiss, as the little ones again shouted, "Now she has come home to stay; Sara has! oh!"

The sitting-room was jubilant, the fire sparkled, the children skipped, the canaries sang, puss ran under the sofa, while Mrs. May busied herself in having the tea-things brought up. The newly-arrived was a bright, intelligentlooking girl of seventeen or thereabouts, possibly eighteen; not handsome, certainly, as heroines are handsome, but handsome with youth, health, and intelligence. Sara May had just graduated from one of the popular boarding-schools, and graduated with honors too; the medal for mathematics had been awarded to her. Dr. Johns could not trip her up in Virgil, and her composition had been asked for by the village editor. Sara's father was proud of her; so was her mother; although she was not Sara's own mother, but a second mother, who nevertheless loved her tenderly, and whom Sara loved, or ought to love; in fact, they were not very well acquainted with each other. After her mother's death, Sara had lived with an aunt; and for the last four or five years she had been kept at a boarding-school, and had only been at home on vacation visits, when she had been regarded more as company than a regular member of the family circle. Then the vacations themselves were broken-up seasons; there was the excitement of her arrival, the coming to and fro of the girls to see her, her paying visits to them, a flitting perhaps to her mother's relatives, her trunks were to be overhauled, old dresses repaired, and the selecting, buying and making new so that the vacation visits did not give her time or op

ones,

portunity to take her place as a child and sister in the family circle. She was the visitor for whom much was to be done in reference to her wishes and movements; then she was always looking forward to going away, going back; thus home wast not the sphere of her activities, of her proper personal interests; it was rather a convenient stopping-place, to get reIcruited and furnished for duties elsewhere. At school she had been a great favorite; the teachers admired her correct scholarship, and the girls, after fairly yielding to her the palm, were content to sit beneath her influence, not haughtily or imperiously exercised. On the contrary, she was generally willing to lend a helping hand to lagging or faint-hearted learners, who came sidling up to her desk, with woful and disheartened looks, "O, Sara May, you know so much! Do explain this, or that." This perpetual acknowledgment of her superiority, we may well suppose, was not wholly disagreeable to her. Altogether, she had been a young lady of considerable importance at school. Then the compositions she had helped write, prose and poetry! One would have thought Sara a Prime Minister, by the documents that sometimes lay on her desk. But school-days had had their ending. Sara's class had graduated, and Sara had graduated at the head of her class. Her father had brought her home to stay; that seemed the delightful part to the little circle of brothers and sisters, who welcomed her with almost uproarious joy. The first week was a happy one indeed. The girls flocked to see her. Some of her father's friends, Judge Fenton, and Rev. Mr. Brown, made calls, particularly upon her; and not only for his sake, but also for hers. Her father had a pretty book-case placed in her chamber, and brought some of the books from his library to hers. Altogether, everything looked promising, a delighted father, a kind and judicious mother, brothers and sisters, a large acquaintance, her own chamber and her own library, So Sara thought until the third miss the expectation of a change, the preparation and arranging for

what could be pleasanter? week, when she began to the bustle and excitement, going back. The settling

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down to be a daughter and a sister in quiet, every-day life, became distasteful to her. She was not exactly unhappy, but restless and dissatisfied; she sighed, hardly knowing for what. She consulted her father about a suitable course of reading. Her father got her books; but she found reading by herself, and acquiring knowledge for itself, was not so agreeable a thing. She had not to be examined in it, she had not to write on it, and so Sara did not relish the course as she expected. As to interesting herself in household affairs, it was dull business. Who would think of admiring her stitches on papa's shirt, and what eclat was there in baking a sheet of gingerbread? Yes, the first sheet was particularly noted, tasted, eat, commented upon and admired as hers; but the third, fourth, fifth, and so on, they were eat, and nobody thought whether she had a hand in them or not.

Sara's want of interest in house matters pained and perplexed her mother. Had she been an own mother, in many things she would have gently corrected; but, wisely or unwisely, she shrank from that which, in a step-mother, could be so readily misrepresented and abused. At last, she became backward about asking Sara's aid, until Sara gradually, as it were, receded from the important empire of home sympathies and duties, and perhaps it may be justly added, affections likewise, to a little world within herself, where she was all in all. In that world, Sara spent many moments; and moments make hours, hankering after something else, an imaginary something, which she conceived would make her very happy. "I want to be somebody," she sighed; "I want to distinguish myself, I want to be known, I cannot sit down and become nobody." If Sara was nobody, it was because she had made herself so; for there was enough for her to do just around her. For the twentieth time she opened her portfolios, and began to look over the compositions, scraps of poetry, and extracts which it contained. She read them over and over; especially two, prepared for the examination, which appeared to her particularly fine "as good as you would generally find anywhere," she uttered aloud. How far did