that is cunning; teach them to be neat and orderly always; she should teach them to obey a look; to respect those older than themselves. She should never give a command without seeing it is performed in the right manner. She should try to inspire love, not dread; respect, not fear. She should teach her children to wait upon themselves; to put everything in its place. She must sympathise with them in their little troubles-they are great for them; the griefs of little ones are too often neglected. She must bear patiently with them, and never arouse their anger if it can be avoided. She must teach them to be useful and kind to all, and try not to forget that she was once a child. She must remember ever that she is training and educating souls for Eternity! Unhappily, a great portion of our species are not very wise, and a good many of them not very honest. The former, if they hear of a person who does not admit the grounds on which they believe something, take for granted that he does not believe it at all; and the latter think it meritorious to take advantage of the silliness of the others, to garble and misrepresent their opponent's expressions, in order to expose him to odium, thus acting like those tyrannical emperors who used to dress up their victims in the skins of wild beasts, and then set dogs at them to worry them to death. Archbishop Whately. MAKING A NEEDLE; OR, HOW PEOPLE HELP EACH OTHER. It is curious to think how many people are at work for you. "Me!" cries a little girl, looking up from her hemming; "nobody is at work for me; I am working for myself." Let us see. In order to furnish you with the small pocket-handkerchief which you are now hemming, the planter sowed and gathered his cotton, the sailor carried it to the manufacturer, the spinner and weaver made it up into cloth, the shopkeeper kept it in his store: so many, at any rate, helped you to it. Then, the needle you are hemming with came hundreds of miles, besides employing a great many people to make it in the first place. The child looked at her needle, so small, so slim, so simple. "It's only a needle," she said. But it takes a great while and many workmen to make a needle. Let us go where our best needles come from, and take a peep into the workshops. In going over the premises, we must pass hither and thither, and walk into the next street and back again, and take a drive to a mill, in order to see the whole process. We find one chamber of the shops is hung round with coils of bright wire, of all thicknesses, from the stout kinds used for cod-fish hooks, to that for the finest cambric needles. In a room below, bits of wire, the length of two needles, are cut by a vast pair of shears fixed in the wall. A bundle has been cut off: the bits need straightening, for they came off from coils. The bundle is thrown into a red-hot furnace, then taken out and rolled backwards and forwards on a table until the wires are straight. This process is called "rubbing straight." We now ride over to a mill. There is a miller peeping out at us. One end of his mill is for grinding flour, the other for grinding needles. We go down into the basement, and find a needle-pointer seated on his bench. He takes up two dozen or so of the wires, and rolls them between his thumb and fingers, with their ends on the grindstone, first one end and then the other. We have now the wires straight, and pointed at both ends. Back to the workshop. Here is a machine which flattens and gutters the heads of ten thousand needles an hour. Observe the little gutter at the head of your needle. Next comes the punching of the eyes, and the boy who does it, punches eight thousand in an hour; and he does it so fast, your eye can hardly keep pace with him. The spitting follows, which is running a fine wire through a dozen perhaps of these twin needles; a woman with a little anvil before her, files between the heads and separates them. They are now complete, but rough and rusty, and, what is worse, they are so limber as to bend with a touch. A pretty poor needle, you will say. But the hardening comes next. They are heated in batches in a furnace, and when red-hot are soused in a pan of cold water. Next, they must be tempered, and this is done by rolling them backwards and forwards on a hot metal plate. The polishing still remains to be done, and to see this we must go back to the mill. On a very coarse cloth, which lies upon another coarse cloth, needles are spread to the number of 40,000 or 50,000. Emery dust is strewed over them, oil is sprinkled and soft soap daubed by spoonsful over the cloth; the cloth is then rolled hard up, and with several others of the same kind, thrown into a sort of wash-pot to roll to and fro for twelve hours or more. They come out dirty enough, but after a rinsing in clean hot water, and a tossing in sawdust, they look as bright as can be, and are ready to be sent to the manufactory, where they are sorted and put up for sale. But the sorting and the doing up in papers, you may imagine, is quite a work by itself. Enough has been told you to see how various are the branches of industry, and that even to furnish so handy and common a little instrument as the needle, how much labour is necessary, and how many workmen are employed. It should make us humble also, to see how dependent we are upon one another. While the bird, the cat, and all inferior animals are supplied with ready-made clothing, and need no help from each other, we cannot live comfortably a day without being ministered to by hundreds whom we have never seen. This great law of mutual dependence should help to impress upon us those precious lessons of brotherly love taught us in the Gospel, as it makes wonderfully significant the whole-hearted rule of the apostle, "Do good to all men, as ye have opportunity." THE DYING GERMAN GIRL. A woman to whom I gave the tract, ""Tis all for the best," after looking at the title, asked me if it was for the best that her child had died. I endeavoured to present the truth to her, and to comfort her, as two more of her children were seriously sick. As I left I gave her a few children's tracts. A week after, as I was passing, I heard some one calling me. I went to the house, and the woman met me in tears, telling me that another child had died. During her sickness she often spoke of me, and would not suffer the tracts to be taken from the bed. A short time! before she died her countenance was lighted up with joy. She took the tract, "Life and Death of John Hands," (German), and turned over the leaves until she came to the plate in connection with the passage "Suffer little children to come unto me," when she pressed it to her bosom and requested her mother to read the passage. After she had read it, the child said, "The dear Saviour also calls me, and I soon shall be with my little brother; 0 mother, pray, pray." She then stretched out her little arms towards the tract, kissed it, and exclaimed, "O dear Saviour, come, come and take me to thyself," and so expired. A powerful impression was made on the mother's mind. I gave her "Baxter's Saint's Rest," to instruct and comfort her. THE RAGGED SCHOOL TEACHER. And who is he that's seeking, With look and language mild, He searches lane and alley, The mean and dark abode, From households sadly wreck'd. And these, the truth impressing, Have call'd on him a blessing, Who form'd the Ragged School. LITTLE WILLIE. He Little Willie was a gentle, fair-haired boy, and the child of Christian Parents, though born in a heathen land. had been taught with his earliest lisping to repeat nightly, on retiring to rest, that beautiful child's prayer, "Now, I lay me down to sleep." When he was a little more than three years old, God called him away from earth, but the closing scene of his life was beautiful. As the shadows of death gathered round him, he supposed it the darkness of night, and clasping his tiny hands he commenced,— "Now, lay me down to sleep, and here his lips faltered, his pulse ceased, and his spirit returned to God who gave it. POETRY. MUSINGS WITH MEMORY. Come, Memory, come ! I'd muse with thee a while, I'd wander with thee down the long, long aisle Retired to where the world's deep hum Let us converse of buried hopes and fears,— The smile, the tear; Not happy smile alone, Ah, no! but tears,—those blossoms, fully blown, Of feeling. Every passing year, — Of times each passing day, each hour, The tear, the smile; Not gloomy tears alone Have gemmed my cheek, but smiles have had a throne And dwelling there: Not smiles that play but to beguile The looker on, and say that care Is fled; but smiles that mark me as the heir |