You are not

Come! come! own the truth. what you have been. You cannot pick up a pin from the ground suddenly without feeling a screw in your back; nor run a hundred yards of even ground without panting fearfully, even if you are able to make a run of it at all.

Do not fill yourself up with the idle notion, because your rheumatism is a little better, and your breath not quite so short as it was, that you are growing young again.

What if you did weather through the ague, and recover from the fever when every body thought you would die, is that any reason why the next malady which affects you will not lay you low? Old Humphrey cries aloud to you, "Set your house in order; for one of these dull or sunshiny days, or one of these dark or moonshiny nights, you may be called away in a moment."

Fools that we are to disregard as we do the merciful admonitions of heaven-sent afflictions! When we recover from sickness, and recruit our health, we regard it as a proof of the strength of our constitutions, rather than as a mark of the forbearing, indulgent kindness of a merciful God. Oh that more frequently the words emanated from our tongues, and from our hearts, "Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my

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days, what it is; that I may know how frail I Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity," Psalm xxxix. 4, 5.

ON BLANKETS.

To be read on a cold night in November.

HELP me, my friends! Help me, for the poor stand in need of comfort: let us try to do them a kindness.

How the casements rattle! and hark, how the bitter, biting blast whistles among the trees! It is very cold, and soon it will be colder. I could shiver at the thought of winter, when the icicles hang from the water-butt, when the snow lies deep upon the ground, and the cold, cold wind seems to freeze the heart as well as the finger ends.

Yet, after all, the darkest night, the bitterest blast, and the rudest storm, confer some benefit, for they make us thankful for the roof that covers us, the fire that warms us, and for the grateful influence of a comfortable bed.

Oh the luxury of a good, thick, warm pair of blankets, when the wintry blast roars in the chimney, while the feathery flakes of snow are

flying abroad, and the sharp hail patters against the window-panes!

Did you ever travel a hundred miles on the outside of a coach, on a sharp frosty night; your eyes stiffened, your face smarting, and your body half-petrified? Did you ever keep watch in December in the open air, till the more than midnight blast had pinched all your features into sharpness; till your feet were cold as a stone, and the very stars appeared as if frozen to the sky? If you have never borne these things, I have; but what are they compared with the trials that some people have to endure?

Who can tell the sufferings of thousands of poor people in winter, from the want of warm bed-clothes! and who can describe the comfort that a pair or two of blankets communicate to a destitute family! How often have I seen the wretched children of a wretched habitation, huddling together on the floor, beneath a ragged great-coat, or flimsy petticoat, striving to derive that warmth from each other which their scanty covering failed to supply!

In many places, benevolent persons give or lend blankets to the poor, and thus confer a benefit, the value of which can hardly be told. May they be abundantly repaid by the grace of that Saviour who said, when speaking of kindnesses

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done to his disciples, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me," Matt. xxv. 40.

Think of these things now, for it will be of no use to reflect on them in summer. Charity is never so cordial as when it feels the misery it relieves; while you feel the cold, then, do something to protect others from the inclemency of the season. It is enough to be ill-fed, and ill-clothed, and to sit bending over a dying fire without a handful of fuel to revive it; but after that to pass the night without a blanket for a covering, must indeed be terrible.

See in the sharpest night the poor old man, over whose head threescore and ten winters have rolled, climbing with difficulty his narrow staircase, to creep beneath his thin and ragged coverlet! See the aged widow, once lulled in the lap of luxury, but now girt around with trials, in fastings often, in cold, and almost nakedness, worn by poverty to the very bones, stretching her cramped limbs upon her bundle of straw! Fancy, -but why fancy what you know to be true?— these poor, aged, miserable beings have to shiver through the live-long night, when a blanket would gird them round with comfort. I could weep at such miseries as these, an effort might relieve.

miseries which so small The table-crumbs of the