CALLS OF USEFULNESS.

A CALL ON A CLEAN INDUSTRIOUS COTTAGER.

How do you do, Mary? How do you do? Hard at work, as usual, I see; never letting the grass grow under your feet. In my customary calls I have gone into many habitations, and this I will say, that no cottage have I yet entered which equals yours in tidiness. It does me good to see with what order and cleanliness every thing is arranged; and I heartily wish that all the slatterns in the parish would take a peep at your cottage, and follow your example. That shelf is a perfect picture; any one might dine without a dish from this deal table, and the quarry floor is as red as a cherry. If your husband were not an orderly and industrious man, I should be ashamed of him.

Your cuckoo clock, there, keeps ticking away, and reminds me that I have no time to spare. Mine are hasty visits; if they were not, I could never see half the people that I have to visit.

B

How precious are moments, and how thriftily we should spend them! We usually take the sound of the clock to be Tick, tack; but a friend of mine says it is, Gone, past! and, as every moment thus marked by the pendulum is gone for ever, it has a solemn signification.

Mind, Mary, that you do not run into the error of paying great attention to your house, and little attention to eternal things: God requires the hearts of his creatures. I have known those who, because they have discharged some duties well, have been satisfied in allowing others to remain undone. Cleanliness is an excellent quality, but cleanliness is not godliness. Perhaps you may remember what the Redeemer said of the Pharisees: "Ye make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness," Luke xi. 39. Have a care, Mary! have a care! It is delightful to peep into such a cottage as yours; but as we are not to live in this world for ever, you must look forward to "a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." We must die as well as live; and it is a blessed thing to die in peace. "The reason why many Christians, at the hour of death, are full of doubts and fears, is this, because, in their life-time, they have not been much exercised in living by faith in the Redeemer.” This faith will make your