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washing her pots and kettles on deck, looked as if she inwardly sympathised with the people on shore; but she trembled and dared say nothing.

Jan was in such a dreadful temper that the cries of the people on shore made him more furious still.

or comical transcripts from every. day Dutch life-he studied them carefully and with passionate adoration. He had never been allowed to go into the streets and look at them for hours at a time, as he could have wished to do; for old Jan, who plied to and from a little village on the banks of the Scheldt, "It's none of your business,' ,"at some distance from Antwerp, he shouted, "how much I pound would never allow his child to go and kick this brat. He is good for on shore during any of their trinothing but whittling and breaking weekly visits to the city. knives. If he carves any more of yearned for a sight of the grand his pudding faces out of my boat churches of which his mother had rails, I'll send him adrift. Then told him-cathedrals in whose you will have what you want. solemn stillness he could stand Then, neighbours, you will have a pauper on your hands; and when you feed him in your kitchens he will carve doll puppets out of your table legs."

Then he vanished down the hatchway, followed by the maledictions of the bystanders.

"If I were you," cried one of them to the boy, "I would run away."

undisturbed all the day long, drinking in beauty at every pore. The harshness and hardship of his life, the beatings of his unnatural father, would have been as nothing to him if he could have been allowed to learn something of art. But old Jan not only refused to allow him to work, but had thrown into the river many beautiful images of saints, of birds, of dragons, which the child had carved by stealth when the bargeman was not near, and had then offered to the boor, asking him to sell them and buy tobacco for himself with the money.

"No child of mine shall waste his life over such mummeries,” said old Jan.

While the boy was musing bitterly on his lot, his mother, who had finished washing her pots and kettles, came to him, and while she wrung out her dishcloth with her lean and blistered hand, she said in a low voice,

The barge went on through the locks, and the boy still crouched in his corner. The tears yet dimmed his eyes, but he had already forgotten his bruises. There was no resentment in his heart towards his wretched father. His mind was filled with a thousand beautiful and fantastic images-delicate fancies which he now and then sought to embody in bits of wood that he laboriously carved with clumsy knives or chisels. He longed to be free from the rude work which he was compelled to do upon the barge, and to study, that he might "Jan, boy, you are small and become a great sculptor in wood. feeble, but you are now thirteen, When the barge passed near some and I think you would be brave of the curiously adorned old houses, and resolute. The good soul downof which there are so many in stairs"-she always called father Antwerp-houses whose windows, Jan good soul-"the good soul whose roofs, whose arches, whose has made up his mind that you doors were richly and profusely are to be a bargeman, and he adorned with carvings of birds and is stern, as you know. Nowfoliage, of beasts and dragons, of do not speak-we must try a new mystical figures from mythologies, way to get you launched in the

world." Here the mother's tears |
began to fall fast, and she thought
of the beatings which she might
receive if she carried out her plan.
"My child, you must leave us; you
must run away!

The boy's eyes flashed. He rose
and limped toward his mother.
"Never!" he said. "I cannot
leave you, motherkin !-leave you
with that man!

pulpit in St. Andrew's Church in a year from this day at the sunset hour. Bring with you some delicate carving as an offering to him, and at the same time say that you wish to return to us. Perhaps his heart will have been softened by your absence." And the good little mother almost smiled, and looked very wise through her tears.

"Motherkin," said Jan, "I will obey you."

"Listen, child," she said. "We will try a little way which the good Then the poor child began to God has put into my head. You tremble at the thought of going will be a genius, my son-one of out alone into the world. But his those great people who can express courage came to him finally, and just what they want to say. You he kissed his mother again and will carve out your thoughts in again. wood-in stone, perhaps. To-night, when the barge stops near the lock, I will make an errand for your father on shore. I will give you a few pieces of money out of the sum which we had saved for Bertha's dowry, and you shall fly. Your father will not hunt for you; his heart is hard, and he will say that he is glad you are gone."

The boy looked at his mother with wonder in his eyes. But there was no longer any sign of tears in them. A new fire lit them up.

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"If anything dreadful happens, I will let you know," said she; "but father Jan must not hear from you nor see you until a year from this day."

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Farewell, then, motherkin," said the child; "farewell for a long, long year. By the carved pulpit in St. Andrew's in a twelve

month."

They took their farewells then and there, lest old Jan should suspect them if they were crying toward evening.

Go," she continued, "to Gasker At nightfall, as the barge apWillems, in the little street near St. proached the lock again, after its Andrew's. There take a chamber, station near a market all day, the and may God be with you! Now mother went on shore to get a pail and then, perhaps, I may come to of clear water; old Jan followed see you. But it is better that I her, storming and threatening, as should not, and that your father she knew he would, because supper should think you gone away no for the workmen was not ready. one knows where. But-and now The boy took the little bag of listen earnestly-in a year from clothes and the money which his this day, toward sunset, I will mother had prepared for him. As bring your father to St. Andrew's the boat grazed the side of the lock, Church. It was there that he first he jumped out, and was speedily saw me, twenty years ago; there lost to view in the crowd. by the great carven pulpit, which you, poor child, have never seen, but which will delight your eyes. Jan, one year is not a long time, but you have already done much, and, perhaps, before twelve months have passed you will have done a Hoble work. Meet us, then, by the

Two hours later he had been received at the house of Gasker Willems, in the little street near St. Andrew's Church. He slept on an old carven bedstead, whose headboard was a pictured history of the destruction of Pharaoh's host, whose feet were griffins' claws, whose cur

tain-posts were lovely angels with silence seemed eternally to praise uplifted faces-angels whose very | God.

CHAPTER II.

A year brought sad changes to old Jan Kammerick. At first, when he heard of his son's flight, he ascribed it to meddlesome neighbours, and his rage knew no bounds. He stoutly insisted that he would never try to bring back the vagabond wood-hacker. He would not hear the boy's name spoken. Sometimes, when he saw that the mother looked paler than was her wont, and that she wept silently when she was polishing her pots and kettles, his conscience smote him. But he would never have been really sorry if misfortune had not come upon him. One of his bargemen, whom he had once beaten, scuttled the barge and fled. Jan and his wife had a narrow escape from drowning, and had it not been for friendly aid would have lost all their pots and kettles. Young Jan had been sent away to Brussels by the good Gasker Willems a few days before this, and knew nothing of it until many days afterward. He was busy with his art, in which he made astonishing progress.

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"Stuff!" the old man was say. ing, when the mother put her hand upon his mouth. He no longer threatened or beat her; his punishments had sobered him; his heart almost yearned for his lost son.

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"By the carven pulpit," tinued the mother, "where we may say a prayer for our lost son.”

“Well, if you will have it so, Anneken," he answered, almost gently.

In the Netherlands there are many churches filled with rare and exquisite carvings, with altar-pieces, shrines, pulpits, choirs, vestries, fonts, and sacristies laden with a wealth of intricate work, done in wood by skilful hands; and in Antwerp the richest specimens of this curious labour are to be found. In

The next misfortune which befell old Jan was the loss of his little house on the banks of the Scheldt. A fire burned out the interior and cracked the stone walls. Old Jan had not money enough to rebuild it. Then his limbs began to fail him; they shook and trembled. The neighbours said, "It is because he kicked and beat his son." And the great Cathedral of St. Jacques, old Jan himself began to be very much of their opinion. He had now only a small barge, was obliged always to live in it, and was very poor and discouraged. Sometimes his heart was softened towards his patient wife, and he would say,

"You will be the first to be killed by my poverty. It would have been better for you if I never had seen you in St. Andrew's Church."

where Peter Paul Rubens, the painter, lies buried, there are hundreds of rich and fantastic carvings, out of which the fancies of the elder artists peer curiously at the prosaic present. Sometimes the birds are a little too odd to be real, the dragons are almost too funny for a cathedral, and the flowers and leaves are not constructed strictly in accordance with botany; but on

the whole you feel that if things in nature are not like those in the carvings, they at least ought to be -so charming, so droll, so satisfactory are they!

not in mocking shape, but as good spirits, come to cheer them on the path of life. Old Jan remembered how he had seen the fair maiden standing near the pulpit, with her hands folded and her eyes closed in prayer, and how he had sworn to win her for his wife. He was glad he had come into the church; and then he thought of his son.

In St. Andrew's Church, of which young Jan's mother had so many tender memories, stands a large carven pulpit of a peculiarly daring design for artists who work in wood. It represents a rocky crag near the At that moment there was a joyseashore. Just beneath the crag lies ful cry from the mother, and young a fishing-boat, in which stand the Jan, wonderfully improved in voice, figures of the apostles Andrew and in manner, and in health, rushed Peter. Behind them, on the right, into her arms. A hundred kisses their fishing-nets hang upon a tree. and half a hundred words, sufficed The apostles are looking earnestly for them; for the good little mother at a figure of the Saviour, which had kept herself informed of all stands in an attitude as if beckon- her son's progress through the ing them and saying, Follow medium of old Gasker Willems. But the father was astonished beyond measure. He stepped back, trembling; and, shading his eyes with his hands, he looked long at the youth.

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me, and I will make ye fishers of men.' Two of the cleverest artists in the Netherlands gave much time and talent to this delightful carving. Van Hool did the foliage, the nets, the rocks; Van Gheel the figures of the apostles and the Saviour. The latter figure seems to have genuine inspiration in it; the sculptor has wrought marvellously, bringing effects out of stubborn wood rarely obtained before. When evening light-the last ray of the declining sun, reflected through the stained glasses of the church, and softened to the delicacy of summer twilight-falls gently upon this group, the sacred figures seem to have all the supreme finish of marble-nay, more, they appear to live.

So thought the good mother Anneken, as on the appointed day, one year from the time when she had sent forth her child into the world to give his genius scope and to escape from his hard-hearted father, she led the feeble and now quite subdued old Jan Kammerick into St. Andrew's Church. As the couple came in view of the pulpit memories endearing and solemn came to them; the spectres of their vanished youth rose up before them,

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Heyday, son!" he said; thought we had lost you. But here you are back again, and no word of repentance."

Old Jan tried to be severe, but his voice softened at every word. "Father," said the youth, “I bring you a peace-offering.'

Just then Gasker Willems came hobbling up, bearing a large box, which he placed upon the cathedral floor. Young Jan opened it, and took from it a piece of woodcarving.

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Quickly!" said Gasker Willems, after he had been greeted; "look at this before the beadle sees us, for it is a time when many stroll into the church. Quickly, and then let us all go to my house."

Young Jan stepped to a point near the pulpit, where the light still fell with some sharpness, and and held up the carving. Then the astonished parents saw that it was an exact reproduction, on a tiny scale but done with surpassing finish, of the pulpit before which they

"I was an old brute!" he said; "how did I ever become such a scoundrel?"

stood at that instant. But this was the carving. He set it down upon not all. In front of the miniature the cathedral floor and took his son pulpit stood a maiden, with eyes to his arms. downcast and hands folded in prayer; and near her, watching her reverently, with parted lips and expectant air, was a brave young bargeman, exactly like those one may see every day on the Scheldt. In this carving old Jan and his wife saw the story of their first meeting told, as the mother had so often told it to her son.

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Father," said the youth, "this and another like it have been my year's work. The fellow to this has been sold to a prince for a large sum of money, and the prince wishes to help me to study until I can help myself more. But I shall not need him; and neither mother nor you will ever work more, for the prince's bounty, with my future work, will be enough for us all. Father, will you take my offering?" Old Jan bowed his head and took

On the way to Gasker Willems's, where the party took supper, the good mother told the husband of her stratagem to help her child. Old Jan said but this: "A good wife is a good thing; but I have not merited one."

Gasker Willems, who was bringing up the rear with the carving in his arms, said,

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Say rather that you had merited nothing, like the rest of us, but that God is good and moves in mysterious ways; and that your tough heart could only have been softened by the stratagem which He sent into the mother's mind."

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Well, well," said old Jan, "I must try and get grace enough to thank Him properly!"

THE SECRET WORTH KNOWING.

BY THE REV. W. ABBOTT.

"The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and to them will he show his covenant."-Psa. xxv. 14.

EXPERIMENTAL subjects are generally welcome to hearers and readers. These favourably impress the mind, occupying its thoughtsengage the heart, drawing out its affections and so are made blessings for the soul. Subjects that tend to deepen our knowledge of God, of self, and of the truths of salvation, are likely to promote our spiritual growth, and conform our lives to the Divine will. Such subjects the Holy Spirit uses for spiritual good.

To

I. Here is a class of characters described as those who fear God. It is not the fear of terror, for that drives us from God; but it is a filial fear, and that draws us near to God. Love is a chief spirit in this fear. In such a state of fear the heart is right with God. have our hearts right with God is true religion and true happiness. Sin had put us wrong with God. We need to be saved from the wrong, and be restored to the right state. For this purpose the Saviour came to redeem us, and the Holy Spirit to regenerate us; and as He regenerates us we become possessed of this loving fear of God.

It is an obedient fear. It is a spirit that clearly reads the will of

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