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LITTLE ALBRECHT-LOST AND FOUND.

wove the osier baskets, and plaited the hempen mats, and played with the wild gypsy boys, and sang the gypsy songs.

Only when the stars came out, he would steal away from them all, and among the whins and the alder bushes, or the mulberries and the scented limes, would kneel low down and say, 'Our Father-for Jesus' sake'

Had any one asked him what it meant, Covey could not have told. But he had a dim, wistful thought that long ago he had been taught them, that he had knelt while he said them, and that they were good words.

And none can be far from God who say those words in truth, not even poor Albrecht, who knew no more to say. For dimly, un knowing it all the time, he held God's hand in the dark. And what can the wisest, or the strongest, or the best in all the world do but this? And the angels kept little Albrecht night and day. The old, sweet, tender words speaking rest, love, obedience, and faith, kept somehow his heart more tender, somehow kept him from wrong. He could not steal with his companions, nor be false, nor cruel as they-he with no Bible to persuade, to warn, to entreat, to guide, he with no kind friendly voices to lead to goodness, and to God and truth. But Albrecht treasured his little, his one grain, his mite. Ah! who shall say it was little-those rich, full, gracious words. And the good God taught him-alone in the gypsy camp.

Sometimes when the stars came out-was it a dream, or a memory?-he thought how somebody had told him of One who made night and summer. Was it the 'Our Father?' Albrecht longed to know, and he asked the gypsy Miriam, but she could tell him nothing. She had no word for God-she had never heard of heaven, except as the sky above that rained or shone upon them.

IV.

'Twas night in a Bohemian forest, and the gypsies were there.

Miriam was dead and buried in a grave

far away. Covey was twelve years old, a thoughtful, lonely boy, jealously watched by the gypsies, now that his friend was gone.

On the edge of the forest was a village, and in the village an inn. Many travellers lingered there in the beautiful months of Spring. Its neighbourhood suited the gypsies. The men sold their mats and their baskets. The women told fortunes and begged. It was always the gypsies' harvest when a village was near, and an inn.

Covey sold his baskets with the rest all the long day; but when the stars were out and the gypsies were gathering to their camp, he stole away, as was his wont, to a lonely part of the wood.

It was a lovely night to see. Never glowed such stars; never perfume of violets floated sweeter than here. And Covey knelt on the violet bed, and looked far up through the young leaves, and clasped his hands and said, 'Our Father—for Jesus' sake.'

When he rose he saw that a lady and gentleman were by him.

'Poor boy,' said the lady, and tears were in her eyes; her face was grief-stricken and worn, and she bent above him, and touched him with her hand. Covey looked up confusedly; he thought he was alone.

'Poor boy, what do you mean by these words?'

'I dont know, ma'am.'

'Dont know! then why do you say them?'
Somebody taught them to me.'
'Who?'

'I dont know, ma'am.'

But they would teach you something else than this.

'No, I have forgotten.'

'Forgotten? then it is long ago.' 'Yes,' said Covey, and he did not know why, but tears gathered in his eyes, and trickled over his tanned cheeks.'

'Was it your mother?' asked the lady.
'I dont know, I dont know my mother.'
'What is your name?'
They call me "Covey."
'Have you no other?'

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But the boy

An eager, burning flush came over the

FLOWERS.

lady's face-one agonizing pang of sudden hope and fear. Albrecht!' she said in a voice that trembled with suspense.

And then such a sudden flash shot from the blue Saxon eyes, such a sudden bounding step forward, such an eager, out-stretched hand.

'O that was my name,' said the boy, ''twas the name my mother called me.'

And like a forgotten dream came back the old buried infancy, the castle in the woods, and his nurse, and the violets, and his mother's room-the very tones of that fond voice thrilled through the wild gypsy boy, the voice that said to his babyhood, 'God cares for my little Albrecht'-and 'God is Love.' And he said the words aloud, taking up the thread of his life, as it seemed, in that long ago.

The mother clasped her child; and Albrecht went back to his father's house, and lived happy in the rich love of his home and his inheritance. And there he learned the rest of that prayer, which his childish years had missed; learned of the God who had kept him while his pleading was but a

name.

TRUE WISDOM.

OMETIMES in a single word one gets SOM a whole system of philosophy, or a whole system of theology. The other

Sabbath evening I had all my Sabbath school before me, and was examining them upon the lesson. You will see from the 'Dayspring' what Sabbath of March it was, when I tell you that the lesson was upon 'Jesus in the temple.' I had spoken for a little to the children in reference to Jesus being about His Father's business, and what delight He took in the work; then, about His being subject to His parents, and, last of all, about His increasing in stature, and in unsdom. I put the following question'what is the truest wisdom?' expecting the answer-'the fear of the Lord.' Look

ing straight before me to where the older pupils were seated, I had quite forgotten a class of children whose ages might range from six to eight years. I might have

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thought on them, for in passing the class I had more than once observed that their teacher had the art of engaging and keeping up their attention, and that it was one of the quietest classes in the school. No answer to my question-when a tiny voice from the corner chirruped the one word 'LOVE.' 'Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained strength.' For love is the highest and truest wisdom; it was the wisdom of Him who so loved us that he gave himself for us. He who is the WISDOM of God, is at the same time the fruit and pledge of the love of God; and God Himself who is LOVE, is the only WISE God.

The wisest thing man, woman, or child can do, is to love God, and he who loves God most truly, is the man who has made the greatest advance in wisdom.

FLOWERS.

BUDS and bells; sweet April pleasures, Springing all around,

White and gold and crimson treasures,

From the cold, unlovely ground.
He who gave them grace and hue
Made the little children too.

When the weary little flowers
Close their starry eyes,
By the dark and dewy hours

Strength and freshness God supplies. He who sends the gentle dew,

Cares for little children too.

Then He gives the pleasant weather,
Sunshine warm and free,
Making all things glad together,

Kind to them and kind to me.
Lovely flowers! He loveth you,

And the little children too.

Though we cannot hear you singing

Softly chiming lays,

Surely God can see you bringing

Silent songs of wordless praise! Hears your anthem sweet and true, Hears the little children too.

FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL.

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The young ones still slowly followed, apparently flying better as they mounted; and they continued this sublime kind of exercise, always rising, till they became mere points in the air, and the young ones were lost, and afterwards their parents, to our aching sight.'

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The care of the eagle for her young is a beautiful emblem of how the Lord cares for His own people. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings; so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange God with him.' Deut. xxxii. 11, 12.

The great strength of the eagle, and the height to which it soars even in old age, is an image of how the Lord's people become stronger and stronger. They that

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SIR

THE EAGLE.

IR HUMPHREY DAVY had an opportunity of witnessing two eagles training their eaglets, and has thus stated his observations:

'I once saw a very interesting sight above one of the crags of Ben Nevis. Two parent eagles were teaching their offspring, two young birds, the manœuvres of flight. They began by rising from the top of a mountain, in the eye of the sun. It was about mid-day, and bright for this climate. They at first made small circles, and the young birds imitated them. They paused on their wings; waiting till they had made their first flight, and then took a second and larger gyration, always rising towards the sun, and enlarging their circle of flight, so as to make gradually extending spiral.

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wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.'

'What is that mother?'

'The eagle, boy! Proudly careering his course of joy,

Firm, on his own mountain vigour relying, Breasting the dark storm, the red bolt defying;

His wing on the wind, and his eye on the sun,

He swerves not a hair, but bears onward, right on. Boy, may the eagle's flight ever be thine, Onward, and upward, and true to the line.'

BIBLE IMAGES.-THE DAYS OF A TREE.

BIBLE IMAGES.-THE DAYS OF A TREE.

IDARESAY you never thought that a

tree had days until one morning father was reading at worship, and he came upon the 65th of Isaiah, and read the 22nd verse, which says, 'as the days of a tree are the days of my people.' And even then perhaps you might not have thought of it, if he had'nt made a pause, and asked you to remember that a tree had days, and that such days as it had, God promised to give to his own people. Now, I would like just to ask the young people who read the 'Dayspring,' to try to understand about the days of a tree. It is a very curious expression, but it is full of meaning, and has a great deal of beauty about it.

Trees, you must remember at the outset, are plants, and there are in the world a great

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many different kinds of plants. Now, don't suppose that I am going to put on a Professor's gown and be a very learned man, and tell you all about plants and define their differences. I am only going to speak about what you may see in the garden every year. There are some plants there which you must sow every year, or which, to save you the trouble, sow themselves. Such a plant enjoys only one year's life-but then it prepares for itself seed year by year, which is sown, and next year produces a plant which lives a year, and follows the example of its parent. That is an annual, and you know how every spring the gardener goes to the seedsman and gets a packet of sweet annual seed which he sows, and waits patiently for the flowers which bloom in beauty, or the vegetables which grow up for use and comfort. Then there are other plants which last for two years or more; and there are bushes and herbaceous plants which last a long time. But the trees were there when Lucy first came into the world; and the little birds, when she first heard their sweet songs, perched in the branches of the same tree from which they now with merry heart descend to pick up the crumbs, which, now that she has become a thoughtful kind hearted little lassie, she carries out of a winter's morning to dear kind robin. Ah! it is many a day since that tree began its life. Long, long before Lucy was a little girl the tree lived-perhaps even before father lived, for some trees live a long time, and survive many generations of men. And yet, if we went away back to the beginning of the tree's life we wolud find it had a morning.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, in one of His parables, tells us of a little seed, smaller, he says, than any other seed, which yet when it has grown up becomes a great tree, giving shelter to all the birds of the air. Many days have intervened between the first sprouting of the seed and the perfect tree. There was a time when a little worm might have killed the tree, but now it has

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THE THIRD COMMANDMENT.

strengthened itself in the soil and taken deep root; and its fair boughs will spread abroad in the sunshine and the rain for many a year, giving useful shelter and shade to many a weary bird and traveller. Oh! children, if you could only listen to the tale which that tree could tell of the many years that have passed since it first grew up and showed face in the world, you would not pass it by without a kindly smile, and saying, God bless you happy tree, for I know that if God makes you so green and beautiful, He will make me full of beauty too.'

There is a morning life of trees. when they are young, and bend to every wind; a midday life, when they have gathered strength, and in the full vigour of manhood can stem the blast and give shelter to the prudent owner of the mansion house, who in the heyday of youth was wise enough to plant them; and an old age of trees, when in the sere and yellow leaf they seem in the gradual decay of their beauty and vigour, gently to resign themselves to that inevitable fate which awaits all earthly things. Yet even then they linger long. I seem as I write to sit under the shade of two venerable trees, whose acquaintance I first made twenty years ago-old yew trees, dark and sombre, and with many a hole worn in their aged trunks-but which when I paid them a visit last summer, were quite unchanged.

There are older trees than these in the world. The cedars of Lebanon, about which you read in Kings and in the book of Psalms, are older far; and travellers tell us of trees in California which are supposed to have been living beings in the days of Abraham and Isaac. Ah! if you were to take your slate and calculate, you would find it difficult to tell me how many days that is agoso far off is it in the forgotten ages of the past! And yet these days are as nothing, little friends, to the happy days of God's own people. If you love God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the children's friend, your days will never end. And as age after age, those old trees have gone on year by year, standing tall and stately in their growth, crowned with verdure, and giving shelter and shade to all God's winged

creatures-still sending forth their song of praise with the help of the feathered songsters that nestle in the boughs, or the murmured anthem of the bees which hive within their dark recesses; 80 in the countless ages of eternity shall you live to praise and bless your God and Father. For the righteous shall flourish as the palm tree-he shall grow as the cedar in Lebanon.'

THE THIRD COMMANDMENT.

HOW sad to think that even Sabbath

scholars forget this commandment! While passing along the street I heard the name of God profanely used by one of a number of boys who were quarrelling in their play. On stepping near, what was my astonishment when I found that the swearer was one of our scholars! He had not yet become so hardened in this sin as many I have met, for he hung his head, and appeared conscious of his guilt. I brought the third commandment to his recollection, and also reminded him that 'the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good'- -even in this place while he was engaged in play. The other boys listened respectfully, and all promised to guard against the sin--the prevailing sin— of taking the name of God in vain.

A thief may imagine he can get rich by stealing; a liar may fancy he can gain something by falsehood and deceit; a drunkard may dream of happiness in the wine cup, but what can a swearer get by his oaths? Truly he serves the devil for nothing.

I knew a boy who indulged in this habit after he left the Sabbath school; I think he he acquired it at the theatre. He soon afterwards learned to smoke, then to drink; and he would tell any number of lies to get whisky. He brought his father's grey hairs with sorrow to the grave; and he followed shortly afterwards himself—a sad victim to habits which are more easily learned than got rid of. 'Seek ye the Lord while He may be found.' 'They that seek Me early shall find Me.'

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