f "No, no! never!" from old and young. Job smites his wooden leg, and
exclaims, with enthusiasm, "Not that, by a long thread!")

"Well," continues Father Brighthopes, with suffused features, "I thank
you. I hope you will remember me, as I shall remember you. God has been
very good to me, in giving me friends, all my life long."

"You deserve them, if anybody does," whispers Job, loud enough to be
heard by the entire audience.

He rubs his hands as if he meant it.

"Let me give you a little hint about getting and keeping friends," adds
the clergyman, smiling around upon the old people in the chairs, and the
young people on the grass or standing up. "I thank Brother Job for
suggesting the thought."

"Hear, hear!" says Mr. Royden, pulling Willie away from the speaker's
legs, and silencing Georgie, who is inclined to blow his grass
"squawker."

"My friends have generally been of the right kind," proceeds the old
man. "If you wish to have your friends of the right kind,"--glancing at
the younger portion of the audience,--"I'll tell you how to go to work.

"Be always ready to lend a helping hand to those who need assistance. Do
so with a hearty good will, not feeling as though you were throwing
something away; for, although you get no material return,--which should
be the last thing to expect,--you will find in the end that you have
been exercising your own capacities for happiness, which grow with their
use. Do good for the sake of good, and you will see that the bread thus
cast upon the waters comes right back to feed your own hungry souls.

"Be ready to sacrifice all externals to friendship, but maintain your
integrity. Give the glittering bubbles of the stream and the current
will still be yours, clear and strong as ever. What I mean is, abandon
circumstances and outside comforts for the sake of those you love, but
never desert a principle to follow any man or set of men. If you do, few
friends will be obtained, and they will not be firmly attached; while
many who would soon have come round to you will be lost forever. But
plant yourself on the rock of principle; and, however men may shun it at
first, it shall in the end prove a magnet to draw all true souls to
your standard. Royal hearts shall then be yours. They can rely on you,
and you on them; so there will be no falling off, when the wind shifts
to the northeast. Truth is the sun which holds friends in their orbits,
like revolving planets, by the power of its