ppropriately decorated. The music
was good, the responses of the congregation hearty, and the service
altogether was much better adapted to awaken and sustain the interest
of a child than those I had hitherto been to in London.

"You know we _couldn't_ play houses in the church where Papa goes," I
told Polly on my return, and I was very anxious that she should go
with us to the evening service. She did go, but I am bound to confess
that she decided on a loyal preference for the service to which she
had been accustomed, and, like sensible people, we agreed to differ in
our tastes.

"There's no clerk at your church, you know," said Polly, to whom a gap
in the threefold ministry of clerk, reader, and preacher, symbolized
by the "three-decker" pulpit, was ill atoned for by the chanting of
the choir.

In quite a different way, I was as much impressed by the sermons at
the new church as I had been by that which cost me a tooth.

One sermon especially upon the duties of visiting the sick and
imprisoned, feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked, made an
impression on me that years did not efface. I made the most earnest
resolutions to be active in deeds of kindness "when I was a man,"
and, not being troubled by considerations of political economy, I
began my charitable career by dividing what pocket money I had in hand
amongst the street-sweepers and mendicants nearest to our square.

I soon converted Polly to my way of thinking; and we put up a
money-box in the nursery, in imitation of the alms-box in church. I am
ashamed to confess that I was guilty of the meanness of changing a
sixpence which I had dedicated to our "charity-box" into twelve
half-pence, that I might have the satisfaction of making a dozen
distinct contributions to the fund.

But, despite all its follies, vanities, and imperfections (and what
human efforts for good are not stained with folly, vanity, and
imperfection?), our benevolence was not without sincerity or
self-denial, and brought its own invariable reward of increased
willingness to do more; according to the deep wisdom of the poet--

"In doing is this knowledge won:
To see what yet remains undone."

We really did forego many a toy and treat to add to our charitable
store; and I began then a habit of taxing what money I possessed, by
taking off a fixed proportion for "charity," which I have never
discontinued, and to the advantages of which I can most heartily
testify. When a self