is wife as he spoke, "that I have not been able to make
out."

"What is that?" asked Mrs. Brainard, smiling.

"Where the last one hundred and seventy dollars you gave me came
from."

"Have you missed nothing?" said she, archly.

"Nothing," was his reply.

"Been deprived of no comfort?"

"So far from it, I have found a great many new ones."

"And been saved the trouble of winding up and regulating that pretty
eight-day clock for which you gave forty dollars."

Brainard fairly started to his feet as he turned to the mantel, and,
strange to say, missed, for the first time, the handsome timepiece
referred to by his wife.

"Why, Anna, is it possible? Surely that hasn't been gone for two
months!"

"Oh, yes, it has."

"Well, that beats all."

And Brainard resumed his chair.

"You've been just as comfortable," said the excellent young woman.

"But you didn't get a hundred and seventy dollars for the
timepiece?"

"No. Have you lost no other comfort? Think."

Brainard thought, but in vain. Anna glided from the room, and
returned in a few moments with her jewel-box.

"Do you miss any thing?" said she, as she raised the lid and placed
the box in his hands.

"Your watch and chain!"

Anna smiled.

"You did not sell them?"

"Yes."

"Why, Anna! Did you set no value on your husband's gifts?"

There was a slight rebuke in the tone of Brainard. Tears sprang to
Anna's eyes, as she answered--"I valued them less than his
happiness."

Brainard looked at her for a few moments with an expression of deep
tenderness. Then turning to me, he said, in a voice that was
unsteady from emotion--"You shall be my judge. Has she done wrong or
right?"

"Right!" I responded, warmly. "Right! thank Heaven, my friend, for
giving you a true woman for a wife. There is some hope now of your
finding the comfort you sought so vainly in the beginning."

And he has found it--found it in a wise appropriation, of the good
gifts of Providence according to his means.

CHILDREN--A FAMILY SCENE.

"MOTHER!"

"As I was saying"--

"Mother!"

"Miss Jones wore a white figured satin"--

"Oh! mother!"

"With short sleeves"--

"Mother! mother!"

"Looped up with a small rosebud"--

"I say! mother! mother!"

The child now caught hold of her mother's arm, and shook it
violently, in her effort to gain the attention she desired, while
her voice, which at first was low, had become loud and impatient.
Mrs. Elder, no longer a