ng near to her in sorrows, taking cognizance of her
grief, and gently smoothing her path in life. But it was not only by
precept that she taught us; her life was a living epistle. One morning
as the winter was advancing I heard her say she hoped she would be able
to get a nice woolen shawl, as hers was getting worse for wear. Shortly
after I went out into the street and found a roll of money lying at my
feet. Oh I remember it as well as if it had just occurred. How my heart
bounded with joy. 'Here,' I said to myself, 'is money enough to buy
mother a shawl and bonnet. Oh I am so glad,' and hurrying home I laid it
in her lap and said with boyish glee, 'Hurrah for your new shawl; look
what I found in the street.'"

"What is it my son?" she said.

"Why here is money enough to buy you a new shawl and bonnet too." It
seems as if I see her now, as she looked, when she laid it aside, and
said----

"But James, it is not ours?"

"Not ours, mother, why I found it in the street!"

"Still it is not ours."

"Why mother ain`t you going to keep it?"

"No my son, I shall go down to the _Clarion_ office and advertise it."

"But mother why not wait till it is advertised?"

"And what then?"

"If there is no owner for it, then we can keep it."

"James" she said calmly and sadly, "I am very sorry to see you so ready
to use what is not your own. I should not feel that I was dealing
justly, if I kept this money without endeavoring to find the owner."

"I confess that I was rather chopfallen at her decision, but in a few
days after advertising we found the rightful owner. She was a very poor
woman who had saved by dint of hard labor the sum of twenty dollars, and
was on her way to pay the doctor who had attended her during a spell of
rheumatic fever, when she lost the money and had not one dollar left to
pay for advertising and being disheartened, she had given up all hope of
finding it, when she happened to see it advertised in the paper. She was
very grateful to my mother for restoring the money and offered her some
compensation, but she refused to take it, saying she had only done her
duty, and would have been ashamed of herself had she not done so. Her
conduct on this occasion made an impression on my mind that has never
been erased. When I grew older she explained to me about my father's
affairs, and uncancelled debts, and I resolved that I would liquidate
every just claim against him, and take from his memory even the shadow