Thine angels make her, innocent and mild!

I rise and bless Thee, for the morning hours;
Refreshed and gladdened by a timely rest,
When thoughts like bees, rove out among the flowers,
Still gathering honey where they find the best:
And for the gentle influence of the night,
Oh, Heavenly Father! do we bend the knee,
That shuts the curtains of our mortal sight,
Yet leaves the mind, with range and vision free,
For dreams! the solemn, weird, and strange that come
And bear the soul to an elysian clime,--
Unveiling splendours of that better home,
Where angels minister to sons of time!
For all Thy blessings that with sleep descend,
Our hearts shall praise Thee, God, our Father and our Friend!

AN ANGEL IN EVERY HOUSE.

IT is a trite saying, and an unique one, that there is "a skeleton
in every house." That every form however erect, that every face
however smiling, covers some secret malady of mind that no physician
can cure. This may be true, and undoubtedly is; but we contend that,
as everything has its opposite, there is also an _angel_ in every
house. No matter how fallen the inmates, how depressing their
circumstances, there is an angel there to pity or to cheer. It may
be in the presence of a wrinkled body, treading the downward path to
the grave. Or, perhaps, in a cheerful spirit looking upon the ills
of life as so many steps toward heaven, if only bravely overcome,
and mounted with sinless feet.

We knew such an angel once, and it was a drunkard's child. On every
side wherever she moved she saw only misery and degradation, and yet
she did not fall. Her father was brutal, and her mother discouraged,
and her home thoroughly comfortless. But she struggled along with
angel endurance, bearing with an almost saintly patience the
infirmities of him who gave her existence, and then hourly
embittered it. Night after night, at the hours of ten, twelve, and
even one, barefoot, ragged, shawlless, and bonnetless, has she been
to the den of the drunkard, and gone staggering home with her arm
around her father. Many a time has her flesh been blue with the mark
of his hand when she has stepped in between her helpless mother and
violence. Many a time has she sat upon the cold curbstone with his
head in her lap; many a time known how bitter it was to cry for
hunger, when the money that should have bought bread was spent for
rum.

And the patience that the angel wrought with made