or her suffering. The
poor child threw herself on her mother, gazing upward in want, and
grief, and bewilderment, in her face. "My Charles," said the mother,
feeling about with the other hand, but she did not find his head to
bless it. "My Charles," she repeated in a fainter tone, and her eyelids
drooped over the hot eyes.

Paulett saw nothing but his suffering wife, heard nothing except her
painful breath. At that moment the door opened, and Charles stood there,
paler than ever, with glittering eyes. He held the cup towards his
father. "Father," he said, "there is water coming down from heaven!"

Paulett looked up and cried, "O God, it rains!"

A TENDER CONSCIENCE.

I have a story to tell you, my dear Eusebius, of a tender conscience. It
will please you; for you delight to extract good out of evil, and find
something ever to say in favour of the "poor wretches of this world's
coinage," as you call them; thus gently throwing half their errors, and
scattering them among a pretty large society to be responsible for them;
provided only they be wretches by confession, that dare not hide
themselves in hypocrisy. In all such cases you show that you were born
with the genius of a beadle, and (strange conjunction) the tenderest of
hearts. I believe that you would stand an hour at a pillory, and see
full justice done to a delinquent of that caste; and would as willingly,
in your own person, receive the missiles that you would attempt to ward
off from the contrite wretch, whose sins might not have been woefully
against human kindness. Could you choose your seat in the eternal
mansions, it would be among the angels that rejoice over one sinner that
repenteth. You can distinguish in another the feeblest light of
conscience that ever dimly burned, and see in it the germ of a beautiful
light, that may one day, by a little fanning and fostering, shine as a
star, and shed a vital heat that may set the machinery of the heart in
motion to throw off glorious actions. But let not the man that shams a
conscience come in your way. I have seen you play off such an one till
he has burst forth--up, up, up, aiming at the skies, nothing less, in
his self-glorification; and how have you despised him, and exhibited him
to all bystanders as nothing but a poor stick in his descent! These
human rockets are at their best but falling stars--cinders incapable of
being rekindled. Commend me to the modest glow-worms, that shine only
when they t