fe makes sport,
Can prosper never;
Who rules himself in nought,
Is a slave ever.

1139

A MISSION FOR EVERY ONE.

Think not thou livest in vain,
Or that one honest pain
Of thine is lost.
He, who in loving care,
Numbers thine every hair,
Knows all the cost.

No lightest care of thine
Escapes His love divine;
No smile's forgot,
Nor cup of water given.
Each tender, loving deed,
Like some strange, precious seed,
Shall bear its fruit in heaven.

Nor dream, if thou wert gone
From out life's troubled throng
Thou'dst not be missed.
Thou knowest not what heart,
That lives in gloom apart,
Would find its sunshine fled
If thou wert dead--
What slender thread of faith would break
If thou shouldest prove untrue.

The flower that blooms in desert place
And lifts its head with winsome grace,
Might sigh: "Alas; ah, me:
Why should I live where none can see?"
But He who made both field and flood,
Hath formed that flower and called it good,
And in His wisdom placed it there
To make the desert seem more fair:
And if He then hath need of flowers
To deck this barren world of ours,
He hath a use for thee!

1140

YOUTH, MANHOOD, OLD AGE.

How small a portion of our life it is, that we really enjoy. In youth,
we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age, we are
looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we
appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even
that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on
some future day, when we have time.

1141

Our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

--_Shakespeare._

1142

LIFE REPRESENTED BY A NEWSPAPER.

This folio of four pages, happy work!
Which not even critics criticize, that holds
Inquisitive attention while I read--
What is it, but a busy map of life,
Its fluctuations and its vast concerns?

1143

The acts of this life are the destiny of the next.

--_Chinese._

1144

There are three whose life is no life:--
He who lives at another's table;
He whose wife domineers over him;
And he who suffers bodily affliction.