t mind which;
Or learning Latin, or digging ditch;
I love him all the same.
With high, brave heart perform your part,
Be noble and kind as he,
Then, some fair morning, when you pass,
Fresh from glad dreams, before your glass,
His likeness you may see.
You are puzzled? What! you think there is not
A boy like him,--surmise
That he is only a bright ideal?
But you have power to make him real,
And clothe him to our eyes.
You have rightly guessed: in each pure breast
Is his abiding-place.
Then let your own true life portray
His beauty, and blossom day by day
With something of his grace.
J. T. Trowbridge.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
For the Companion.
A TRUE STORY.
A few years ago a couple of good women living together near one of our
great cities took two or three orphan children into their home.
As time passed, other helpless, friendless little ones came to them,
until they had thirty under their care. Their own means they gave to the
last dollar, and for the rest they trusted God, living from week to week
on the contributions of the charitable, but making it a rule to ask help
of nobody but Him who has promised to be a father to the fatherless.
Last winter one of their friends published a short account of this
little home, and happening to meet that day a gentleman well known as a
financier all over the country, handed it to him.
"This Home is but a mile or two from your house, Mr. C------," he said.
"Yes," said Mr. C------, carelessly; "I have heard of it. Kept up by
prayer and faith, eh?"
"Yes. A bad capital for business, I fancy."
Mr. C------ thrust the paper in his pocket, and thought no more about
it. That night at about eleven o'clock he was sitting toasting his feet
before going to bed, when there was a tap at his door, and his daughter
came in with the paper in her hand and her cheeks burning with
excitement.
"Father, I've been reading about this Orphan Home. We never have done
anything for it"---
"And you wish to help the orphans, do you? Very well, we will look into
the matter to-morrow."
She hesitated. "Father, I want to do it to-night."
It was a bitter night in December; the snow lay upon the ground. "The
horses and coachman are asleep long ago. Nonsense, my dear; wait until
morning."
"Something tells me we ought to go now," she pleaded, with tears in her
eyes.
Mr. C------ yielded; he even c
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