iscontent, recognizes and
resents it, or fails to see it, would laugh at its possibility, and pity
the sentimentalist who imagined it. And there are dear, blooming,
merry-hearted, clear-eyed young women who are as gay and as elastic as
bird on bough or flower in field.

To discontented girls I would say, there is for you one panacea--Work;
and there is one refuge--Christ. Have you been told this before? Do you
say that you can find no work worth the doing? Believe me, if not in
your own home, you need go no further than your own set, your own
street, your own town, to discover it waiting for you. No one else can
do it so well. Perhaps no one else can do it at all. The girl can not be
unhappy who, without reserve and with full surrender, consecrates
herself to Christ, for then will she have work enough.--MARGARET E.
SANGSTER.

God giveth his beloved rest through action
Which reacheth for the dream of joy on earth;
Inertness brings the heart no satisfaction,
But condemnation and the sense of dearth.

And shall the dream of life, the quenchless yearning
For something which is yet beyond control,
The flame within the breast forever burning,
Not leap to action and exalt the soul?--

Surmount all barriers to brave endeavor,
Make for itself a way where it would go,
And flash the crown of ecstacy forever,
Which only laborers with God may know?

In action there is joy which is no fiction,
The hope of something as in faith begun,
God's sweet and everlasting benediction,
The flush of victory and labor done!

Labor puts on the livery of greatness,
While genius idle withers from the sight,
And in its triumph takes no note of lateness,
For time exists not in Eternal Light.

* * * * *

LI.

THE VOICE IN RAMAH.

"RACHEL WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN, AND WOULD NOT HE COMFORTED, BECAUSE
THEY WERE NOT."

We have heard the voice in Ramah,
The grief in the days of yore,
When the beautiful "flowers of the martyrs"
Went to bloom on another shore.

The light of our life is darkness,
And with sorrow we are not done;
For thine is the bitterest mourning,
Mourning for an only son!

And what shall I utter to comfort
The heart that is dearest of all?
Too young for the losses and crosses,
Too young for the rise and the fall?

O,