d, "is by
Miss Elsie Carleton."

There was a little flutter of excitement as Elsie rose--as the brightest
girl in the school, a good deal was expected of her. Some of the girls
noticed with surprise, that Elsie had grown rather pale, but her voice
was as calm and superior as ever, when she unfolded her paper, and
began:

"GOD KNOWS.

"Oh, wild and dark was the winter's night
When the emigrant ship went down,
But just outside the harbor bar,
In the sight of the startled town.
And the wind howled, and the sea roared,
And never a soul could sleep,
Save the little ones on their mothers' breasts,
Too young to watch and weep.

"No boat could live in that angry surf,
No rope could reach the land--
There were bold, brave hearts upon the shore;
There was many a helping hand;
Men who strove, and women who prayed,
Till work and prayer were vain;
And the sun rose over that awful void,
And the silence of the main.

"All day the watchers paced the sand;
All day they scanned the deep;
All night the booming minute guns
Echoed from steep to steep.
'Give up thy dead, oh cruel sea!'
They cried athwart the space,
But only a baby's fragile form
Escaped from its stern embrace.

"Only one little child of all,
Who with the ship went down,
That night while the happy babies slept
All warm in the sheltered town.
There in the glow of the morning light
It lay on the shifting sand,
Pure as a sculptor's marble dream,
With a shell in its dimpled hand.

"There were none to tell of its race or kin--
'God knows,' the pastor said,
When the sobbing children crowded to ask
The name of the baby dead.
And so when they laid it away at last,
In the churchyard's hushed repose,
They raised a slab at the baby's head,
With the carven words 'God knows.'"

There was a general murmur of admiration, as Elsie sat down again, in
the midst of a burst of applause louder than had greeted any of the
other productions.

"Wasn't it lovely?" whispered Winifred to Jack, as she wipe