little
Susan; and immediately she began,--

"How sweet is the day,
When, leaving our play,
The Saviour we seek!
The fair morning glows
When Jesus arose--
The best in the week."

Master William helped along with great spirit in the singing of this
tune, though I heard him observing, at the end of the first verse, that
he liked the other one better, because "it seemed to step off so kind o'
lively;" and his accommodating sister followed him as he began singing
it again with redoubled animation.

It was a beautiful summer morning, and the voices of the children within
accorded well with the notes of birds and bleating flocks without--a
cheerful, yet Sabbath-like and quieting sound.

"Blessed be children's music!" said I to myself; "how much better this
is than the solitary tick, tick, of old Uncle Fletcher's tall mahogany
clock!"

The family bell summoned us to the breakfast room just as the children
had finished their hymn. The little breakfast parlor had been swept and
garnished expressly for the day, and a vase of beautiful flowers, which
the children had the day before collected from their gardens, adorned
the centre table. The door of one of the bookcases by the fireplace was
thrown open, presenting to view a collection of prettily bound books,
over the top of which appeared in gilt letters the inscription, "Sabbath
Library." The windows were thrown open to let in the invigorating breath
of the early morning, and the birds that flitted among the rosebushes
without seemed scarcely lighter and more buoyant than did the children
as they entered the room. It was legibly written on every face in the
house, that the happiest day in the week had arrived, and each one
seemed to enter into its duties with a whole soul. It was still early
when the breakfast and the season of family devotion were over, and the
children eagerly gathered round the table to get a sight of the pictures
in the new books which their father had purchased in New York the week
before, and which had been reserved as a Sunday's treat. They were a
beautiful edition of Calmet's Dictionary, in several large volumes, with
very superior engravings.

"It seems to me that this work must be very expensive," I remarked to my
friend, as we were turning the leaves.

"Indeed it is so," he replied; "but here is one place where I am less
withheld by considerations of expense than in any other. In all that
concerns making a show i