ou say it first," said one of the children to her little hostess,
"because it is your birthday."

At a nod from her mother, the little girl said the Selkirk grace:--

"Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit."

Then another small girl said her grace, which was Herrick's:--

"Here a little child I stand,
Heaving up my either hand;
Cold as paddocks though they be,
Here I lift them up to Thee,
For a benison to fall
On our meat and on us all
Amen."

The next little girl said Stevenson's:--

"It is very nice to think
The world is full of meat and drink,
And little children saying grace
In every Christian kind of place."

The succeeding little guests said the dear and familiar "blessing" of so
many children:--

"For what we are about to receive, O Lord, make us truly thankful."

My little friend into whose life so grievous a sorrow had come was the
last to say her grace. It was the poem of Miss Josephine Preston Peabody
entitled "Before Meat:--

"Hunger of the world.
When we ask a grace
Be remembered here with us,
By the vacant place.

"Thirst with nought to drink,
Sorrow more than mine,
May God some day make you laugh,
With water turned to wine!"

There was a silence when she finished, among the children as well as
among the grown persons present. "I don't _quite_ understand what your
grace means," the little girl of the house said at last to her small
guest.

"It means that I still have my mamma, and she still has me," replied the
child. "Some people haven't anybody. It means that; and it means we ask
God to let them have Him. My mamma told me, when she taught it to me to
say instead of the grace I used to say when we had my papa."

The little girl explained with the simple seriousness and sweetness so
characteristic of the answers children make to questions asked them
regarding things in any degree mystical. The other small girls listened
as sweetly and as seriously. Then, with one accord, they returned to the
gay delights of the occasion. They were a laughing, prattling, eagerly
happy little party, and of them all not one was more blithe than the
little girl who had said grace last.

The child's intimate companionship with her mother in the sorrow which
was her sorrow too had not taken from her the ability for participation
in childish happiness, also hers by right. Was not this because the
companionship was o