religious instruction. He was a very eager, intelligent disciple, and took in everything I told him with a bright understanding that was quite refreshing by comparison with some others of my pupils. His was indeed an innocent, bright mind; a pure, generous heart.

In a very short time I had the happiness of receiving him into the Church, and not a day too soon, for that very week he was seized with the first of those terrible attacks of heartfailure which were to cost him his young life.

To-night, as I finger my breviary, alone in my cell, my thoughts are full of him. For only an hour ago I left the military hospital where poor Corporal M'Ilroy sleeps his last sleep, a smile of ineffable peace on his young face. Let us hope that in God's mercy and goodness he has met the mother whom he loved.

NORA TYNAN O'MAHONY.

SWEET AND LATE

SWEET are roses after rain,

And sweet and green is aftermath,
Where stood but now the unripe grain,

And lonely is the forest path

Where one gold leaf already hath

'Neath hasty foot of summer lain.

Come in, come in, and close the gate.
Love is sweet, if joy be late!

Oh, sweet's the glory of the blue,
When dawn's wild lights are lost in it,

And nothing's seen but what is true,
When noon's bright glare has cooled a bit,
And sun-down clouds are out of view.
Come in and rest, O pilgrim soul.
Love and faith have won the goal!

R. M. G.

L

ABOUT A NAMELESS PICTURE

AST summer, in company with a friend, I spent a long day in exploring the Musée de Picardie in Amiens. After viewing many works, whose chief quality lay in their richness of colour and in other technical merits that made me contemplate them with more curiosity than emotion, I saw in a corner a medium-sized picture, without name or catalogue number, before which I stood for a long time motionless. There were but two figures on the canvas. A peasant girl was bearing in her arms, across the fields, a dying old woman. At the first glance, I said, "One is the mother and the other the daughter." In the face of the girl, who was not beautiful, there was expressed a concentrated sorrow-silent, tranquil; the sorrow of despair, the sorrow of the poor, of the destitute, that recognizes fully its insignificance, and resigns itself to the blows of destiny; that expects no relief beyond itself. The landscape was lonely, and it likewise was not beautiful. The sun was setting; on the summits of the sombre mountains there was a ruddy glow that heightened the melancholy aspect of the country, which was already marked. The figures of those peasants were painted with a marvellous sentiment of reality. The artist had not sought to make his picture beautiful externally; the patched garments, poor and coarse, the shoes dirty and torn, the hands disfigured by toil, all the details were painted with a frankness, with a courage, that made a vivid impression. There were no elegant combinations, no delicate touches, the artist did not coquette with the spectator; with firm hand he raised the curtain, and said, "Behold and feel, if thou canst, that which I have felt." I responded to his call. I felt that peculiar sensation that everybody knows, something like a shiver, and something like tears came into my eyes. In that unnamed picture there was nothing to regale the eyes; why, then, did it impress so strongly ? Undoubtedly because of the idea, the idea of sorrow, the grandest of all. There the sorrow felt by the artist was just as it was expressed in Nature. If into the face of the girl there had been put a nervous contraction, a dramatic look, the same effect would not have been attained:

we should soon have divined that it could not have been felt, and, therefore, it would have been absolutely impossible to make others feel it. The secret of that work of art was, therefore, as in all others that merit the name, neither in the subject, nor the composition, nor the execution; it lay, pure and simple, in having felt Nature well and sincerely.

L'arte vòstra quella, quanto puòte,

Segue, come il maèstro fa il discènte;
Si che vòstr' arte a Dio quási è nipote.

And with this truism, so beautifully expressed by Dante, we take leave of our picture.

R. M. SILLARD

VESPERS

Now all is still, but song of lark

And chiming bell of distant sheep.

The shadows of the wheat stooks creep,

Slanting to eastward, long and dark.

Yet in the hush is clearly heard

Earth's vespers. Sings the ripened wheat
An undertone of praise. High, sweet
Sounds the glad hymning of the bird.

Each fleeting shadow of the leaf

Makes melody-the heaven is deep
And holy-voiced. The sun doth steep

Inffire the brow of every sheaf.

Night breathes her spices on the air;

Now shadows reach from stook to stook;
The sky is cleft by homing rook;

And earth is full of peace and prayer.

AGNES BLUNdell.

IN

A GOOD TONGUE-THRASHING

N the title of this little paper the word thrashing is to be understood in a passive sense; it is the tongue itself that is in the present case to get the thrashing. Denunciations indeed much milder than those administered by the Holy Ghost through the inspired pen of the Apostle St. James. I find in one of my pigeon-holes two or three little pieces about sins of the tongue, about the power of words for good or for evil: I will string them together. "Gather up the fragments lest they be lost." No author's name is attached to the following lines in an old English Messenger of the Sacred Heart, where they are called "Only a Word":

Ah me! these terrible tongues of ours!

Are we half aware of their mighty powers?

Do we ever trouble our heads at all

Where the jest may strike, or the hint may fall ?

"

That spicy story you must have heard

We jerk them away in our gossip rash,

And somebody's glass, of course, goes smash.

What fames have been blasted and broken,
What pestilent stinks have been stirred,
By a word in lightness spoken,

By only an idle word!

A sneer, a shrug, a whisper low

They are poisoned shafts from an ambushed bow;

Shot by the coward, the fool, the knave,

They pierce the mail of the great and brave.

Vain is the buckler of wisdom or pride

To turn the pitiless point aside :

The lip may curl with a careless smile,

But the heart drips blood-drips blood, the while.

Ah me! what hearts have been broken,

What rivers of blood have been stirred,
By a word in malice spoken,

By only a bitter word!

A kindly word and a tender tone

Only to God is their virtue known!

They can lift from the dust the abject head.

They can turn a foe to a friend instead ;

1

The heart close barred with passion and pride

Will fling, at their knock, its portals wide,

And the hate that blights and the scorn that sears

Will melt in the fountain of childlike tears.

What ice-bound griefs have been broken,
What penitent throbs have stirred,
By a word of kindness spoken,

By only a gentle word!

Caroline Bowles, who became the wife of Robert Southey's declining years, said something very like this more simply and tersely :

A little word in kindness spoken,

A motion, or a tear,

Has often healed a heart nigh broken

And made a friend sincere.

A word, a look, has crushed to earth
Full many a budding flower,

Which, had a smile but owned its birth,

Might bless life's darkest hour.

Then deem it not an idle thing,

A pleasant word to speak;

The face you wear, the thoughts you bring,

A heart may heal or break.

Some Philip B. Strong contributed these couplets to the New York Mail-Express :

Or sometimes take this form instead,

"Don't let your tongue cut off your head."

"The tongue can speak a word whose speed,”
Says the Chinese, "outstrips the steed."

While Arab sages this impart,

"The tongue's great storehouse is the heart."

From Hebrew wit the maxim sprung,
"Though feet should slip, ne'er let the tongue."

The sacred writer crowns the whole,
"Who keeps his tongue doth keep his soul."