CON. You put me out completely. I don't remember a You are crying.

word now.

HOL. Likely it's the character of the father. Let us finish the scene.

CON. What a splendid actor you would have made!
Shall we finish the scene?

HOL.

CON. 66

"You say you are my father?"

HOL. "You doubt it: happily I can invoke remembrances that will give confidence to your heart. Do you not recall your days of childhood, a cottage surrounded with large trees, the high road passing before the door?"

CON.

"Yes, yes!"

HOL. "On the road in the distance, a man who, waving his handkerchief, shouted, 'I am here!''

CON. "I remember well.'

HOL. "He crossed the threshold, pressed you in his arms, and kissing you again and again he danced for joy. Can you still doubt ?

CON. "My father!"

HOL. Ah! that's not it. You do not give sufficient force to the words.

CON. (turning away). Then let some one else do it.

HOL. Be patient, be patient. You can do it to perfection, I am sure. Why not work yourself up to the notion, that this young girl who has not heard of her father for twenty years is yourself?

CON. What do you say ?

HOL. Imagine yourself the girl you are representing.

CON. There is something in your words and manner HOL. Try again. This time you will feel the words. "He pressed you in his arms, he kissed you again and again, he danced for joy. Can you still doubt?"

CON. "My father!"

HOL. (shakes his head). No. no!

CON. I know; but I shall never do better.

HOL. I suspect the fault lies with the author.

The re

membrances he invokes in this scene are very vague.

A

load a man in the road- there is nothing to lead up to. Who knows now, if we were to change some words?

CON. Ah, yes! Cut out "my father.'

HOL. No, no! change the details. Allow me.

Recall

to your memory, my child, bethink you well, a large room, a man seated on a table, cross-legged, who sometimes

crept towards you, with his head moving up and down like a monkey, to make you laugh.

CON. Ah!

'HOL. Do you remember? By the side of the man a large pair of shears, with which you always wanted to play, and the man scolded you gently, - very gently, — told you not to touch them.

CON. Surely that was

- go on.

HOL. And one day when you cut yourself with these shears, your blood flowed, you remember?

CON. Yes.

HOL. You cried. The man jumped from the table. pale with fright. But when he saw it was nothing, he pretended to laugh, and beat the shears very hard to console you my child! my child!-that man, do you remember him? CON. My father! (She runs into his arms. They embrace and kiss each other with strong feeling.) HOL. You said it right then, said it finely, suiting the word to the action, the action to the word.

CON. And do I indeed embrace my father, that best protector from the world's assaults? Oh! I have often dreamed of this; but the bright reality, with its vivid flashes of childhoods memories, seem to endow me with a new existence of filial love and pleasure.

HOL. Did I not tell you you were a genius? my good genius! One touch of nature has restored a child to a father's heart. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."

A DISTURBANCE IN CHURCH.

THEY have had more trouble at our Methodist meetinghouse. Last Sunday Rev. Mr. Moody was just beginning his sermon, and had uttered the words, "Brethren, I wish to direct your attention this morning to the fourth verse of the twentieth chapter of Saint"- when a hen emerged from the recess beneath the pulpit. As she had just laid an egg, she interrupted Mr. Moody to announce the fact to the congregation; and he stopped short as she walked out into the aisle, screeching: "Kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk-te-ke! Kuk-kukkuk-kuk-to-ko!"

Mr. Moody contemplated her for a moment, and then concluded to go on; but the sound of his voice seemed to pro voke her to rivalry, and so she put on a pressure of five or six pounds to the square inch, and made such a racket that the preacher stopped again, and said,

"Will Deacon Grimes please remove that disgraceful chicken from the meeting-house?"

The deacon rose, and proceeded with the task. He first tried to drive her toward the door; but she dodged him, and, still clucking vigorously, got under the seat in the front pew. Then the deacon seized his umbrella, and scooped her out into the aisle again, after which he tried to "shoo" her toward the door; but she darted into a pew, hopped over the partition, came down in the opposite pew, and out into the side aisle, making a noise like a steam planing-mill.

The deacon didn't like to climb over after her, so he went round, and just as he got into the side aisle the hen flew over into the middle aisle again. Then the boys in the gallery laughed, and the deacon began to grow red in the face. At last Mr. Binns came out of his pew to help, and as both he and the deacon made a dash at the chicken from opposite directions she flew up with a wild cluck to the gallery, and perched on the edge, while she gave excited expression to her views by emitting about five hundred clucks a minute. The deacon flung a hymn-book at her to scare her down again, but he missed, and hit Billy Jones, a Sundayschool scholar, in the eye. Then another boy in the gallery made a dash at her, and reached so far over that he tumbled and fell on Mrs. Miskey's bonnet, whereupon she said loud that he was predestined for the gallows. The crash scared the hen, and she flew over and roosted on the stove-pipe that ran along just under the ceiling, fairly howling with fright. In order to bring her down, the deacon and Mr. Binns both beat on the lower part of the pipe with their umbrellas, and at the fifth or sixth knock the pipe separated and about forty feet of it came down with a crash, emptying a barrel or two of soot over the congregation. There were women in that congregation who went home looking as if they had been working in a coal-mine, and wishing they could stab Deacon Grimes without being hung for murder. The hen came down with the stove-pipe; and as she flew by Mr. Binns he made a dash at her with his umbrella, and knocked her clear through a fifteen-dollar pane of glass, whereupon she

landed in the street, and hopped off clucking insanely Then Mr. Moody adjourned the congregation. They are going to expel the owner of that hen from the church when they discover his identity. Max Adeler.

THE PALMER'S VISION.

NOON o'er Judæa! All the air was beating
With the hot pulses of the day's great heart;
The birds were silent; and the rill, retreating,
Shrank in its covert, and complained apart,

When a lone pilgrim, with his scrip and burden,
Dropped by the wayside weary and distressed,
His sinking heart grown faithless of its guerdon,
The city of his recompense and rest.

No vision yet of Galilee and Tabor!

No glimpse of distant Zion thronged and crowned!
Behind him stretched his long and useless labor,
Before him lay the parched and stony ground.

He leaned against a shrine of Mary, casting
Its balm of shadow on his aching head:
And worn with toil, and faint with cruel fasting,
He sighed, "O God! O God, that I were dead!

"The friends I love are lost, or left behind me;
In penury and loneliness I roam;

These endless paths of penance choke and blind me:
Oh, come and take thy wasted pilgrim home!"

Then with the form of Mary bending o'er him,
Her hands in changeless benediction stayed,
The palmer slept, while a swift dream upbore him
To the fair paradise for which he prayed.

He stood alone, wrapped in divinest wonder;
He saw the pearly gates and jasper walls
Informed with light; and heard the far-off thunder
Of chariot wheels and mighty waterfalls.

From far and near, in rhythmic palpitations,

Rose on the air the noise of shouts and psalms;
And through the gates he saw the ransomed nations
Marching, and waving their triumphant palms.

And white within the thronging empyrean,
A golden palm-branch in his kingly hand,
He saw his Lord, the gracious Galilean,
Amid the worship of his myriads stand.

"O Jesus, Lord of glory! bid me enter:

I worship thee! I kiss thy holy rood!"
The pilgrim cried, when from the burning centre
A broad-winged angel sought him where he stood.

"Why art thou here?" in accents deep and tender
Outspoke the messenger.
"Dost thou not know
That none may win the city's rest and splendor
Who do not cut their palms in Jericho?

"Go back to earth, thou palmer empty-handed!
Go back to hunger and the toilsome way!
Complete the task that duty hath commanded,
And win the palm thou hast not brought to-day!"

And then the sleeper woke, and gazed around him;
Then springing to his feet with life renewed,
He spurned the faithless weakness that had bound him,
And, faring on, his pilgrimage pursued.

The way was hard, and he grew halt and weary;
But one long day, among the evening hours,

He saw beyond a landscape gray and dreary
The sunset flame on Salem's sacred towers.

Oh, fainting soul that readest well this story,
Longing through pain for death's benignant balm,
Think not to win a heaven of rest and glory

If thou shalt reach its gates without thy palm!
J. G. HOLLAND