the trembling barks of life to glad reunions near the open sea. In the trials, vicissitudes, and dangers of the earthly lot, this love reveals its constancy, its tenderness and power.

Years ago we are told a vessel, leaving one of the ports of New England, passed around Cape Horn, and sailed out into the Pacific Ocean. There it sprung a leak and went to the bottom. The crew escaped in the long boat, and with a very small supply of provisions made for the far-distant continent. Their provisions soon fell short, and it became evident, that without a dreadful expedient, the whole would perish before reaching the shore. To prevent this, it was determined to throw a part of their number overboard. Lots were cast, and the number taken were thrown into the ocean, and perished. Again they cast lots, and one of two brothers present was taken. Just as they were about to cast him into the deep, the other brother came forward, and remarked that he himself was a single man, while his brother had left in America a wife and family of helpless children, whose "lives were bound up in his," and who were dependent on him for support. He therefore proposed to die in the stead of his brother. After much and earnest entreaty, the latter accepted the proposal. The crew wept at the exhibition of such wondrous love, and shrunk from casting the self-sacrificed victim into the ocean. At last famine prevailed, and the young man was cast upon the surface of the deep waters, and after a few struggles, sunk to rise no more. Such "love was wonderful” indeed. But there is another form of family affection even greater than this the love of a mother for her children.

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"Hast thou sounded the depths of yonder sea?
Hast thou counted the sands that under it be?

Hast thou measured the heights of heaven above?
Then mayest thou mete out a mother's love."

We read that when the plague broke out in a little village of Italy, the children of one house were taken first. The parents watched over them, but only caught the disease they could not cure. The whole family died. Then across the street, in the home of a absent all the week, returning only on Saturday to bring his scanty earnings, the disease next began. The

poor laborer who was

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wife felt herself attacked by the fever in the night. When morning dawned she was worse, and before night the plague-spot showed itself. She remembered the terrible fate of her neighbors. She knew she must die, but, as she looked at her dear boys, she resolved not to communicate death to them. She therefore locked the children in the room, and snatched the bedclothes, fearing they were already impregnated with the dreadful germs, and with them left the house. She even denied herself the sad pleasure of a last embrace. Oh, think of the heroism which enabled her to conquer her feelings, and leave home with all she loved-to die! Her oldest child saw her from the window. "Good-bye, mother," said he, with a tender voice, wondering why she left so strangely. Good-bye, mother," repeated the youngest child, stretching his little hand out of the window. The mother paused. Her heart was drawn toward those little ones, and she was on the point of rushing back. She struggled hard, while the tears rolled down her cheeks, at the sight of her helpless babes. At length she turned from them. The children continued to cry, "Good-bye, mother!" until their little voices died away, and the mother, with an anguished heart, entered the house of those who were to bury her. In a short time she died, and with her dying breath commended her husband and children to the care of heaven. Was ever other love like that? Only once, when, for the plague-smitten race, it hung in bleeding mercy on the Cross. Exhibitions of a mother's love, though not so striking as this, are by no means rare. Live where she may, and how she will "a mother is a mother still, the holiest thing alive." Every person who has any recollection of a mother at all can recall some token of her affection, some expression of her sacrificing love that renders her name and memory hallowed. I have often thought that Elizabeth Akers Allen must have had a good mother, or her heart could not have indicted the immortal "Rock me to sleep."

"Mother, oh mother, my heart calls for you.
Many a summer the grass has grown green,
Blossomed and faded our faces between;
Yet with strong yearning and passionate pain,
Long I to-night for your presence again."

SYMPATHY.

"Our hearts, my love, were doomed to bo
The genuine twins of sympathy;
They live with one sensation;
In joy or grief, but most in love,
Our heart-strings musically move,
And thrill with like vibration.

"How often have I heard thee say,
Thy vital pulse shall cease to play
When mine no more is moving!
Since, now, to feel a joy alone

Were worse to thee than feeling none:
Such sympathy in loving!"

But Thomas Moore was not very discriminating. His numerous love poems, for that matter, were all sympathetic. Their characters were all affected pretty much in the same manner-with a sympathy in loving.

But sympathy, as now regarded, is more commonly applied to a fellow-feeling under affliction, coinciding quite nearly with commiseration or compassion. Mr. James Berry Bensel has written a poem that very beautifully illustrates this idea:

"In sorrow once there came to me
Two friends to proffer sympathy.
One pressed warm dewy lips on mine,
And quoted from the word divine:
Wiped the hot tear-drops from my eye
And gave my sore heart sigh for sigh:
Told me of pain he had outgrown-
Pain that was equal to my own,
And left me with a tender touch

That should have comforted me much.
But still my sorrow was no less
For all his loving graciousness.

"The other only pressed my hand;
Within his eyes the tears did stand.
He said no word, but laid a rare
Bunch of sweet flowers beside my chair;

And closely held my hand the while
He cheered my sad gloom with his smile.
And ere he went he sang a song

That I had known and loved for long.
And then he clasped my hand again
With the same look that shares a pain.
And when he went I laid my head
Down, and was glad and comforted.

"What was the difference, can you tell?
I loved my friends, alike and well;
I loved them both alike, and yet
The one's warm kiss I could forget,
The other's hand-clasp I could feel
For hours through all my being steal.
Each shared my sorrow, yet to me

One brought but love, one sympathy."

"The stimulating power and comfort of sympathy," says Rev. E. H. Delk, "none can express, save those who have realized it. It has a power like a magnet, unseen but potent, which draws to itself the wandering scattered particles that exist around it."

THE CHOICE OF A COMPANION.

Much good advice has been given as to the choice of a companion, and rightly so. It is really the most serious thing a man or woman has to decide upon, affecting, as it does, future happiness and usefulness, possibly both for time and eternity. Marriage is a permanent bond, or is supposed to be; it cannot be peacefully or rightfully broken. So intimate is this union, that neither party can escape from its influences; it elevates or it lowers, it inspires or it enfeebles, it makes or it mars. As the wife is, so is the husband; as the husband, so the wife; the two may raise each other to a higher standard of thought and feeling, or drag one another down to a lower level than either occupied at first. It is in this wise that Sir Philip Sidney describes "a happy couple," "he joying in her, she joying in herself, but in herself because she enjoyed him; both increasing their riches by giving to each other, and making one life double, because they made a double life one; where desire never

HOME LIFE.

wanted satisfaction, nor satisaction ever bred satiety, he miing Cause she would obey, or rather, tause she would obey se

De Deration is wistom before engaging to marry. Take time to *ink, to surv, to know yourself, what you want to know your "orite way, or gentiemen friends, what they are likely to make, d whether there is any naturai affinity or ariaptation between yoIL. 'r. Livingston is reported to have used to a young man the Lowing sport and easy 'argument against the marriages somenes formeu ov students while in the minary, and even in the

• When you are nobody, you marry nobody; when you et to be somebody, yon nave got nobody.” And a certain learned professor spelas in antision to the same practice as follows: Many 1 tism (1. stidents in theology) deem the irksome sasun of protion an admirable time for securing that best of earthly bless ps—a good wie; and thus a business in which the wisest: man 1. tpt to play the fool, they contrive to despatch at the perind when very funity, every auction of their being should be engrossed by The one «reat object which has received their consecration.”

Consider what a wife ought to be. Be not influenced alone by personal attractions, Let not the money question settle your fotce, Money and lands are good, but utterly out of place when. weighed in the balance against intellectual and moral endowments. Some wealthy maideus have a fill share of good sense, modesty, culture, sweetness of temper, and tenderness; such ought not to be verlooked because of their hard casă. Notwithstanding the tonch of worldliness in the great English statesman, Lori Burleigh's counsel to his son, it is based on wide experience and knowledge: • When it still please God to bring thee to man's estate, use great providence and circumspection in choosing thy wife, for from thence a" urine all thy future good or evil. And it is an action of life „ile unta a stratagem of war, wherein a man can die but once. If domustate be good, match near home and at leisure; if weak, tar and quickly. Inanire diligently of her disposition, and how jor parate have been nelined in their youth. Let her not be how generons (genernæa, of good birth) soever, for a man an in the market with gentility. Nor choose a base and

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