The wages of American seamstresses have not yet been beaten down to the British level. Our shirt makers and tailoresses have not yet been reduced to the pauper loaf and the Sunday dinner or sheep's brains. Their pay is not, however, in decent proportion to the profits of their employers. Nevertheless, they have reason to be thankful that their lot is not cast in a land where the price of fourteen hours' work will only purchase two ounces of meat, a slice of bread, two cups of tea, a farthing's worth of milk, leaving almost nothing over for clothing, shelter and fuel, and absolutely nothing for slack times and sickness. No wonder that twothirds of the English needlewomen die of consumption—in their case a polite name for starvation. MODERN OVERTASKING. Human life is, in many respects, worth more now than it was a hundred years ago. We no longer, as a rule, eat and drink to excess, as our ancestors did; we do not invite apoplexy by covering our heads with a cap of dead hair, and swathing our throats in folds of unnecessary linen; our sanitary arrangements are a hundred fold better, and our town-dwellers see much more of the country, and taste much more of the country air. Yet it is certain that nervous disorders are greatly on the increase, and it is to be feared that the excitement of modern life is introducing new maladies while removing old. A physician of the early or middle Georgian era said that a large proportion of the deaths of Englishmen was due to repletion. The proportion under that head is now very much less; but what we have gained in one direction we have lost in another. Among the intellectual and mercantile classes of the present day, the greatest danger to life is from nervous exhaustion. We make too serious and too incessant demands on the most delicate part of our structure, and the whole fabric gives way under paralysis, or heart complaint, or softening of the brain, or imbecility, or madness. Disease of the heart is constantly sweeping off our men of intellect, and the vast size of our modern lunatic asylums, together with the frequent necessity of adding to their number, is a melancholy proof of the overwrought state of a large part of the population. ON WARD! How low and mean and abject our lives seem, when we allow ourselves to lose sight of our duty to God and our neighbor! How we shrink away into absolute nothingness, when no At such times, good motive compels us to act. we stand above a precipice, down which we are liable to fall at any moment, into an abyss of evil doing. Nothing, save the Almighty arm, can save us then, from the guilt and shame of falling. Let us, then, stand fast in faith and love faith toward God, and love toward our Upward-onward- -God-ward- RESPECT THE BURDEN. -- the Napoleon, at St. Helena, was once walking with a lady, when a man came up with a load on his back. The lady kept her side of the path, and was ready to assert her precedence of sex; but Napoleon gently waved her on one side, saying, "Respect the burden, madam.” You constantly see men and women behave toward each other in a way which shows that they do not "respect the burden," whatever the burden is. Sometimes the burden is an actual, visible load, sometimes it is cold, raggedness, sometimes it is hunger, sometimes it is grief or illness. If I get into a conflict (suppose I jostle or am jostled) with a half-clad, hungry looking fellow in the street on a winter morning, I am surely bound to be lenient in my constructions. I expect him to be harsh, rude, loud, unforgiving; and his burden (of privation) entitles him to my indulgence. Again, a man with a bad headache is almost an irresponsible agent, so far as common amenities go; I am a brute if I quarrel with him for a wry word or an ungracious act. And how far, pray are we to push the kind of chivalry which "respects the burden?" As far as the love of WHY does not every body who can afford it, God will go with us. A great distance — it is have a geranium in his window? a long way to the foot of the rainbow. THE SONG OF THE FREED WOMAN. [The following noble poem is by Isa Craig, one of the finest English poets of the day. It is somewhat long for our pages, but it is a pity to mutilate any thing so admirable; so we copy it entire :-] The Lord hath bought us, O my people! With blood and not with gold; The Lord hath bought us, O my people! In the sight of all the nations A slave! A slave, and yet a favored child, He owned me, as he owned his horse, his dog. Among you what it was that stirred my heart When I saw Your bondage in its bitterness, I thought, Of slavery for his loss ye would lament, The Lord hath bought us, O my people! The Lord hath bought us, O my people! And still the fire Burned in me, stirred by rumors of the war. Then there came a day (Your master and my father rode away And said, "My father, I am yet a slave -" "And shall be, while I live," he said, and went. And never came again. He fought and fell In the long battle of the Wilderness, I covered then my face, but not for shame God's judgments burn up shame-and in that place I called on Him to hasten to our help. And no man bought us. The Lord had bought us, O my people! With blood and not with gold. The Lord had bought us, O my people! We shall no more be sold. Lift up the little children, Let this their birthday be; They are yours, the little children, The end was near: The crowning victory, and the city's fall, "I agree most heartily in your condemnation of the attempt to wrest from nature a secret, which is not hers to tell. But the knowledge of, or rather the belief in, such secret, accounts for the fascination of certain aspects of nature; for the entrancing influence which these and certain situations exert upon us. All our relations must be changed before the charm of indefiniteness, or the delicious torment which belongs to a mystery, just on the verge of solution, ceases to hold us, as by a spell. Still, that we go beyond what is lawful in this matter, cannot be denied; that we pry and listen, where we should wonder and adore. We are in unlawful positions when the awful presence chamber of the Universe becomes a whispering gallery; when we sit at the portals of glory, only to place our ears at the keyholes. And the baffled disappointment with which we turn from these quests, never had a place with humility and reverence." "You have not yet met your own question of the other evening, concerning the illusiveness of present scenes and experiences. I don't quite apprehend the point of your inquiry." “But, remember, I offered to go back there, and you declined being taken; now I intend to discourse from your text. I suspect that, after all, our inquisitiveness in this direction has a sound root; but we have trained what has branched from it in a wrong way. We are to accept the mysteries which are before and around us; veiling our faces and lying in rapt silence when these wonderful intimations are felt; striving only to catch what they bring to our ears. Our time for hearing the strange secret of the soul has not yet come. But the interrogatories which may be lawfully put, in another quarter, we are shy of propounding. To ourselves, and to our circum how willingly we walk in utter darkness rather than take that trouble. Sitting idle and being drifted along is, of all aspects of existence, the most hopeless. To confront events in a defiant spirit seems to me, sometimes, the worthier attitude, as it implies life and action. Neither of these dispositions is the true and desirable one. There is an interior virtue, a real meaning to all which befalls us, whether good or ill; beyond the outward and obvious character of each event and every phase of life, there are inward and spiritual significances, and these it is my business, my duty to know and improve." "In your sermon, last Sunday, you denounced an intense self-consciousness; and I don't see how this questioning of particular circumstances and situations can be made without coming into that condemnation." "There are dangers and disadvantages here, as in every other line of duty. There is the risk of fastening self-conceit, and also of forming a habit of morbid dissection of motives; either of which is fatal to a soul's integrity and growth. But neither of these perils is an excuse for neglecting an obligation; or failing to improve our opportunity. I believe that real humility will prevent a too conscious analysis of what makes up our life; and the giving ourselves to a welfare larger than belongs to one circle of persons and events, will hinder a dangerous introspection. If we have any true notions of our own weakness; any reliable memory of our failures and shortcomings, self-consciousness may be turned to its legitimate business of repentance and amendment. When we regard, in their proper light, the merits and claims of others; the service which the humblest of us owes to his family, friends, and the world, we must realize the demand to action; and find no time to spend in microscopic moral dissecting.” "Then why not let alone the questioning and introspection altogether? why not allow the larger claims to fill our minds and hands, and in the performance of duty conquer our idleness and overcome our weakness? why not leave circumstances and situations to be interpreted when other mysteries are solved, and the soul's secret is revealed? Perhaps the great and we shall be saved all trouble, and at the revelation may make the lesser unnecessary, same time avoid the dangers and risks which stances, it is fit that we should sometimes put you admit belong to the former method? ” questions, and persist in obtaining answers; yet "Just because we have no right to postpone the matter in one case, and are unable to omit it in the other. There is no performing of duty at hap-hazard. We must have some apprehensions of the relation which we hold to others and which they bear to us, to understand their claims. Otherwise we may throw away our lives in vain efforts, and overlook the most imperative of our duties. And there is one consideration which forces this course upon us, more strongly, as it seems to me, than any other. We can never resolve, at any given point in our lives, to commence and fulfil all our obligations, unfettered by the past; we are free to act without reference to it. All that has been all that we have done, or left undone, affects our relations to the present, and complicates our obligations. What, at the beginning of life, might have been unnecessary and may be a hindrance, is now, because of our former course of conduct, an obligation that we ignore at our peril, moral and spiritual. So, also, what might constitute the most valid claims upon us, are null because of superior demands, arising from what we, ourselves, have done to make them such. In view of this aspect of the case alone, how can we live worthy lives, how fulfil in any measure our obligations, unless we take care to know something of ourselves and our circumstances; of the relation which exists between us and the world around us? How can we fulfil the claims of duty, unless we know what that duty is, and where it lies? We, every one of us, realize that these days and years which we are spending, may bear a true and noble record of us, with them, as they fly; this life may be worthy, faithful, lofty with truth, integrity, aspiration. And we realize that we are failing to make each day and year what we feel it should be: that life instead of being alive with energy and effort, glowing with faith and aspiration, is cold, purposeless, or irresolute, through our own fault. To amend this, and awake ourselves from the sloth of disposition and custom, to grow, and work, and live, we should ask of ourselves and our surroundings the questions and demand the answers. There, you have my sermon, and a poor one it is, considering the text." "But you have omitted the application. I supposed that was an important part of every discourse." "My discourse is poorer than I had deemed it, if the moral is not obvious. Didn't you always skip the moral in reading Esop's Fables and the notes to the Pilgrim's Progress." "Certainly; but the preacher has an advantage. He can enforce his application on the spot, and his hearers could scarcely be ill bred enough to run away." "He would be more flattered by knowing that his moral was applied by each hearer, for himself." "But he won't know that the hearer has made just the intended application. He cannot be sure that each has applied the doctrine of the discourse faithfully to his own case." "Not unless he sees in the hearer's life evidence of such application. Or being too far removed for that evidence to reach him, he hears from the individual's own lips the welcome truth. But I omitted one point in my sermon, the lack of which might vitiate the application. When convinced of failure in the direction of special obligations, or of the necessity of entering upon new and disagreeable duties, there is always danger of overdoing, and of taking on ourselves more than in the end we are able to fulfil. The impulse that sends men and women, after finding the shallowness of the most shallow of earthly pleasures, into convents and monasteries, comes in this direction. So also the making merit of self-denials, falsely so called, for there is no more intense form of selfishness. It is closely allied to that spirit which says, "Come and see my zeal for the Lord;" only it makes a parade of its own weakness, sometimes even of its own shame, in its glorying. We have each seen persons who had given up some special sin, who were yet more intolerable in their reform, than in their former condition. And refusing to accept and enjoy privileges, is another form of the same tendency. Because one blessing is denied us and one hard burden laid upon us, to refuse all remaining joys, and to take on ourselves all possible responsibilities, is as foolish, and more reprehensible, than for the soldier who has lost one arm, to cut off the other, and put out his eyes, or for the sailor to starve himself entirely, because necessity causes him to be put on short allowance." "We must be denied then the poor satisfaction of making a virtue of necessity, and of mingling a little heroic asceticism with the poor common demands of circumstance. We must have deprivation and sacrifice at their dead level; none of the inspiration or exhilaration which extra self-denial gives." There, I beg your pardon for the length of the sixthly' of my discourse." CHAPTER VIII. sary asceticism. I would not have privations, | let us take heed that we do not place hindrances bereavements and hardships lie at the dead in the path ourselves. level of ordinary circumstance; so I would protest against degrading them by any stage trickery. We may accept every form of suffering and loss, as we may each event and phase of life, at its highest. We may allow every pain and sorrow to sink us lower to the earth, and make us of it, earthy; we can, by discerning the divine spirit of affliction, set each new grief beyond the stars. The Christian doctrine of sorrow and loss is so lofty, that when we have once partaken, ever so feebly, of its spirit, we shall be amazed at ourselves, whenever our weakness leads us to forget for one hour the lesson, or more properly the inspiration of that experience. There is a weak affectation of resignation, which is often mistaken by those who express it for something genuine, but which is in reality only cant. I know all is for the best,' uttered by such persons, means only it is right and proper to say that I am resigned; everybody expects it of me I don't see any best in connection with this event- but it would be impious to rebel against it. Now it seldom happens that we can at first see any best in the calamity; and where is there any obligation for us to perjure ourselves by saying that we do? To bear the shock calmly and bravely, if possible, to trust and wait for light, by which to see it good and right, is all that is required of us. Then, to take up the new duties which the change has brought, to perform them with single-heartedness, just as they present themselves, is the next advance. Between these first steps and the sublime Christian stand-point, where the soul sees a truer possession in this apparent deprivation, where it has learned to distinguish proximity from possession, to view what is nearest to the senses, as Afar off lying,' and what is passed from their apprehension, as 'real and underlying;' there is a long distance to tread. But the living soul will go through all the stages of such an experience, till it comes to know the great mystery of spiritual loss and gain. And these steps, or stages, will vary in length according to the temperament, habits and circumstances of the person who is realizing such experience. It will matter little about delays and difficulties, when once we have conquered and passed the dangers of the way; perhaps the deeper the former darkness, the weightier the obstacles to our progress, the greater the glory which shall be revealed. Only The next day I made a practical and personal application of the sermon to which I had listened, by going into town with Ellen to find a governess for the children. We were unsuccessful for the time; but the temptation to apply, immediately, my understanding of the pointedness of that discourse, especially of what I could not but own to myself was a forced application, was too great. And I left my assumed duties wholly in Sarah's hands. I would not overdo in the matter of duties; I determined to give this extra time to books, for I found that Ellen's fashion of spending the long, hot July afternoons, was out of the question. I knew what books held the things which I most wished to know. The necessary impulse had been given in our late conversations, and I began in earnest. Time, material and opportunity I possessed; but there were requisites which these did not afford. To the scholar, even the most meagre of shreds and patches of time are precious. Uninterrupted hours, even, are next to nothing, where one has reached maturity of years, without feeling the need of habits of study and careful thought. Slowly, out of the various writings, philosophical and theological, into which I plunged, some scraps of theories and some confused ideas were gathered; there remained of my reading just enough to awaken a thirst for knowledge, and to show me more plainly than I had yet dreamed how broad was the field into which I had dared to set my foot, and how great was my ignorance of even how to begin to tread it. I knew that to proceed, I must have advice; and that, to make use of the little already gained, some master's hand must cut the elements, and round into spheres what were now mere fragments of chaos in my thought. But I had taken a step which placed me, as I fancied, beyond any such help. And I realized more fully some truths in the discourse to which I had recently listened, and made broader application of them, than I had hitherto done. There seemed extra perplexities and complications attending every step that I took, just because I had refused, at the outset, to accept at their true value my altered circumstances. But while I was lamenting my precipitancy, |