hospital. Should their ailment prove tedious they lose their place, and, on being discharged from the hospital are houseless until they can procure a fresh situation; for many have no friend nor parent to whose house they can repair. It cannot be expected that such persons should be retained in a hospital after they are cured, for to do so would be to frustrate the object of a hospital, which is to cure the sick. A young woman without a home is forced to go to a lodging-house, where she pays a high price, and must often meet with bad people. Even if none with whom she meets are actually vicious, yet the unrestrained intercourse of a number of half-educated people in a lodging-house can lead to no good. If not soon successful in obtaining a situation, the girl's funds may fail her, she is forced to pawn her clothes-starvation soon looks her in the face, the agents of brothels are on the look out, and she sells herself for a morsel of bread. It would be easy to trace each step of her progress, till the once decent servant-maid has become the brazen-faced strumpet. It may be thought that the case above referred to, cannot be of frequent occurrence, but it should be borne in mind that a great proportion of the servants received into hospitals are the servants of petty tradesmen and small shopkeepers. They receive but very small pay for their services. A person cannot be a patient in a hospital altogether without expense, and when sent out, a servant's scanty stock is soon exhausted. Even if she has parents, no one who has seen a poor family huddled together in one room can wonder that the girl does not wish to go thither, or that her parents should be too poor to receive her. A young girl, who had shopkeeper's in Islington, Hospital suffering from Cases such as this occur. lived as servant at a small was admitted into fever. Her father was a widower with two or three small children. He was seized with fever and taken to the Fever Hospital. The girl had spent most of her money to furnish comforts to her father, and to help her little brothers and sisters. When she recovered her father was dead, her brothers and sisters were in the workhouse. She was furnished, from a fund connected with the hospital, with new clothes, and a sovereign, and was sent away to live where she could, and look out for a new situation. What has since become of her is not known. The following suggestions are thrown out with the greatest diffidence and respect. Would it not be possible for the Committee of the Servants' Home, Millman Place, to put themselves in correspondence with the authorities of the hospitals, and to furnish a temporary home to servants when discharged from hospitals? It being clearly understood that none should be received who were not declared by the medical attendants to be quite restored. In the event, of any such arrangement being made, there would probably be two classes of applicants-1st. Servants who are not destitute, (but would be able to pay at the present rate) but who would value the order and quiet of the Servants' Home.* *2nd. Indigent servants, being mostly very young * Our Correspondent is respectfully informed that both these classes are provided for in the designs of the London Female Mission. The one by the "Home," and the other through the medium of the "Indigent Refuge;" at the same and inexperienced girls, who have been servants in the families of small tradesmen. Some of the hospitals, if not all, have a fund from which they help the destitute. It is likely that the Governors would devote some part of this fund to enable the Servants' Home to receive girls too poor for themselves. to pay The prevention of vice is so much easier than its cure, that we may calculate upon the good which might be brought about by some such plan as that above suggested, with far more certainty than in the case of any project for restoring those who have once abandoned the ways of virtue. J. C. TRUE PLEASURE. OH! tell me, ye worldlings, of one single joy, Oh! tell me of bliss, which knows not alloy, If ye say in the world, that ye seek for such bliss ; For ye never can find in a vain world like this, Then, why, after phantoms so eagerly go, Those pleasures which only bring anguish and woe, And remember these pleasures in which you delight, Shall at last like a torrent burst forth on the sight, time we think we have been remiss in not making these Establishments more generally known among the Hospitals of the metropolis. Oh, how can these follies, this madness prepare, In the love and the bliss of the Saviour to share, Then lay up your treasure "where thief can ne'er steal,” And which none but the Christian can know. F. F. 66 I CANNOT KEEP THAT COMMANDMENT. 66 A little girl, six years old, in an American Sundayschool, was repeating the fifth commandment; her teacher endeavoured to shew her in what way she was to honor her parents, and said, you must honor your parents by obeying them.” 'O, ma'am! exclaimed the child, "I cannot keep that commandment." 'Why cannot you keep it, my dear?" because, ma'am," when my mother tells me to do one thing, my father tells me to do another. Now, just before I came here, my mother told me to stay up stairs and learn my lesson, and my father told me to come down and play; now how could I obey them both? No, no," closing her little hands as if in despair, 'no, no, ma'am, it is impossible for me ever to keep that commandment." 66 NOVEL READING. At the time when that wonderful genius, Sir Walter Scott, was producing one novel after another with a rapidity which his readers could scarcely keep pace with, a young married lady, whose taste strongly inclined her to works of this nature, but who had abstained from reading them, lest they might interfere with her new domestic duties, was induced, by the wishes of her husband, to commence with him the Waverley Novels for their evening reading: but the pages were far too fascinating to be laid aside at the usual hour for repose; there was no cessation of interest until the volumes were closed. An infant son lay in his cradle beside the mother, who, too conscientious to keep an attendant awake for their novel reading vigils, attempted herself to watch the child. But, though quiet, he was sometimes hungry; and nature admonished him, that, in the cold of a winter's night, he ought to be warmed and cherished on a mother's arms, and he would sometimes cry; perhaps at the very moment when Jeannie Deans was about to make her eloquent appeal to the Queen, the infant would make his plea for a mother's care the story must then be broken off, while, with a feeling of disappointment, almost amounting to impatience, the maternal duties were performed. But the healthy and beautiful child was seized with an acute disease, which terminated in his removal from this world; and though the mother could not accuse herself of actual neglect, she was conscious of having had her thoughts too much diverted from her child, by the fictitious scenes in which she had permitted her imaginations to rove. She was wholly unprepared to meet such an affliction; and, turning from the novels to her Bible, sought for peace and consolation in the promises of Him who is "the resurrection and the life." Those books which had drawn her thoughts from her lovely infant, she could not, for a long time, endure to behold; and from thenceforward she renounced them all, in the settled |