"How long were you up with him?"
"Off and on, until day."

"What about the night-sweats you told the doctor about: did you have them?"

"Yes, ma'am. I always have them." "Well, this won't do, Barby," said Mrs. Grayson. "The doctor says you mustn't lose so much rest. I shall have to make some arrangement to relieve you of either Willy or Georgy at night. You must get more sleep, carlier or later."

Barby did not reply. As she stood, with her eyes upon the floor, her name was called from the nursery.

"Yes, dear," she answered, and hurried back to her charge.

So ended the interview. But the nurse was not forgotten. Several times through the day Mrs. Grayson thought of her, and turned over the ways and means of relieving her from the exhausting demands nightly made upon her strength. Difficulties naturally presented themselves. The children were used to Barby, and so much attached to her that it was not probable either Willy or Georgy, the troublesome ones at night, would submit to being taken from her room.

The experiment was made on Willy, in order to give Barby a chance to gain sleep during the first part of the night. But he rebelled, of course; and, instead of fretting between sleep and wakefulness, screamed to the full capacity of his lungs. This was worse for Barby than the care of Willy; so, after enduring the baby's cries for half an hour, she could hold out no longer. Leaving her bed and throwing on a wrapper she went to Mrs. Grayson's room, and took, almost by force, the screaming little one from her arms. No sooner were her tender, loving tones in his ears than Willy's cries changed to murmurs of delight, as he nestled his head down upon her bosom.

"Dear pet lamb! They sha'n't take him from his Barby!" And with these assuring words she ran back with the hushed child to the nursery and laid him in his crib beside her bed.

So that experiment proved a failure and was not attempted again. The next trial was with Georgy, the five o'clock boy. After he was asleep he was removed to his mother's room. Mrs. Grayson did not get home from a party until past one o'clock. It was two before she was lost in sleep. At five she was awakened by Georgy, who wanted to get up.

No impression. "You Georgy!"

It cer

The tempest raged more fiercely. "Stop this instant, or I'll punish you!" The threat may not have been heard. tainly was not heeded. Mrs. Grayson felt too uncomfortable under the double annoyance of broken sleep and stunning cries to be able to keep a very close rein on patience. "Did you hear me?"

She had left her bed and gone to the one occupied by Georgy.

"Hush this moment, Sir! I won't have such goings on!"

Mrs. Grayson was unheeded. Patience could hold out no longer. The hand which she had uplifted in threatening came down upon the rebel with a smarting stroke.

"Oh no! Please, ma'am, don't do that!" And a hand caught her arm that was a second time upraised. It was the voice and hand of Barbara.

"Please don't!" pleaded the distressed nurse, who had left her bed and come to the door of Mrs. Grayson, on the first sign of trouble. She had not stopped to throw on a wrapper; but, in her thin night-clothes, moist with the perspiration that made sleep a robber of strength instead of a sweet restorer, ran down stairs and along the cold passage to the chamber where the strife she dreaded had commenced.

"Go back to your room, Barby!" said Mrs. Grayson, with anger in her voice. "How dare you interfere ?"

"Barby! Barby! Oh, Barby!" cried the child, in a voice of anguish. "Take Georgy! Oh, take Georgy!"

Hurt by the tone and words of Mrs. Grayson, Barbara retired slowly toward the door; seeing which, the child stood up screaming after her wildly, and fluttering his little hands as if they were wings to bear him to his beloved nurse. The tender heart of Barbara was not proof against this appeal, and she returned with hesitating steps.

"Didn't I tell you to go to your room!" exclaimed Mrs. Grayson, passionately.

"Yes, ma'am; but I can't go. Let me take Georgy, won't you, please?"

The voice of Barbara was low, imploring, and husky with oppressive feeling; her face pale and distressed.

"Barby! Barby! Take Georgy!"

"Barby! Where's Barby? I want Barby!" cried out the child, in a voice that expressed both passion and surprise.

"Hush! Lie still! You can't go to Barby!"

But the mother might as well have spoken to the wind. Georgy only cried the louder.

"Do you hear, Sir! Stop that crying this instant!"

from the room.

"I think, ma'am," said the chamber-maid, soon after breakfast, "that you'd better go over and see Barby."

"See Barby! Why? matter with her?"

"She's in bed yet." "In bed!"

Is any thing the

"Yes, ma'am. And I think she's right sick." Mrs. Grayson waited to hear no more, but

went over quickly to the nursery, where she found Barbara in bed.

"Are you sick, Barby?" she said, kindly, laying her hand upon her forehead, which she found hot with fever.

"Yes, ma'am," answered Barby, in a dull, half-unconscious manner.

"How long have you felt sick ?"

"I had a chill this morning."

"After you came from my room?"

"Yes, ma'am.”

"Have you any pain ?"

Did the doctor mean any thing by this emphasis of the pronoun? Doubtless, for he looked steadily at Mrs. Grayson until her eyes fell. He had not been in attendance for years in her family without comprehending the position and duties of Barby.

Reader, we will have no concealments with you-this sickness is unto death! Yes, even so!

A mysterious Providence?

Nothing of the kind. Her burdens were too heavy for her, and she has fallen by the way;

"Is there pain as well as tightness?" "When I take a long breath."

And then Barby lay very still and heavy, like one falling into semi-unconsciousness.

There was no mistaking the fact. Barby was seriously ill. Some little resistance was made by the children on attempting to remove them from her room; but they yielded when told by their mother with a hushed, serious voice, and a sober countenance, that "Poor Barby was sick," and must be kept very quiet.

When the doctor, who was immediately called, saw the sick girl, his countenance betrayed concern; and when questioned earnestly by Mrs. Grayson on leaving her room, he said that it was an attack of acute pnuemonia.

when her heart was most in her duty, and those to whom she ministered most in need of her loving, patient care. Ah! if she had been rightly considered; if there had been for her, in the heart of Mrs. Grayson, a tithe of the regard in which Barby held her children, this sad martyrdom would not have taken place. But she did not mean to wrong Barby. None knew her better or valued her more. Did not Barby owe every thing to her? See from what a life of cruel hardship she rescued her. True-all true. Yet, does this mend the wrong? Your house will burn down as surely from a thoughtless exposure to fire as through the torch of an evil incendiary. Destruction waits not to ask the why or the wherefore.

"In great danger, madam," was the emphatic reply.

"What is to be done?" asked the lady, turning her hands within and around each other, like one in pain and bewilderment of mind.

"Keep her perfectly quiet, and give the medicines I leave in the order prescribed," said the doctor.

"You will call in again to-day?" "Yes. I will see her before night." "And you think her really in danger?" Mrs. Grayson's voice betrayed her great anxiety.

66

“No good can arise from concealing the fact, madam. Yes, the girl is in danger, as I have already told you."

"Don't neglect her, doctor!" Mrs. Grayson's voice choked. “Oh, if we should lose Barby, what will we do?"

True, true, kind-hearted, but not always considerate lady! what will you do without this humble, unattractive, unobtrusive little body, whose face, figure, and movements excite mirthfulness or ridicule in strangers? You have forgotten Barby in your fashionable pleasures-forgotten her with a cruel forgetfulness, through which have been sapped the very foundations of her life—and now, we fear, consideration has come too late. What will you do without Barby? Did you only think of yourself and your children in this extorted exclamation? Perhaps yea, perhaps nay. The human heart is very selfish-very.

"I will not neglect her, madam !”

skill at defiance; and when it became at last apparent to all that the time of Barby's departure was at hand, a shadow of deep sorrow fell upon the household of Mrs. Grayson.

What would they do without Barby? She had grown into the whole economy of things; was a pillar in the goodly frame-work of that domestic temple; and how was she to be taken away without a loss of strength and symmetry?

The

But death waits not on human affairs. feet of Barby were already bared for descent into the river whose opposite shore touches the land of immortal beauty; and in spite of skill, care, regret, and sorrow the hour of her departure drew near, until it was at hand.

True to the last, Barby's thoughts dwelt always on the children; and she felt the disabilities of sickness as an evil only in the degree that it robbed them of the care she felt to be so necdful to their comfort and happiness. If she heard Willy cry, or Georgy complain, she grew restless or troubled. Every day she had them brought to her bedside that she might look at them, and utter, were it ever so feebly, a word of love.

"Dear, dear! Won't I be well soon, doctor? What will the children do?" How many times was this said even after hope had failed in the physician's heart. At last the time came when concealment from Barbara of her real state was felt to be wrong, and the duty of communication devolved upon Mrs. Grayson.

"Barby!" she said, as she sat alone by her bedside, forcing herself to speak because she

with good reason, that passion alone, in the trouble of it, exceeding all other accidents." And yet extreme fear sometimes causes actions which the most daring courage would fail to urge men to. As in the first pitched battle the Romans lost against Hannibal, under the Consul Sempronius, a body of ten thousand foot, that had taken fright, "seeing no other escape for their fright, threw themselves headlong upon the great array of the enemy, which with wonderful force and fury they charged through and through and routed, with a very great slaughter of the Carthaginians." Courage is indispensable to the soldier; yet some of the greatest commanders have in their youth shown signs of nervousness. Philip of Macedon ran away, in his first battle. Sancho XII., King of Navarre, was surnamed "the Trembling," because, going into battle, he was always seized with violent tremors. Yet he was a truly brave man; for one of his friends attempting to comfort him by representing as less the dangers he was about encountering, the stout old king replied: "You understand me ill; for could my flesh know the peril my courage will presently carry it into, it would sink down to the ground." That gallant general, Lord Hill, was so sensitive that in his youth he fainted at the sight of blood, and after he had entered the army fainted again, on beholding from his window a prize-fight in the court. A lady once wondered how, with such sensitiveness, he was able to act with great coolness and vigor in the midst of dreadful scenes of carnage. "I have still the same feelings," said he; "but in the excitement of battle all individual sensation is lost sight of."

Next to courage endurance is the greatest military virtue. The two qualities, in fact, go together; and have never had a finer example than in the wreck of a British transport ship in the Bay of Bengal, in the early part of this century. The vessel had sprung a great leak; and being about to sink, all efforts to relieve her being vain, the Colonel commanding first put the women and children in the only boats which could be used, and then ranged his brave soldiers

able fate, and, seeing the ship now about to give her last fatal lurch, ordered to "present arms.' Thus, standing firmly in their ranks, no man moving or showing fear, they fired a volley as she sank, and went down standing at ease, in as fine order as though they had been arrayed upon parade ground.

Since the days when Alexander the Great, marching at the head of his army through the borders of India, suffering with the soldiers excessive thirst, yet threw away the casque full of water which was brought him in the presence of all, saying that one soldier is no better than another since that day, the burning plains of India have witnessed some noble examples of bravery, endurance, and self-sacrifice. Sir William Napier relates that on one of the long marches the Twenty-fifth Sepoys, being nearly maddened

riers approaching with full skins of water. They rushed toward him in crowds, tearing away the skins and struggling together, with loud cries of "Water! water!" At that moment some halfdozen straggling soldiers of the Twenty-second came up, apparently exhausted, and asked for some. At once the generous Indians withheld their hands from the skins, forgot their own sufferings, and gave the fainting Europeans to drink; then they all moved on, the Sepoys carrying the Twenty-second men's muskets for them, patting them on the shoulders, and encouraging them to hold out. It was in vain; they did so for a short time, but soon fell. It was then discovered that these noble fellows were all wounded, some deeply, but thinking there was to be another fight, they had concealed their hurts, and forced nature to sustain the loss of blood, the pain of wounds, the burning sun, the long marches, and the sandy desert, that their last moments might be given to their country on another field of battle.

Women have shown as great coolness and intrepidity in battle as men. The celebrated Captain Molly gained her grade of sergeant from Washington's own hand at the battle of Monmouth, where, her husband being shot down at the gun he was serving, and the gun about to be abandoned, she took his place, and did no little injury to the enemy, while her cool bravery won the admiration of all beholders. She had already distinguished herself at Fort Clinton, where, the Americans being about to retreat from it, she rushed back to her husband's gun, with the lighted match he had dropped in his flight, and touched off the piece. It was the last gun fired in the fort. Women soldiers have not been so rare in modern times as the rude life would seem to warrant. The spice of romance found in rough campaigning experiences seems to have its charms for the fairer and weaker sex. In 1739 died Christian Davies, who "served several years with great valor in the Enniskillen Regiment, but receiving a wound at the battle of Aghrim, was discovered." Her biography was published in 1741, with the following title: