"You have the words, certainly. But are you in possession of their whole wealth of meaning? We all know, to be sure, what sort of a transfiguration the hardest and coarsest duties undergo when done for the sake of one we love, often exchanging their squalid, unlovely, repulsive aspect for one that is positively winning and delightful,but do we comprehend so readily all that is implied in sweeping a room as for Thy laws?' I think white wings of angels would hover delightedly over the work! The servant, so sweeping, would bring into active exercise all the. Christian virtues; namely:-Obedience,—he is obedi ent to the law, 'Servants, obey your masters,' and to God, the Lawgiver; Humility,--he is not above his work, he is only solicitous that it shall not prove that his work was above him; Meekness,―he bears with his master's reproofs and his own mistakes, patiently; Faithfulness,--he does his task thoroughly, putting his broom into all the corners and hidden places, as seeing one who is invisible' inspecting his work; Honesty, he takes nothing from the room, not so much as a pin from the floor, that does not belong to him; Diligence, he is careful not to waste his master's time, nor God's; Contentment,-instead of fretting and repining because he has to work, or because the work is of a homely sort, he feels the blessing of having work so plain, so immediate, so free from difficulties and entanglements, that he cannot well go wrong in it; Trust,—he be lieves that his Lord knows what work is best for him now, and will give him other and higher work so soon as he is fit for it; Hope,--he remembers joyfully the rest that remaineth, and the glory that shall be revealed; Lastly-that crowning grace!-Love,-he is full of kind thought and delicate consideration for those to whose comfort he is ministering, careful to leave the master's easy-chair just at the angle he likes best, the mistress's work-table free from dust, the invalid's couch where the light falls softest,everything so arranged as to give the greatest satisfaction

to the eye, the deepest repose to the mind. He can, if he will, consecrate his work with prayer, and sweeten it with thoughts of our Saviour bending His sacred head over a carpenter's bench, and St. Paul plying his trade of tentmaker. How truly such sweeping makes both the room and the action 'fine!' Now take that same potent clause' into the study of music, and see how inevitably a Christian must be a better musician than a worldling-other things being equal."

"Still," suggested Alice, "one might think it right to learn just enough of music to make home pleasant, with out having any strong musical bias, or expecting ever to become an accomplished musician."

"If one does, Alice, one will be likely to prove conclusively, in one's own person, how little advantage results from any study of importance, which is not taken up seriously, and carried on regularly, with a view to the greatest proficiency that is within the student's reach. If there is no strong natural bent, the more need of persistent study and practice; the pleasantness of home will not be much enhanced by a soulless, slovenly, disjointed performance. The real inoperativeness, or insincerity, of this motive generally appears when marriage and motherhood bring new cares to the player or singer. The sweet accomplishment of harmony, which was to add so rich a charm to the home-precinct, is dropped and forgotten so soon as the musician. really has a home, for whose delight and discomforts she is, mainly, responsible."

Alice looked troubled. "You would not think it right," said she, "for a mother to neglect her children for her music?"

"Certainly not.

But the mothers of whom I am speaking lavish time enough upon their own and their children's finery, not only to keep up their music, but to make continual progress in it. Yet which accords best with that sweet ideal of motherhood which we all hallow in our

hearts-she who spends an hour or two of each day in embroidering, tucking, and trimming her child's garments, making its babyhood unlovely with pride, and its maturity sinful with extravagance; or she who surrounds its young life with an atmosphere of soft, melodious, spiritualizing sounds, training it early to comprehend the laws and the significances of harmony, and bringing it, by easy and imperceptible degrees, into lovely accordance with all that is good and sweet and ennobling in art or in nature? Which of them will the children reverence most? Which will they rise up to call blessed,' when death paralyzes alike the fingers that ply the embroidery-needle and the fingers that wake the white, singing keys? Which memory will send the sweetest, most pathetic strain down through their future lives? Easy it is to answer!-the garments that we have worn fade quickly from our recollection—most emphatically they 'perish in the using;'-but the melodies that sweetened our childhood, the songs that we sang with our mother in the twilight,-these are among the things which our hearts cherish to their latest throb!"

"Do you think it is wrong, then, to trim our garments and make them pretty?"

I could not help smiling. "Do you really think that 'trimming' and 'making pretty' are convertible terms, Ruth? Any artist will tell you that much of the trimming, which costs us so much time and money, is only a making ugly. But, allowing that its end is beauty, and that it always accomplishes that end, is there no distinction to be made between the high beauty and the low one? The beauty of lovely melodies is infinitely greater than the beauty of lovely garments; the former, therefore, should be first sought after to beautify our homes. The real trouble is, that women do not rightly divide their duties. Consciously, or not, we each make to ourselves two catalogues of the day's labors; one under the head of 'Things that must be done,' the other of "Things that may be done.'

Then we put the tucks, the flounces, and embroideries, the rich cakes and pastry, and the fashionable calls, under the head of Must,' and the music, the reading aloud of the best authors, and kindred duties, under the head of May.' The body must be pampered; the mind may be fed, or starved, as it happens. Thence come endless toil of the most slavish, exhausting, unsatisfying kind, continual deterioration, and the sharp gnawing of discontent."

There was a long pause. "Do you think, then," said Alice, timidly, "that no one ought to learn music, who cannot give some regular time to it daily?"

"That would be too hard a saying. Where there is genuine talent, and the way open, it might do to begin by devoting all the odds and ends of time to the work, and so making a kind of regularity of irregularity. If this were done patiently and scrupulously, I think God would, ere long, give the regular time needful. If it did not come, I should consider it, in most cases, a clear indication that the music must be given up."

"What! when there is real talent!" exclaimed Ruth in amazement. "Do you think God ever gives a talent which he does not mean us to cultivate?"

"Rarely; I never knew such a case, yet it may exist. Given talent, energy, patience, and faith; and the opportunity for growth and the opening for usefulness generally follow. But if there be, anywhere, a heart heavy with the sense of germs of talent undeveloped, denied all time and space for unfolding, kept down by illness, or by a multitude of homely, yet genuine and pressing duties; let it take comfort in the certainty that God means it to attain, by this thorny road of constraint and privation, unto higher and heavenlier things than it might have won in the freest exercise of its talents,-even unto the sweet patience of hope, the repose of unquestioning obedience, the bless edness of sacrifice. They also serve who stand and wait,' says Milton of the celestial host."

Alice's face lit up radiantly. Ruth looked half-scared, half-exultant. "Such a life would be a bitter one for me," she said, with a slow shake of the head. "I tasted it before you came, and I did not find out the sweetness nor the comfort in it. I am so glad you came, Miss Frost!"-giving me a quick, impetuous caress.

"That reminds me that we have not yet agreed upon the terms of payment for these lessons."

She looked utterly confounded.

gan, and then stopped.

"I thought "--she be

"You thought I was to give them freely and unconditionally? Not altogether. 'If ye hae nae purse to fine, ye hae flesh to pine,' says the old Scotch proverb. I have a mind to play Shylock with you. I shall exact a flesh-andblood payment."

Ruth opened her eyes at me in speechless amazement. Alice only smiled. I was beginning to remark the latter's quickness of comprehension wherever any spiritual analogy was implied. I had already learned that her faculty of ob servation was unusually keen and delicate; it even annoyed me a little, at times, to see that every emotion which disturbed the surface of my consciousness, appeared to have its answering ripple on hers. Not, evidently, because she sought to inspect or to analyze my feelings; the power seemed to be most involuntarily exercised, and was even a source of embarrassment. Often, when her eye met mine, she colored and turned away, as if there were such a crime as spiritual theft, and she had been detected in it. In a loved and trusted friend, such facility of comprehension would be invaluable, sparing one much painful travail of speech; but in an indifferent person, it came near to being an intolerable nuisance. And, up to this time, I had not taken as the phrase goes-to Alice Prescott. She was afflicted with such an overpowering and inveterate shyness ---oftener taking the form of stiffness and unresponsiveness than of open confusion of face--that one's course of ac