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OBSTINACY.

OBSTINACY is a pertinacious and stubborn perseverance in any opinion, or course of action, we have once adopted, however absurd and destructive in its consequences. This unhappy error often arises from a strong desire of appearing consistent, and a shame of acknowledging ourselves to be wrong. It is one of those vices which misleads us with a semblance of virtue; its common foundation is pride.

Pride and self-sufficiency cheat us through life, and we become dupes to our own blindness, in supposing that others do not see our weakness, because we ourselves refuse to acknowledge it. In short, truth, and nothing but truth, is what we ought obstinately to adhere to; for if we are obstinately attached to error, as sure as truth and falsehood are different things, our misfortunes in life will be in exact proportion to our obstinacy,

TO A CHILD ON HIS BIRTHDAY.

WHERE sucks the bee now? Summer is flying,
Leaves on the grass-plot, faded are lying;
Violets are gone from the grassy dell,

With the cowslip-cups where the fairies dwell;
The rose from the garden hath passed away -

Yet this, fair boy, is thy natal-day.

For love bids it welcome, the love which hath smiled

Ever around thee, my gentle child!

Watching thy footsteps, and guarding thy bed,

And pouring out joy on thy sunny head.

Roses will vanish, but this will stay —

Happy and bright is thy natal day.

THE BLIND BOY.

SEVEN children gathered around the board of William Halleck; and though poverty lay like a dark mist on his prospects, and sometimes pressed heavily on his heart, yet the hardy and pious farmer toiled patiently along the thorny path he found marked out for him. Death had never entered his doors; but sickness had come often, with fatigue, expense, anxiety, and sorrow in her train; and beneath his roof dwelt one being, at once a living joy and a living sorrow. His fourth child was a bright and beautiful boy; but God had shut out from his mind the perception of all visible loveliness. Henry was born blind. The hearts of the parents

were troubled when the terrible suspicion first came upon their minds, that the fair infant on whom they gazed, lay in a world of darkness. Many and various were the experiments they tried to ascertain the truth, and it was long after every friend and neighbor that looked upon the child had expressed his melancholy conviction, ere the father and mother would shut their hearts against all hope. But the boy grew and strengthened; his little limbs became active; he stood by his mother's knee; he grasped her hand, and walked tottering at her side; language came in due season to his tongue, and his artless prattle and happy laugh were the loudest and the liveliest in the house. Yet vision

was still wanting, and the earth and all it contained, even the faces of those he best loved, were shut from his gaze. He was born to be a poor, useless, helpless blind boy; and the hearts of his parents sometimes ached to the core as they looked on his blooming cheek and sightless eyes, and thought of the future.

But the voice of complaint was a sound unknown beneath the roof of William Halleck, and the hymn of thanksgiving ascended every evening from the lips of his family circle, ere the deep sleep of the weary came on their eyelids.

Three winters in succession had a rheumatic fever laid one of the daughters of William Halleck on the bed of sickness; yet she, too, like the rest of that humble household, was industrious, contented, and pious. She was two years older than Henry; and the mutual sense of infirmity had knit the bonds of a brother's and a sister's love most closely between them. When the invalid first rose from the weary bed of pain, and went forth under the blue sky of spring, it was the strengthening arm of Henry that supported her; and when the blind boy asked of things that were shut up from none but him, it was the soft voice of Mary that answered his questions, and poured into his mind the delight of new ideas. It was Henry who sat by Mary's bedside in her hours of suffering, and ministered to her wants. He knew by her breathing when she slept, and remained still and silent in his darkness till she woke. He knew by the very tones of her voice when she was better, and when she was worse, and though he stole about her room with the bent head and outstretched

hand of the blind, he seldom missed finding anything that Mary wanted. And it was Mary who gave Henry that knowledge of the Being who made him, which was a bright light to his mind, and shed over his spirit a hope more gladdening than the sunshine which cheered all outward things.

As soon as pain ceased to rack her joints, and strength was in a measure restored to her limbs, Mary was wont to arise and return thankfully to those employments, in which alone she was permitted to assist the toils of her family. The first warm days of spring were to Henry days of rejoicing. As soon as he felt their breath, he used to hasten into the house crying with a glad voice, "Summer is coming, and Mary will get well! To him the first note of the robin told not of the verdure and blossoms which were soon to

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nature with beauty; but it announced that she whom he loved would be freed from her pain, and come out with him into the pure air, and go into the fields and woods, gathering fragrant wild-flowers, listening to the music of the winds, waters, and birds, and talking to him cheerfully and usefully. Mary was entering upon her seventeenth spring; and before the April snows had melted from the fields, she was already so well, that she sat up as she was accustomed at her little window, plying her needle with a busy and skilful hand. There came a heavy storm of rain with warm south winds, and in one night the snowy mantle of the earth had vanished, and the fields lay bare and brown the next day, beneath a clear sky and a warm sun. It was a beautiful morning, and unseen influences were busy

in the trees that stretched their arms silently to the gentle breeze, and in the very sods that basked in the sunshine. The leaf was preparing to put forth, the green blade to sprout, and the pulses of man beat lightly and happily under the spell of the season Henry felt the soft west wind on his cheek, and heard the first notes of the spring birds. As soon as the sun rode high in the heavens, he went to summon Mary from her toils, to walk with him as far as the Great Oak, a spot which she loved, because it commanded a wide and beautiful prospect, and which was dear to him, because she loved it, and because it was always the end of their first walk in spring. Mary hesitated, for she feared the dampness of the ground; but Henry had gone with a younger brother all the way up to the Great Oak on purpose, and assured her the path was dry. She stood at the door, and as she looked up at the clear and beautiful sky, around on the landscape, and again on the pleading face of her blind brother, she could not find in her heart to say, "No." They went out together, and Mary was glad she had gone. Her own heart seemed to expand with quiet happiness as she walked. What invalid is not happy in breathing the open air for the first time, after tedious months of confinement, and feels not as if the simplest act of existence were in itself a luxury? Henry went leaping by her side with short and joyous bounds, pouring forth the exuberance of his spirits in the songs she had taught him, asking a thousand questions, and sometimes stopping to listen when the sound of a sheep-bell, the note of a bird, or the murmur of a distant voice struck

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