one of them. He could tell you. He hadn't sweated by night and been poulticed and plastered by day for nothing. Mrs. Guptill could always see when he was ready to come down with anything, but it didn't get ahead of her. She began the doctoring process without a moment's hesitation, and kept it up with such a show of determination that frequently the disease was ashamed to exhibit itself. What if her plasters did occasionally evince a roving disposition; what if Guptill did come home at night with his chest-protector sticking out of his coat-sleeve, or some other of Mrs. Guptill's homemade external applications scattered all over his longsuffering back, his wife felt convinced that she had warded off a sick spell, and was accordingly triumphant.

Then there was that Russian disease called La Grippe. Mrs. Guptill frequently held forth on the subject, declaring that it was nothing, after all, but oldfashioned influenzy, and that it couldn't beat her. She saw no reason why folks should be taken off with it; the disease had to be managed in time, and that was all there was to it. However, she meant to keep her eye on every member of the family, and let them but give one sneeze, and she knew how to proceed.

Now it so happened that Mr. and Mrs. Guptill went out one evening and left the children in the care of Polly Waldron, a next-door neighbor who offered to run in and mind them awhile. When they returned, and Polly was starting home again, she looked back just as she reached the door and said something about one of the children, but all Mrs. Guptill caught were these warning words:

"He's been sneezing like anything, and you'd better look out for him, for he seems to be coming down with the grip."

The little ones were in the back room, and Mrs. Guptill rushed in to investigate the matter. Pouncing upon Johnnie, whose eyes were red and watery (a sure sign, as anybody knew), she trotted him upstairs to her room.

"I'll never do it again," the boy began to whimper.

"No, and you wont do it this time, if I can help it," said Mrs. Guptill running here and there, bringing out first one preventive and then another, until the table was completely covered with boxes, bottles, and plasters. After undressing the boy and soaking his feet in hot mustard water, she hurried him into bed. Then she gave him a bitter dose of medicine, laid a plaster on his chest, mustard drafts to his feet, tied a flannel around his head, covered him with a pile of blankets, and commanded him to sweat.

The poor little victim made no remonstrance. He had learned by bitter experience to suffer quietly under such treatment.

That night Mrs. Guptill scarcely closed her eyes, neither did Mr. Guptill; his wife wouldn't let him. "Just suppose we haven't taken the complaint in time," she cried out to him whenever she found him sinking into a sweet slumber, and then it became necessary for the two of them to rush around the room and hunt up some more tortures for poor Johnnie, who already bore a close resemblance to a boiled lobster.

The next morning Polly Waldron ran in to see how "Oh! he'll come out all the patient was getting on. right," triumphantly said Mrs. Guptill, as she led Polly to the room where the boy was lying, "I took him in hand at once, and there hasn't been a symptom 'cept the red, watery eyes. He hasn't sneezed at all."

When they reached the room Polly gave one glance at the much-wrapped-up, much-sweated piece of humanity on the bed, and then making some inarticulate remarks in which the words, "Tom," "sneezing," "Johnnie," "crying," were the only ones that could be understood, she gave way to peal after peal of uncontrollable laughter.

It took Mrs. Guptill fully three minutes to comprehend the situation :

She had doctored the wrong

child!

OUR CHRISTMAS.*-JULIA WALCOTT.
We didn't have much of a Christmas
My Papa and Rosie and me,
For mamma'd gone out to the prison
To trim up the poor pris'ner's tree;
And Ethel, my big grown-up sister,
Was down at the 'sylum all day
To help at the great turkey dinner,
And teach games for the orphans to play.
She belongs to a club of young ladies
With a "beautiful objick" they say,-
"Tis to go among poor lonesome children
And make all their sad hearts more gay.
And Auntie--you don't know my Auntie?
She's my own papa's half-sister Kate,
She was 'bliged to be round at the chapel
Till 'twas-oh, sometimes dreadfully late.
For she pities the poor worn-out curate:

His burdens, she says, are so great,
So she 'ranges the flowers and the music
And he goes home around by our gate.
I should think this way must be the longest,
But then, I suppose he knows best;
Aunt Katie says he intones most splendid;
And his name is Vane Algernon West.

My papa had bought a big turkey

And had it sent home Christmas eve;
But there wasn't a soul here to cook it-
You see Bridget had threatened to leave
If she couldn't go off with her cousin
(He doesn't look like her one bit);
She says she belongs to a "union"

And the union wont let her "submit."
So we ate bread and milk for our dinner,
And some raisins and candy, and then
Rose and me went downstairs to the pantry
To look at the turkey again.

Papa said he would take us out riding

Then he thought that he didn't quite dare
For Rosie'd got cold and kept coughing;
There was dampness and chills in the air.

*From The Ladies' Home Journal, by permission of "The Curtis Publishing Company."

Oh, the day was so long and so lonesome!
And our papa was lonesome as we;
And the parlor was dreary, no sunshine,
And all the sweet roses,-the tea
And the red ones,-and ferns and carnations
That have made our bay-window so bright,
Mamma'd picked for the men at the prison
To make their bad hearts pure and white.
And we all sat up close to the window,
Rose and me on our papa's two knees,
And we counted the dear little birdies
That were hopping about on the trees.
Rosie wanted to be a brown sparrow;
But I thought I would rather, by far,
Be a robin that flies away winters

Where the sunshine and gay blossoms are.
And papa wished he was a jail-bird,

'Cause he thought that they fared the best; But we all were real glad we weren't turkeys For then we'd been killed with the rest.

That night I put into my prayers:

66

Dear God, we've been lonesome to-day
For mamma, Aunt, Ethel and Bridget
Every one of them all went away.
Wont you please make a club, or society,
'Fore it's time for next Christmas to be,
To take care of philanterpists' fam'lies,
Like papa and Rosie and me?"

And I think that my papa's grown pious,
For he listened, as still as a mouse,
Till I got to Amen ;-then he said it
So it sounded all over the house.

A TOUCH OF NATURE.-WM. H. BUSHNELL
A wild canyon cut in the mountain side,
By watery chisels, deep and wide.

For many a year the Indians roamed there,
And fought for possession with grizzly bear.
Then miners came, and their axes made room
For Long Tom, and cradle, dam and flume.
Their sturdy strokes brought the redwood down,
And almost in a day was builded a town.

And primitive structures, homely and rude,
Began to checker the solitude.

And one o'er the rest rose grand and tall,
With battened roof, and with canvas wall.
With unplaned seats, and with puncheon floor,
And the legend of "Theater" over the door.
Within, men packed it from pit to dome,
Who had left all virtues but courage at home;
Who toiled all day for the nuggets bright,
So recklessly gambled away at night.

A heathenish crew as any of old,

With chance for religion, and their only god, gold.
One side was the stage framed with evergreens,
And blankets were made to do duty as scenes.
At one end of the room was pictured vice,
At the other cards shuffled, and rattled the dice.
The feeble orchestra scarce could be heard
For clinking of glasses, and impious word.
The play was wild as befitted the place,-
The triumph of white o'er the Indian race.
The actors were men unknown to fame,
And actresses but one remove from shame.
The dance was a wild and immodest thing,
With a mixture of can-can and Highland-Fling.
So the play, the jest, and the jeer went along
Till a woman stepped out to sing a song;
And at the first note every sound was hushed,
Between bearded lips the fierce oath was crushed,
Glasses left undrained, cards left unturned,
And a strange soft light in every eye burned.
The singer had reached by the power of art,
The inmost depths of each hardened heart.
Sobs come for curses, and a touch of grace,
Had, in a moment, transformed the place;
And men from the gyves of passion set free,
Seem to kneel once again by a mother's knee;
And a picture undimmed by crime or pain,
Was vividly brought to each mind again,

For the words were the sweetest in any tongue,
And "Home, Sweet Honre," was the song that was sung