chance enough. Such a stubborn cnild! I will warrant the rest will bring their excuses up to time."

Well, all that long forenoon Irving Chase sat on the platform, his face hidden in his arms. "I will let him pout it out till noon," I thought to myself. When school closed at noon, I spoke to him. "Irving, look at me." He looked up now with dry, shining eyes. Never can I forget that look. Had I but been wiser!" Now," I said severely, "I want you to go straight home and get that excuse, and give this note to your mother."

I thrust the note into his hand and pushed him toward the door, while the children stood about looking wonderingly after him. He had brought his noon lunch, as usual, in a little basket, which he had left hanging in the entry. I expected him back before time to open the afternoon session. He did not come. I was vexed. "To think that his mother should humor him so! What can we do with children when their parents coddle them, and spoil them so completely?" so I said to myself. I felt a vague sense of trouble all the afternoon. Things did not run smoothly as before. I whipped a child for spilling his ink. Two were in corners. Several were kept in at recess. I felt that I was speaking sharply when I did not mean to do so.

At four o'clock I was too tired and nervous to stay and plan out the next day's lessons. While putting on my hat in the entry, Irving's dinner basket caught my attention. Mechanically I reached for it, thinking I would call at his home as I passed. As I took it, the cover slid off. A note lay on top of the dainty lunch. It was that missing excuse that had caused all my trouble that day. Perplexed and remorseful, I was reading the note again, when a carriage was driven up to the schoolhouse steps and a voice called, "Miss Deering, are you there?" I stepped to the door. It was Dr. Mann. "Don't be alarmed, Miss Deering, but they want you up at Mrs. Chase's. Little Irving is very ill, and in his delirium keeps begging you not to strike him.

We thought if you could see him and assure him yourself, you might be able to quiet him." Ah, what was that? I heard as in a dream. But I understood now. He must have been ill in the morning and could not hear well, and I had whipped him cruelly for disobedience. Faint and sick, I took my seat beside the doctor. He must have divined something of my trouble. "Whatever has happened, Miss Deering, do not think of it now. We must try to save him yet, and you must nerve yourself to help do it."

Mrs. Chase herself opened the door for us, her face full of grief. I grasped her hand and sobbed aloud. Then I heard, from the chamber adjoining, the cry of a child,oh, so pitiful, pleading with me, monster that I felt myself!

"Don't strike me, Miss Deering, please don't strike me. I can't find it. I've lost it. Don't whip me, please don't whip me, Miss Deering!" Then a shriek, so wild and piercing that I felt I must have died, and my spirit entered some hideous place of torment. Do not ask me to describe the night that I passed. He did not, could not, know me. All my protests and assurances of kindness were in vain. All night, at intervals, he broke out with his pleadings for merey, till I could not bear it longer, and they carried me fainting to a bed.

At last he slept. But he woke no more. Oh, that he might have known me once and forgiven me! Perhaps, if his spirit is where he can know what we mortals suffer, he looks down and pities and forgives me now.

I have taught many terms of school since then. Do you wonder that I have never, in all this time, found a prank so mean, an offence so grave, as to lead me to strike the offender? Corporal punishment may have been deserved, but to strike the defenceless body of an erring child, would have been to bury the lash deep in the unhealed wound of my own heart; and the echo of that terrible cry ringing through my memory turns all my wrath at the offence into pity for the offender.

-Teacher's World

SAMBO'S NEW YEAR SERMON.-I. EDGAR JONES.*

On New Yeah's day resolbe straightway to minimize yo' ills,

Wiv sanitary common sense reduce yo' doctah's bills.

Sweah off from clogging greediness, wiv gluttony an' such,
Fo' one who starbs hisself to def ten die who eat too much.
Doant capah like a mooley cow on ruin's dizzy brink,
Keep way back f'om de precipice respec'fully an' think.
Resolbe dat yo' will not flare up in wild extremes ob dress,
Take middle groun' atween a ton an' none at all, or less.
Doant soak yo' clay too labishly wiv red-eye, gin or rum,
Dey'll switch yo' off down grade right quick to wha' no good
folks come.

Doant oberdo yo' wuks an' ways, f'om cycling to a walk,
An' nebah weah yo' wisdom thin by eberlastin' talk.

Doant be a scandalmongah mean--a cawin' carrion crow-
Inventin' odorous abuse in word-bombs packed wiv woe.
Doant be a narrow-gauge false saint wiv no thought but ob
creeds,

Let out de tucks sewed in yo' soul, expandin' yo' good deeds.
Be faithful to yo' chosen chu'ch, but widen out yo' glance,
See noble motives eberywha' an' gib all souls a chance.
Dispute yo' politics an' points wiv tempah all serene,
An' nebah in fair ahgument explode an' make a scene.
In sho't, resolbe to gib yo' soul a balance-wheel an' guide,
An' nebah let it run slam-bang wiv throttle-valve too wide.
Resolbe to be symmetrical upon de broad-gauge plan
Which wiv uncommon common-sense rounds out de noble

man.

Be hones', upright, squah-toed, true, to right good things inclined,

Instead ob a lop-sided soul by ebil undermined.

Doant covet watahmillyuns, hens, or slip in thievish ways, Yo' chickens may come home to roost in melon-colic days. Doant gib yo' pennies to de chu'ch, yo' dollahs playin' craps ; Or make yo' sins all wide-awake, yo' 'ligion ob cat-naps.

*Author of "The Drunkard's Death," "Heroes of the Mines," "The Landlord's Last Moments," Smoked-American Theology," "The Vigilants," "On the Frontier," "The Legend of Kalooska, "Nearer to Thee," "Judge Lynch," and other dramatic and dialect recitations in the "100 Choice Selections" Series.

An' when yo' sweah off on New Yeah stick bravely to yo word,

Instead ob floppin' like a flea, or playin' mockin' bird.

Be hones' in yo' life an' lub, no hones' gal deceive-
A flirt am like a coward wiv a daggah up his sleeve.

No grumblah, growlah, chronic-crank or insect wiv a sting
But wiv de sunshine in yo' soul soah high on happy wing

So shall yo trabel heabenwahd by de best an' brightest way.
An' lib yo' pledges to renew on many a New Yeah's day.
De qua'tet now will sing de hymn: "We knows whar we
am at,"

While Deekin Bunette locks de doahs an' passes round de

hat.

THE OLD SERMON.

The solemn hush of midnight is brooding over the earth; Alone in my state and splendor I wait for the new day's birth.

No sound breaks in on the stillness, no voice in the silence

calls,

So heavy the velvet hanging, so thick are the study walls.
I would sit in the dusky silence, and rest both heart and

brain,

And gather strength for the warfare that day brings on

again;

But a picture comes in the darkness of a place I knew

when a boy,

And it chills the heart that is throbbing with the flush of worldly joy.

'Tis a simple church in a meadow land,
Where I see a white-haired pastor stand—
Who warns his flock with uplifted hand:
"Except ye be like the children,

Ye cannot enter in."

There's a glitter and glory around me that is born of a guinea's shine;

I measure a thousand acres, and know that their wealth is

mine;

I hear in the shout of the gaping crowd the homage they

bear my name

It is written in radiant letters on the glittering roll of fame; The sound of the words I utter is echoed from land to land; And the helm that sways a nation is trusted within my hand;

But my heart grows faint like a woman's when the dusk of twilight nears,

And I dread the solemn midnight when that white-haired man appears;

For soul and spirit become perplexed;

I dread the words that are coming next,
The awful sound of that simple text:
"Except ye be like the children,

Ye cannot enter in."

Long and fierce was the struggle that placed me upon the height;

Wrought with a will for the lustre that has made my name so bright;

I won me a crown of laurel, and wreathe it around my brow, And the wounds of the mighty conflict I bear about me now. And mine is the right of resting, of pausing awhile in the

strife,

For I fought the fight like a victor, and conquered the thing called life.

But that picture will come in the darkness, and stifle the firelight's gleam,

Till I pale and shrink like a culprit who is bound in a nightmare's dream;

For I see the old man standing there,

The lifted haud and the whitened hair,
And I hear the trembling voice declare :
"Except ye be like the children,

Ye cannot enter in."

So I sit alone in the midnight, while the ghosts of the past flit by,

And they warn me with shadowy fingers of the end that is drawing nigh;

I think of the life within me, of the fierce and resistless will, And the frail and helpless body that must lie so cold and still,

Till the quivering heart in my bosom grows faint and numb with fear,

With dread of the awful summons that one day I must hear: And I turn with a shudder of loathing from the power 1 stooped to win,

And I long for the heart of childhood, untouched, unsullied by sin;

For the voice of truth falls on my ears,

And memory calleth adown the years,

While awed and frightened my soul still hears: "Except ye be like the children,

Ye cannot enter in."