had formerly been a governess to her daughter, and the esteem she had for her; and, finally, of the favorable things she had heard of me, and her desire of seeing me in a suitable position. They also presented me to Monsieur, the Duke of Brittany, and other distinguished individuals. They assured me also that I must see the beauties of Versailles, and I was accordingly dragged about the place. I thought that I should die of weariness. I had been talked about so much that they observed me as an object of curiosity, and thousands of people came to look at me, and examine me, and ask me questions. They insisted that I must finish the day by taking supper with the young King. After seeing me in the crowd, the Duchess told the Duke of Burgundy of my talents, and my so-called knowledge. She did not stop there: The next day, having gone to the home of the Duchess of Noailles, she sent for me to come to her there. I obeyed her call at once.

"There, Madame!" said she, "there is the person about whom I have told you. Come, Mademoiselle, talk!"

Then, seeing me hesitate to reply, and thinking that she must aid me, just as a singer will give a prelude to an air that is to be sung,

"Speak a little about religion, and then talk about other things."

I was so confused that I could scarcely think, and do not even remember how I conducted myself. It was, doubtless, in denying that I possessed the rare talents which they supposed.

This ridiculous scene was repeated in another house where they showed me. I saw that I was to be paraded as an ape or some other animal that is displayed in the market place. I wished that the earth would swallow me, rather than appear in such a figure. I have to reproach myself with having been so shocked by these scenes to which I was subjected, that I appreciated less than I ought the motive of so many strange steps, which was none other than an immoderate desire to have me justly estimated by the public.

I had been in this awkward position several days, when the Duchess returned home one night raging terribly against her sister

and the Cardinal de Rohan, because they had come to no decision in regard to my future position. According to her ideas, I ought to be placed at Jonarre and receive a pension.

"Indeed!" said she to my sister, "since they make so much ceremony about it, there will be some other way provided. I am a great lady enough myself to make her fortune, without any need of them." She would take me home with her, and that would be better than anything else.

That was just what I feared. I stood transfixed, without the power to make a movement or say a word, much more to make the least acquiescence to this proposal. But the agitation of the Duchess prevented her from noticing my immobility. My sister justly reproached me for my silence when we were alone: I acknowledged to her that the aversion I felt for the situation, and the fear of saying something that would engage me to it, had suspended all power of speech.

The anger of the Duchess against her sister determined her to leave the next morning; and I flattered myself that I should be permitted to return to my convent, where I longed to go. But I was not yet at the end of my travels. The Duchess announced to me that she was going to Sceaux, and she wished to take me there to introduce me to Monsieur de Malineu, who was capable of appreciating my worth. As the crowning act of my despair, I was to be exhibited upon a new theatre.

Before we reached the Abby de Vertot, her relative and friend who lived at Versailles came to make her a visit. She gave him an arm-chair and left me standing, as she usually did when she had company. I did not like to submit to this, and passed into the study, and shed bitter tears, which were wrung from me by the humiliation of my condition. We arrived after dinner at Sceaux, where Madam the Duchess, always full of her subject, did not fail to speak of me with excess.

Madame, the Duchess of Maine, accustomed to these exaggerations, and seldom attentive to what did not interest her, paid little or no attention to her remarks. However she wished me to force myself upon her notice, and she finally consented out of po

It is

miraculously does it leap up from its weakness, and praise God in unselfish charities, even in the best Christian hearts. moving in the Divine order, slowly. Its seed is in all human souls, germinating, growing, blossoming, bearing fruit, but nowhere showing perfect blossoms or fruit yet. The time has not come for that. Eternity is God's summer for growing the fruits planted in the garden of his universe.

How men wait and long and pray for a more rapid growth of fellow-love. This is well, and is one of the means of its growth. So let them wait and long and pray; so let live and give and do for humanity; so let them send missionaries and teachers and preachers among men ; so let them build and and cultivate and govern for human good; so let government, church and society aid the good time coming" It is God's work, and they are helping it on. It is Fellow Love teaching and preaching and praying. It is Fellow-Love pleading its own cause at the bar of the world. It is Fellow-Love arming for, and fighting in the conflict with selfishness; training its muscles for the long contest; putting on its strength for ultimate victory. Men must work with God. Good men and true, must make room in their hearts for the growth of fellow-love, and make room in the world for its coming hosts, and the institutions of love they shall ordain.

**God speaketh in their lives of truth and beauty;
God speaketh in their glowing words of fire;
God speaketh in their acts of love and duty,
And voiceless charities that never tire.

For them earth smiles more joyfully and fairer, — Each word of love and truth lives on for aye, Each heart-beat of their lives to man brings nearer The glorious morning of the perfect day."

IT is very touching, it brings both smile and tear, to see the eternal hope which always soars, like a white dove, from under the shadow of every disappointment, so white, so fresh, as if its wings were cleansed anew, in the darkness out of which it came; the hope that is like a courageous word, like a suddenly thronging thought of spring-time, like a walk in the cool air on an autumn mountain-side; the hope that something will yet be, that the ocean of purity is yet filled with pearls for the successful diver, that nature is yet rich, and God lavish, as of old, and one's need not utterly overdone.

A GIRL'S TALK TO GIRLS.

BY SARAH L. JOY.

ON'T be frightened, girls, I'm not going

it just as much as I used to in the old days at the "Sem" when we were brought in for Friday night lectures on our shortcomings during the week. Plenty of cause I had to hate, yes, and dread them too, for usually at the head of the list of offenders stood my unlucky name followed by those of half a dozen kindred spirits, who, preferring fun to French 'ranslation, liberty to Latin, and mischief to mathematics, kept ourselves in hot water and the Faculty in a continual state of nervous excitement. Fanny, sweet and winsome still; Min, bright, sparkling brunette, the most petted of society's darlings; Hester, ringleader in all the frolics, staid matron now,

girls all, who stood together in the Library on those unlucky nights, do you remember? Have you forgotten how meekly we stood, with downcast eyes and repentant faces, listening-apparently-to an exaggerated account of our depravities, and a horrible warning of the awful consequences that would ensue unless we mended our ways, but in reality revolving some new plan for mischief in our fertile brains, and only waiting to be dismissed the awful presence, and find our room door closed behind us, to break out into fresh anathemas against our persecutors, and to concoct some grand escapade more startling than any we had indulged in before?

Ah! girls, we have changed since then; added years have brought new experiences; let us hope we have grown wiser and better. To all of us life has assumed new phases, to some new happiness has come, and down their life path shines only rosy brightness; to others (and God help them,) sorrow and care, with only the corpse of a dead hope at their feet, and the tear-moistened grave of a dead past in their hearts.

kindly into each other's eyes, I would like to talk to you a little about this life of ours, the grandly earnest thing it seems to me, and if I can make one among you see her duties and responsibilities as a woman, rouse any one to truer and more earnest endeavor, broaden and deepen her aims and interests, then indeed I shall not have striven in vain.

Do you know, I've been thinking lately, that the majority of us have fallen into a decidedly aimless, desultory way of living, just going on from day to day with no fixed, definite purpose in our lives, but simply drifting along on the wave of circumstance, caring little where it was taking us, so we could be at our ease and indulge ourselves in our own selfish pleasures.

By most of us, I fancy this life of ours is regarded as one grand play-day, and so we go on getting as much out of it as we can, and giving nothing in return. This is, I dare say, less selfishness than thoughtlessness, though the one does lead to the other after awhile; for it is true, that in proportion as we let our thoughts of others and our care for them, be displaced by thoughts of and care for self alone, so our desire to benefit them will decrease, and our love of self will grow. It is pleasant to have our own way, to have all our whims gratified, and to deny ourselves of no pleasures, that is, it is pleasant for a little while in a certain way, but I question if there is any real feeling of satisfaction that will arise from such a course of life. There might be, if there were nothing beyond, but it does seem to me that we are called into existence for something nobler and better than to pander to our own selfish appetites, and simply be content to live on from day to day with no effort for improvement.

I believe that no one is sent into this world without a work to do; there is nothing without its mission in the whole catalogue of created things, and it is not likely that we "made in the image of God" and "only a little lower than the angels," will be exempt from our share of usefulness. What the special life-work of each one of us may be, I cannot tell; it depends entirely on our surroundings and opportunities. Each one must decide for herself what her duties are, and in what manner she can work to the best advantage.

every day to every one of us, if we only would use them, but either we don't see them, or in our careless indolence we pass them unthinkingly by, not attaching the proper importance to them.

The trouble generally is, girls, we are all inclined to "despise the day of small things," and we want if we are to work to do something grand and startling, quite of the common course, that will astonish the world; and in our look-out for the grand opportunities that so seldom come, we lose many ways of doing real good. We cannot all be " representative women,” and do grand,heroic deeds, but we can work quietly and unostentatiously, carrying our deeds of kindness into every day life, and making ourselves better, and every one around us happier by the influence of a consistent, lovely manner of living.

But because we have a work to do and life is earnest and we are to be in earnest with it, I do not mean that we are to go through it with knit brows, as though we were puzzling over some perplexed question in mathematics, no indeed! I believe in carrying so much sunshine in our hearts that it will shine through our eyes and brighten our faces. We need all the sunshine we can get in this world you may be sure, and you and I have got to help make it. Clouds will come sometimes of course, but they needn't come as often as they do if we wouldn't let them; we make them oftentimes I think; let trifles annoy us, grow impatient and fretful at little things, and render ourselves and every body else uncomfortable. This can be helped by a little patient endeavor and fore: hought.

Less for self, and more for others, girls, and our work is well begun; after that, once fairly started on the upward way, our progress will be easier, we will find our field of labor extending before we are aware that we have commenced our task,and with every day's duties will come new love and interest in our work

First of all, let us each one try to make our own life so sweet and sunny that our influence will be felt on all around, and after that the other opportunities will come as fast as we can use them. The result can be no other than satisfactory I am sure.

Did my talk become a sermon after all? Well, I didn't mean to preach. I only wanted to tell you my thoughts and set you thinking

Under the Snow.

It was no misnomer, when the Romans would commence their year with Spring, to give its first month the name of the warlike planet, Mars. But it is a misnomer in our latitude, whatever it may have been in their more balmy and southern clime, to call our stormy and blustering March the first month of spring. A day's journey to the southward may take us where lilacs are budding, and the plough stands in the furrow, but in this forty-third degree of latitude, and on the Atlantic slope, where the prevailing westerly winds sweep down upon us the chilliness of our mountain peaks, the lightest foot-fall of Spring has not indented our unbroken snow-fields, or crackled the ice which rings beneath the steel of the skater.

If our snow were to determine our winter, it should begin in the vicinity of Christmas and end in raveled and broken edges among the coy sunbeams of April. By this guage, March is midwinter in our northern borders. To be sure, in its best days, the sun,- -in whose court the Seasons are maids of honor creeps slowly back across the line, and nominally brings the spring in his train; but the line is far to the southward, and the goddess travels not by rail. All through the fruitful sugar-orchards of Vermont and Maine and northern New York, the snow lies three feet deep; and the early thaws melting the upper layers into an icy crust, only render the barricade more formidable. Whether the patient Canadians with their short stature, get through the boisterous month by tunnelling or snow shoes, we have never presumed to fathom.

So while astronomers persist in the vernal equinox, and the almanacs keep up the farce of the season, we pay little practical heed to such arbitrary nomenenclature. The winter festivities of the town but grow mer. rier as the season waxes later; and the evening sleighbells of our country hills ring gayer YOL XLI.-15

tunes among the drifts of March than over the light snows of Christmas. It is the peeping grass-blade and the swelling bud that first whisper of spring, as they surprise our eyes through the clearing vapors of some April morning.

And this is well, if spring be what the poets tell us. If we may trust Spenser and Thompson, and that multitude of English songsters, from the "chaffering swallow" to the "holy lark," who have laid their tribute at her feet, the goddess comes in garments of green, with sunshine in her eyes and gentle zephyrs upon her lips. She brings the days of unfolding leaves and early flowers, reaching over even to the roses. "The time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land."

This season in New England is May and June. Even May-day hardly gives us the blue violets in the warm hollows, or the trailing arbutus creeping along the hill-sides. And our lasses must have a June Queen if they would give her an out-door coronation, or wreathe their "Maypole " with aught but evergreen.

But when the tardy spring does arrive, with what a gracious and generous hand does she fling wide her stores! As Longfellow tells us of Sweden, "winter and summer are wonderful, and pass into each other.” The flowers follow close on the footsteps of the retreating snow. The hills emerge, green and smiling, fuom beneath their chilly covering. The trees shake out their garments, and are clothed as if by magic. There is a stir through the valleys. like a waking from slumber, and the woodlands are filled with sudden music - the morning song of the year. The plum and cherry and hawthorn put on their bridal robes, and the apple-tree has no time for leaves in the press of its crowding blossoms.

But is this wonder of bud and bloom thus evoked in a breath, as it seems to us careless