one of the most difficult to learn, of all the lessons of life. It is natural for the mind to reach out eagerly for immediate results.

11. As manhood dawns, and the young man catches in its first light the pinnacles of realized dreams, the golden domes of high possibilities, and the purpling hills of great delights, and then looks down upon the narrow, sinuous, long, and dusty path by which others have reached them, he is apt to be disgusted with the passage, and to seek for success through broader channels, by quicker means. Beginning at the very foot of the hill, and working slowly to the top, seems a very discouraging process; and precisely at this point have thousands of young men made shipwreck of their lives.

12. Let this be understood, then, at starting; that the patient conquest of difficulties, which rise in the regular and legitimate channels of business and enterprise, is not only essential in securing the successes which you seek, but it is essential to that preparation of your mind requisite for the enjoyment of your successes, and for retaining them when gained. It is the general rule of Providence, the world over, and in all time, that unearned success is a curse. It is the rule of Providence that the process of earning success shall be the preparation for its conservation and enjoyment.

13. So, day by day, and week by week; so, month after month, and year after year, work on, and in that process gain strength and symmetry, and nerve and knowledge, that when success, patiently and bravely worked for, shall come, it may find you prepared to receive it and keep it. The development which you will get in this brave and patient labor will prove itself, in the end, the most valuable of your successes. It will help to make a man of you. It will give you power and self-reliance. It will give you not only self-respect, but the respect of your fel lows and the public.—J. G. Holland.

LESSON 5.

HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES.

HANDSOME is that handsome does, hold up your

heads, girls," was the language of Primrose, in the play, when addressing her daughters. The worthy matron was right. What is good looking, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle, generous in your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration. Loving and pleasant associations will gather about you.

2. Never mind the ugly reflection which your glass may give you. The mirror has no heart. But quite another picture is yours on the retina of human sympathy. There the beauty of holiness, of purity, of that inward grace which passeth show, rests over it, softening and mellowing its features just as the calm moonlight melts those of a rough landscape into harmonious loveli

ness.

3. "Hold up your heads, girls," I repeat after Primrose. Why should you not? Every mother's daughter of you can be beautiful. You can envelop yourselves in an atmosphere of moral and intellectual beauty, through which your otherwise plain faces will look forth like those of angels.

4. Beautiful to Ledyard, stiffening in the cold of a northern winter, seemed the diminutive, smoke-stained women of Lapland, who wrapped him in their furs and ministered to his necessities with kindness and gentle words of compassion. Lovely to the homesick heart of Park seemed the dark maids of Sego, as they sung their low and simple song of welcome beside his bed, and sought to comfort the white stranger, who had "no mother to bring him milk and no wife to grind him corn."

5. Oh, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be chiselled from marble or wrought out on canvas; speculate as we may upon its colors and outlines, what is it but an intellectual abstraction after all? The heart feels a beauty of another kind; looking through the outward environment it discovers a deeper and more real loveli

ness.

6. This was well understood by the old painters. In their pictures of Mary, the virgin mother, the beauty which melts and subdues the gazer is that of the soul and the affections, uniting the awe and mystery of that mother's miraculous allotment with the irrepressible love, the unutterable tenderness of young maternity,— Heaven's crowning miracle with Nature's holiest and sweetest instinct.

7. And their pale Magdalens, holy with the look of sins forgiven,—how the divine beauty of their penitence sinks into the heart! Do we not feel that the only real deformity is sin, and that goodness evermore hallows and sanctifies its dwelling-place? When the soul is at rest, when the passions and desires are all attuned to the divine harmony,

"Spirits moving musically

To a lute's well-ordered law,"

do we not read the placid significance thereof in the human countenance?

8. "I have seen," said Charles Lamb, "faces upon which the dove of peace sat brooding." In that simple and beautiful record of a holy life, the "Journal of John Woolman," there is a passage of which I have been more than once reminded in my intercourse with my fellowbeings: "Some glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true meekness. There is a divine harmony in the sound of that voice to which divine love gives utterance."

9. Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was that of a woman whom the world calls beautiful. Through its "silver veil" the evil and ungentle passions looked out hideous and hateful. On the other hand, there are faces which the multitude at the first glance pronounce homely, unattractive, and such as "Nature fashions by the gross,' which I always recognize with a warm heart-thrill; not for the world would I have one feature changed; they please me as they are; they are hallowed by kind memories; they are beautiful through their associations; nor are they any the less welcome that with my admiration of them "the stranger intermeddleth not."

IT

LESSON 6.

IT SNOWS.

T snows!" cries the school-boy, "Hurrah!" and his shout Is ringing through parlor and hall,

While, swift as the wing of a swallow, he 's out,

And his playmates have answered his call;
It makes the heart leap but to witness their joy,
Proud wealth has no pleasures, I trow,

Like the rapture that throbs in the pulse of the boy
As he gathers his treasures of snow;

Then lay not the trappings of gold on thy heirs,
While health, and the riches of nature, are theirs.

2.

"It snows!" sighs the imbecile, "Ah!" and his breath Comes heavy, as clogged with a weight;

While, from the pale aspect of nature in death,
He turns to the blaze of his grate,

And nearer and nearer his soft-cushioned chair
Is wheeled toward the life-giving flame;