.Thom. "Well, then, I think I can tell you. You would have had in your pocket at this moment about THREE HUNDRED POUNDS, and that's a good sum for a labouring man at the age of thirty-nine." Bill. "I can't believe it. It can't be. I never could have been worth three hundred pounds. It's very well for you to talk about hundreds, when you have had money left you, and have bought the house you live in, and the garden with it." Thom. I never had a penny left me in my life, William. I am thankful to say I have always had good work, and I was careful about my expenses. I never was in an alehouse in my life. And to shew you that you would have been worth three hundred pounds, if you had done the same, here is my SavingBank book, which just tells me, that the four shillings a week which I carried to the bank, instead of carrying it to the alehouse, just comes to THREE HUNDRED AND NINE POUNDS, THIRTEEN SHILLINGS, AND NINE PENCE.' Bill. "And so I should have had all that money, if I had kept away from the alehouse. Well, it all comes of taking that pipe of tobacco; I do believe I never should have gone at all to the Blue Boar, if it had not been for that; so that morsel of tobacco has cost me more than three hundred pounds." Thom. "That's what I have saved, William, by not going, and a trifle more, too, for I have bought my house and garden, you know." Bill. "Well, only think! A pipe full of tobacco to stand a man in three hundred pounds!" Here the two friends looked at one another, and then at Thomas Richards, as much as to say, that "he was right;" and they then went away, saying, that "a pipe of tobacco was the dearest thing that a man could put into his mouth." V. Look at Home. 31 LOOK AT HOME. THE following is taken from a French story, and put into English by a little girl of eleven years old, and sent to us with a request that we would insert it in the "Monthly Visitor." It happened one day that a certain king, whilst hunting in a forest, chanced to lose his way; and, as he was endeavouring to find the right road, he heard some people talking. He approached the place from whence the voices came, and discovered a man and a woman employed in chopping wood. The woman said to her husband, "I think Eve was very greedy for eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree. If she had obeyed the good God, we should not have been condemned to work every day as we now do."—" If Eve was very greedy," replied the man, "I am sure it was a great crime and folly in Adam to consent to do what she asked him. If I had been in his place, and you had wished me to eat the fruit, I should certainly have been very angry, and should not even have listened to you." The king then came up to them and said, "You seem, my poor people, to have a hard task there chopping wood."Yes, Sir," replied they (for they did not know that the stranger was a king) "we work as hard as horses from morning till night, and yet we find it but a difficult matter to gain a livelihood.""Come home with me," said the king, "and I will support you without your being obliged to work."-At this moment, the king's attendants, who had been seeking his majesty, came up; and, when the poor people discovered who the stranger was, they were, it may be supposed, surprised, frightened, and delighted. When they arrived at the palace, the king or dered them a new suit of clothes, a fine carriage, and a great many servants to attend upon them; and, every day, they had a dozen different dishes for their dinner. At the end of a month they were surprised to find twenty-four dishes served up, but, in the middle of the table, was placed a large covered dish. The woman, who was very curious, immediately wished to lift up the cover, but one of the king's attendants who was present, said,, The king has forbidden you to touch it, and his majesty moreover commands you not even to see what is within. When the servants were all out of the room, the husband perceived that his wife would not eat any thing and that she looked very melancholy. "What is the matter?" enquired he very kindly."I do not care for any of the good things that are on the table," answered the woman, "but I have a very great longing to see what is hid in the covered dish." "How can you be so foolish," said her husband, "have we not been told that the king forbids our looking into it."-" The king is very unjust then," said the wife. "If he did not like us to see what was in it, surely he ought not to have ordered it to be put on the table." She then began to cry, and declared that she would kill herself if her husband would not uncover the dish. He could not bear to see her so unhappy, and told her, that, if she would leave off crying, he would do whatever she wished. He then took off the cover, and out jumped a little mouse. They tried all they could to catch it, but it escaped and hid itself in a hole in the floor. At that very instant the king entered, and asked angrily, "where the mouse was?"-" Please your majesty," ," said the man, in great alarm, "my wife tormented me so much to shew her what was within the dish, that, in spite of myself, I opened it, and the mouse has escaped." "Ah!" said the king, "it was but the other day, when you were in the wood, that you said, if you had been in Adam's place, when Eve wanted you to eat the forbidden fruit, you would have been very angry with her, and would not have listen→ Lines from Bishop Heber's Palestine. 33 ed to her. It is necessary, I see, to remind you of your own declarations. And you, wicked woman," continued the king, "you have here every kind of luxury, as Eve had in Paradise, yet that is not enough for you, but you must needs wish to see and eat of the only dish that I had forbidden. Go, dissatisfied people, and return to your work in the wood, and instead of being content with censuring the faults you read of, let them be a warning to yourselves that you may learn to avoid them." The poor people were filled with shame, returned to the wood; and, whenever they felt inclined to murmur at their hard lot, they always remembered how ungratefully they had behaved when every comfort was in their possession. HELEN. LINES FROM BISHOP HEBER'S PALESTINE. THE following description of the coming of our Lord, and of his death, are taken from the beautiful poem of PALESTINE, written, when a student at Oxford, by the late Bishop of Calcutta, whose death is, at this moment, the subject of the deepest grief in Europe and India to those who are anxious to see the blessings of Christ's religion spreading throughout the world. We see, at what an early age, this good man devoted his talents to the service of God. In that cause, he died. He comes;-but not in regal splendour drest, Thou palsied earth, with noonday night o'erspread! AN OLD TRAVELLER. "IT is strange," said an old man one day to his neighbour, that we travellers should think so little, as we do, of our journey." 66 Travellers, indeed!" said his neighbour, "who would think of an old man like you, who cannot walk across the room without help; who would think of such a man, as you, travelling? As for myself, you know that I never go beyond the next village, and I don't suppose I ever shall." 66 Well," said the old man, "I know all that, and yet I say we are travellers. Our life here is like a journey, I have been going on the road seventy-five years; and I, and all, must go on, whether we will or no: there is no stopping in this journey, and there are only two roads." "That is, indeed, just what our minister tells us :" said the neighbour." But how can a poor working man be always turning his mind to such things?" 66 Why, my friend," said the old man, "I can tell you that the more a man thinks of these things, the happier he will be. I have had many a trial in my day; and, if I had taken the advice I give to you, I should have been a happier, as well as a better man ;the God of all grace and mercy pardon my sins! Consider," he continued, "what would be the conse |