flinging abroad his glorious beams. Yonder are the hop-pickers pulling down the poles across the

crib, and plucking off the hops. I see a stranger drawing near out of curiosity; but I would have him mind what he is about, or he will be tossed into the crib as sure as he is born. The hop-pickers have sharp eyes. Now they have taken hold of him. Ay, ay, my brave boy, it is of no use to struggle, for they are too many for you. There! they have bundled him into the crib head over

L

heels, and it will cost him a silver shilling before they will suffer him to get out again."

"He should have kept a sharper look-out, and taken better care of himself."

"Yes; but you must remember he is a stranger, and perhaps he has never seen a hop-yard before, and is unacquainted with the hop-picking cus

toms.❞

"Well, we must make some allowance for him on that account, certainly."

"The little whitewashed dwelling yonder, with the jessamine climbing up the front of it, is neat and clean enough for a prince to live in it; but the dirty, wretched cottage there, with the broken windows and the ragged thatch on the roof, is the dwelling of Frank Perkins, the most idle and slothful man in the parish. See how his little garden is choked up with weeds. 'I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; and, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw, and considered it well. I looked upon it, and received instruction. Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep so shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; and thy want as an armed man," Prov. xxiv. 30-34.

"Frank Perkins will never do any good for himself by his idleness."

"An idle man seldom does anything to-day that he can put off till to-morrow.

while he was sleeping.

He forgets that a seed sown or a sapling planted would be growing He that makes no hay when the sun shines, is not likely to make it in the rain he that neither ploughs nor sows, has a very poor prospect of gathering in any harvest. Unnecessary delays are bad enough in temporal things, but in eternal things they are a thousand times worse.

:

'Shun delays, they breed remorse;

Take thy time, while time is lent thee;
Creeping snails have weakest force;

Fly their fault, lest thou repent thee;
Good is best, when soonest wrought;
Lingering labours come to nought.

Hoist up sail while gale doth last,

Tide and wind stay no man's pleasure;
Seek not time, when time is past;

Sober speed is wisdom's leisure.
After-wits are dearly bought;

Let thy fore-wit guide thy thought!"

"I should have told you that when the grass is cut early in the country, there is a second crop ready by the end of August; but farmer Browning was not very anxious to have a second crop."

'Why? He was too good a farmer to like one crop of hay better than two, surely!"

6

"I will tell you why. Enough,' said he, 'is as good as a feast; and, One bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. If I try for two crops, I partly spoil one to get the other; and then, if wet weather comes, what is the rowen, or second crop, good for? But if I even get in two crops, and get them in well too, the latter crop will impoverish my land more than it will enrich my rick-yard." "Ay! ay! farmer Browning knew what he was about, it seems, after all."

"In August there is often much thunder and lightning. You have heard the saying, I dare say,

When caught by the tempest, wherever it be,

If it lightens and thunders, beware of a tree.

"Oh, it is a glorious thing to witness a storm, when the skies open with the flash; when the thunder seems ready to rend earth and heaven, and the rain comes down in a deluge. We know at all times, that there is a God, good, and great, and glorious; but in the storm he seems to come nearer to us than we can bear, and we feel as I suppose Moses felt, when God called to him out of the burning bush: 'Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground,' Exod. iii. 5. But my digging is over for to-day, and therefore I must give over my remarks."

"I HEARD your shears at work, Michael," said Maurice, as he came up the side walk of the garden, "I heard them at work, clipping the hedge, when I was on the lawn. They went snap! snap! snap! so I thought to myself, while Michael is snapping the hedge he can tell me about the country in September. You gave me some famous country pictures for August; there was that of the old horses under the tree, and the schoolboys bathing, and the old fisherman, and that of Jem