My uncle looked both surprised and startled at this, and he said,

"Why, you never used to complain of it!"

"No, but then I am growing older, and know more now." How old are you?" he asked.

"I am a good bit past fourteen!"

"Are you really so much? True; true; I had forgotten."He sat silent for a little, evidently thinking deeply, and then he said

"I am really sorry, my child, that I can give you so little amusement, but the fact is, I have not the means. I cannot now tell you all about it, but I lost, through an accident, nearly all my property, more than twenty years ago; and that is what has obliged me to lead such a retired life. In fact, Katie, I had so little left, that when you were thrown upon my hands, I really hardly knew how to meet the expense of bringing you up, trifling as the addition was."

"Oh, uncle," I exclaimed, "have you brought me up entirely at your own expense

?"

"Yes, my dear, entirely."

I was very much conscience-stricken at this information. I had never thought of it before, and now all the bitter things I had been thinking about my uncle rose up to condemn me.

"I am very sorry I said anything about it," I said. "I didn't know anything about it."

"No, I know you didn't, my dear. I know you are not ungrateful; but I don't wish you to think that I am depriving you of the pleasures and amusements it is natural you should wish for at your age without good reason. Nor will it always continue so. A change may come any day; must come before many years are over, and then I shall be able to place you in a very different position. I had quite forgotten though," he added thoughtfully, "how old you were. How fast time flies. Don't say anything about the reasons I have given you to Mrs. Marsh," he added. "I would rather she did not know what I have said."

My feelings on the subject of my disappointment were much changed by that short conversation. I began to feel a most romantic amount of gratitude towards my uncle, for having given me a home, and brought me up, under the circumstances he had described; and to think how very hard it must be for him to have been compelled, by the loss of his property, to lead

such a life for so many years. The knowledge that our life was what it was from a necessity, which must be more trying to him than to me, materially altered my view of it, and I began to meditate on the possibility that I might do more to make him happy than I had ever done before. I had certainly been very selfish. I had never thought of doing anything except amuse myself.

I could not, however, help still feeling my disappointment a good deal. The next day was one of those upon which Mrs. Marsh did not come, and it was very wet, so I could not go out. My thoughts once turned towards the subject of the dulness of my life would keep there, and I leaned against the window frame of the small room which was my schoolroom, contemplating the pouring rain, in a rather dreary frame of mind. My uncle was busy writing, so I knew he would not care to be disturbed, and I had nothing to do. Nothing, at least, that I cared to do. I felt in no mood for music or drawing. Suddenly an idea presented itself, that I might find some amusement in exploring the unused rooms up-stairs. Numbers of them were half full of all kinds of lumber, and I thought I might find some occupation in turning over their contents. Up-stairs I went accordingly, and wandered from room to room, dragging out and examining most inconceivable heaps of rubbish; and turning over the contents of old chests and boxes of all kinds. I found little enough, however, for a long time, to interest me; there was little besides the remnants of old furniture; but, at last, in a dark corner of one room, I espied a very large old fashioned chest. It somehow excited my curiosity, but to get at it was a work of time, for innumerable boxes and packages of all kinds were piled upon the top, and some of them were rather heavy. At last, however, I succeeded in moving them all, and by that time I had worked myself up into the belief that the chest must contain something very wonderful. I thought, before I tried to open it, I would drag it nearer the window, and I seized a handle to try. I might as well have tried to move the house bodily. I could not make the least impression upon it. I then proceeded to the task of This was a work of some difficulty. There was no lock, but the lid seemed as if it had got firmly jammed down. After many efforts I succeeded in raising it, and then to my no small disappointment too-its tremendous weight was accounted for; it was quite full of books. This was terribly uninteresting. I did not care about books. The age of

opening it where it stood.

the fairy tales was past, and almost the only others I had ever had were the instructive books provided for me by Mrs. Marsh, and, although I liked reading some of them well enough, I was by no means enthusiastic on the subject. However, I took out one of the volumes, and opening it at random, began to read. It was not much past two o'clock when I sat down on the floor with that book in my lap; and the next thing I knew was, that I sprang to my feet as if I had been shot at hearing the dinner bell, and that was half-past six. For a moment I could not remember where I was, or, I suspect, very distinctly, who I was; and then I threw the book back into the chest, closed the lid, and darted off to my own room. I hastily removed the very evident traces of my afternoon's hunt among the lumber, and ran down to the dining-room. My uncle was waiting for me, in great surprise. I had never, in my life, been late for dinner before.

"My dear Katie," he said, "what have you been doing?" "Why, child," he added, as I advanced to the table, "what is the matter."

"Nothing," I answered, trying to look unconscious of a fact, of which nevertheless I was fully aware, that my cheeks were burning, and my eyes a great deal brighter than they were wont to be.

"Then what has given you such a tremendous colour?" he asked.

"Only getting ready for dinner in such a hurry," I answered. "I was reading, and had not the least idea it was so late, so the bell quite startled me."

My uncle looked at me hard for a moment, but he did not say anything more, and we sat down to dinner. He had given up his old habit of reading while he dined for some time, and of late had talked a good deal to me: and true to my determination to devote myself more to his amusement, I tried to talk, but it was uncommonly hard work that evening, and I was very glad when bed-time came, and I could be alone again.

I felt utterly confused and bewildered by the crowd of new sensations and feelings which had begun to dawn within me. I suppose most children glide by degrees, and almost unconsciously, from childhood into girlhood; but I had stepped across the invisible boundary in a moment, and never, I believe, was the boundary passed under circumstances more fatal for such a disposition as mine. That old chest was full of old-fashioned

novels and romances, in both prose and poetry, with some of comparatively modern date. The volume I had taken out, and the greater part of which I had read during those few hours, was the last of one of the most extravagant romances I have ever come across; full of the most wild and romantic adventures, and of the most impassioned love scenes,-to say nothing worse. I had read through the wildest and most impassioned scenes of the whole, and no words could tell the effect they had taken on me. I was a child no longer, though girlhood was but in its infancy as yet. I could no more have slept when I went up to my room than I could have flown. I only waited till all was quiet, and then I crept off to the chest again, and opening it, proceeded to examine the books more carefully. With a beating heart I read title after title, and just glanced into them, wondering whether they were all as enchanting as what I had read. I soon collected all the volumes of the one I had been reading, and then carefully closing the chest, I carried them off to my own room, and sat down to read through from the beginning; an occupation from which I never moved until my candle suddenly expired in the socket, and I had to get to bed, as best I could, in the dark, to dream—ah, how different my dreams were that night from what they had ever been before.

To this day I have not the least idea how that old chest came to be filled as it was; but I imagine, that at some former time, before my uncle retired to his solitary life at the manor, its contents had probably been removed from the library, to make room for more valuable books, and had been entirely forgotten.

SERMON-METERS.

BY THE REV. H. VON DER HEYDE COWELL, B.A.

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN has caused an eighteen-minute pulpitglass to be set up in the Savoy Chapel, and thus has marked the limit to which her royal patience may be tried by the preacher.

Of course the idea of having a pulpit-glass was suggested by the customs of the past. We are familiar with the old hour glass in Wilkie's picture of "John Knox preaching before the Lords of the Congregation in St. Andrews," and in the frontispiece to the "Bishop's Bible," Archbishop Parker is represented with such a sermon-meter by his side. But, while we cannot credit Her Majesty with originality of conception as to the form of this preacher's monitor, she certainly has varied the length of the lapse of the sand, limiting it, as she has done, to eighteen minutes. The old pulpit-glass was usually an hour-glass; and when the sand ran for only half this time it was usual for the preacher to turn it up again and invite his hearers, silently at least, as one divine is said to have done audibly, to take another glass with him.

Both Herbert and Hooker prescribe an hour as the most fitting period for the duration of a discourse, while Cranmer cautioned Latimer "not to stand in the pulpit longer than an hour and a half." And any one who has a library well stored with volumes of sermons may satisfy himself that Jeremy Taylor, Barrow, South, and other great preachers of the past, were wont to make even longer demands, at times, on the attention of their hearers; not to mention the still more prolix productions of the great Puritan preachers.

Now the substitution of the eighteen-minute glass for the hour-glass is indicative of the general desire of our day for the curtailment of sermons. Is this clamour for short sermons reasonable and wise? We shall be able to answer the question better by and by, when we have considered some of the reasons that have led to the cry for brevity.

We live in a fast age, and the preacher ought to feel, to some extent, the force of the current that is bearing life onward at so