A SUMMER DAY'S SURPRISE. It had been a bad day in Penn Ally-burning hot; steaming hot; baking hot. There seemed only half enough air to breathe, and even that was of the poorest kind. Work went undone, while the discouraged men and women crept about to find scraps of shade in which to doze and nod or wake to say cross and profane words. It had been especially hard for Silas Dunn, the baker's lame boy, because he could not go about looking for a cooler place, but must just sit and take what came, hour by hour; and as the sun rays grew fiercer and more cruel, a desperate weakness and faintness came over him, that was hard to bear. And yet Silas was not to be pitied as most his neighbors, for in the midst of pain and poverty there blossomed for him two sweet comforts: First and greatest, was a knowledge of his Heavenly Father; and second and of close kin to the first, Silas had a friend! So, I think, you will often find it, that when a human life is sore beset and pressed outwardly, the good God opens springs of comfort in the desert. "One-two-three!" The bell from Marsh Market tower carried count of the hours, even down Penn Alley; it was three o'clock, time for the market to close; the stalls would be emptied and covered now, and the market wagons turned toward the outlying country. Silas thought of this as he lay on the back doorstep; shade, at least, could he find there, for there the sun had never shone, since those tall tenement walls went up. But it was a breathless, close place. "Ben will be coming by soon," he said to himself, raising his head to look through the dark, narrow passage, out to the alley on which the house dismally fronted, "he promised me a bunch o' flowers today, and Ben never forgits." You Fifteen minutes went by and a small covered wagon, drawn by a depressed and reluctant mule stopped at the bakery. could have told by the flush on the lame boy's cheek and the joy light in his eyes that this was Ben, but he did not speak-his delight in the presence of his one friend filled him too full for speech. "Hello, Cap'n!" said the bluff, brown-visaged country boy, going on heavy footsteps back to where Silas lay. "How's this for a nice cool day?" Silas thought this delightfully amusing and laughed for the first time that day. "Here's your posy, Capt'n," said the market boy, "but 'taint worth much now, it's been sort o' froze out today." Ben's wit was not of a varied sort, but his audience was never tired of it. The "posy" was a bunch of phlox and nasturtiums, stuck in an old tomato can full of water. The flowers were indeed somewhat travel-worn, but the city boy's enjoyment was not marred by that. He asked question after question about where they grew and how they grew and whether you could see them growing, and wound up as usual "Do you reckon I'll ever see things growing out in the fields and places, Ben?" "Course," answered the market boy cheerily, "soon's you get a little better o' that pain in your hip, I'm going to drive you all round creation, me and Jennymule." Silas lay still, in quiet enjoyment of this fairy story, which he heard, and believed in, every market day. Then he said in a low, eager tone, "The last one gave me a beautiful dream, Benthe violets, you know. I dreamed I waked up one morning and looked out of the back window, and there in the yard was a lot of violets growin'-growin,' mind you, not stuck in any can, nor nothin' like that, but comin' up wavin' and bloomin' out o' the ground! Wasn't that a dream though!" This time Ben was silent; something seemed to catch him by the throat and choke back all words. "Who could a put 'em there?' says I to myself, and I looked up at that piece of sky, 'way up there between the houses, and there I saw something white floating away; so then I knew God had sent His angels to put 'em there for me to see, 'cause I ain't ever seen any in the fields. But in the morning-" Silas stopped, he had no words to express the disappointment of that waking. “That's all right, Capt'n," said Ben with husky cheerfulness, "you'll have that dream over again some morning, you'll see if you don't;" and then Ben went back to the market wagon, Jennymule took up her patient jog, and the lame boy's one taste of happiness was over for the present. That was on Tuesday. Tuesdays and Fridays were market days on Marsh street. On the next Thursday evening after sundown, Ben's mother stood in the door of the little farm-house with a tin horn in her hand; she had been making the welkin ring with loud blasts, for Mother Wiley did not approve of laggards at her supper table, and Ben was not in yet. "There, mother," said the farmer husband, coming in redfaced and clean from his bath at the pump, "give over that there noise; Ben 'ill be along d'reckly." Once more the horn uttered a loud call, and this time the listening ear caught a faint answer from the woods, a sort of Indian war-whoop, made by clapping the fingers rapidly to the lips, while raising the voice shrilly. "There," said Mother Wiley, hanging up her horn, "I've fetched him." The family sat down to eat the hot johnny-cake, spread over with jam, and presently through the open door Ben was seen com ing in from the woods, carrying an old chip basket full of earth, and leaves, and-it was too dark to see what else. "Seems like when I've got supper ready, Ben, you might as well take the trouble to come to it," began his mother with a little frown between her eyebrows. But Ben put his mouth down to her ear and whispered some long winded secret; the frown left in haste. "Poor child!" murmured the farmer's wife, "poor little fellow!" Ben sat down to his supper without more ado, and one of the older brothers gave the rest a friendly wink. ""Taint hard to see who has the upper hand of Madam," he said, looking teasingly at his mother. But her thoughts seemed far away. "You had best go to bed right off, Ben," she said, "and let the rest pack the wagon, if you are going to take an earlier start, I'll see about it," she added mysteriously, with a glance out at the willow tree, al whose roots she could just see, in the fast gathering darkness the old chip basket Ben had left there. Another hot night; another restless and feverish one for Silas Dunn; no beautiful dreams kept him company through the long hours, but Pain and Weariness, grim visitors, instead. As dawn began to creep over the sky, the tired boy slept, slept heavily, and only awoke when daylight was fairly abroad, and the flies began to buzz about him. Silas sat up on his little cot, which was directly under the back window, and looked out, as he had done in his dream What was this? Another dream? A low cry of delight came from his lips, for there under his window, green and waving and blooming, as he had seen them in his dream, was a little bank of violets! The green leaves looked contentedly at home, in the rich moist earth that had been provided for them, and the dark blue violets lifted their veined and penciled blossoms up to the patch of sky, as cheerily as they had done in the depth of Riverside woods. Ben was sitting on the back step of the bakery in Penn Alley, tasting the sweetest pleasure earth knows, the joy of having given joy, as he watched the lame boy's delight in his new possession. Silas only looked at him in a smiling silence, and did not try to tell him how he had been thinking to himself that God had made something more precious and beautiful than violets, and that was the loving, unselfish heart of market-boy Ben!-Selected. Memory Gem. "This world is full of beauty, as other worlds above, LESSON XXIII. GENEROSITY. Teacher's reading: Life of Christ, Farrar. THE WIDOW'S MITE. Mark 12: 41-44; Luke 21: 1-4. The widow-her offering-the remark of Jesus. What did He mean? Impress upon children the pleasure of giving freely of what they have received, whether little or much; and also that it is "not what we give, but what we share," that counts. Encourage them to give offerings and to pay tithing. A WASTEFUL WOMAN. "It is true it is none of my business," said Miss Sellars to herself, as she left the pavement at the end of the village street, and struck out on the dusty road; but the reflection did not seem to call the slightest halt in her progress. "I always did hate to see people imposed on," she continued, "and 'specially a single woman; I'm single myself, and I know what a forlorn sort of a fight a single woman keeps up against the world. Everybody is ready to cheat her and take advantage of her; everybody. Well, this newcomer shan't be run over for want of knowing who it is that's doing it. I'm going to tell her myself. She looks sharp and cross enough; I wouldn't be surprised if those good-for-nothing Woods children had met their match." These thoughts, and a dimmer undercurrent of thoughts and feelings like those, kept the old maid company out to the dilapidated gate of "The Briary," a suburban villa, which, after lying untenanted for years, had just been rented by a stranger. Miss Sellars' pull at the rusty bell brought the stranger herself to the door. "You see I am my own housemaid," she said, in a soft voice strangely at variance with her sharp nose and chin, and sharp, near-sighted eyes. "Walk right in, and please excuse my confusion; I am so much obliged to you for calling soon; it is very good of you." "Well" said Miss Sellars, "I might as well tell you that I came early to give you a right start. You see this place has belonged to the public so long, that if you don't shut down on them at first, there's no saying how much trouble you will see." Miss Kitty Clark looked so astonished that a less persistent meddler would have been baffled, but Miss Sellars, strong in her disinterestedness, went on: "Now there's the Woods children, a gang of idle beggars; they were getting apples out of your lower lot live?" yesterday, so I "Where do they Miss Sellars located the offenders, and in answer to a few questions gave their family history-a pitiful tale, to be sure. "Thank you for telling me about these people," said the stran"Are there any more in my neighborhood?" ger. "They are about the worst," said her visitor, "but you are going to have trouble with Mrs. Bell's cow; they haven't got any pasture lot, they turn old Brindle out to graze on the roadside, and nobody has been born smart enough to invent a gate that Brindle can't open." "I wonder they should keep a cow when they have no place for her," suggested Kitty. "La! They couldn't get along at all without Brindle; there are more babies in the family than you can shake a stick at and the old cow really seems to work hard for something to make milk for those babies. You'd think they were hers." Then a strange dimness came into the near-sighted eyes-perhaps the good angels knew it was a feeling of pity, and found it beautiful, but to outward appearance it only made them red around the rims. Miss Sellars got up and said good morning. "I'll look in on you again, when you are fixed up for company," she said "this was just a sort of duty visit.” "I am a thousand times obliged to you," said the stranger, "you have done me a real kindness, and one that I am going to profit by, I assure you." "That's right; you look after your interests now, for if we don't look after our own, as I always say, nobody else is going to do it." A little twist of a smile appeared on Miss Kitty's face, as her visitor turned her back. "It seems as if there were somebody looking after mine," she said to herself, "so I must be looking after these others now. Poor little apple gatherers! I'll see about them first." Miss Sellars was so busy doing her fall cleaning, for the next few days, that she left the stranger to wrestle with her own affairs; but chancing to see black Joe, who drove Mr. Bare's cows, and who had been her informant before, she hailed him, and asked how things were going on at "The Briary." "Why, love your soul, Miss Mary," said the old man, “you ain't never seen such carryin's on, since you bin born! Them Woodses is thar twict a day, let alone onct. They totes home everything off the place. More'n that, she done 'ploy old man Woods to fix up de fences an' sich, an' de ole woman is makin' her carpets. Seems lek she done 'dopted de fambly. Den dar is Miss |