great whole-a member of a large family, a sharer in a glorious communion of feeling and thought, of suffering and of action.

For benefits such as these, who would not feel grateful and gladly own the gratitude they feel?

To those who deal with gravest themes, and seek to supply our deepest wants-whose written words are as guide-posts and mile-stones on the way to heaven-we offer not in these pages our "Thanks." We trust we all have for such a page in that illuminated missal which God keeps-a book in which sighs and tears, and groans and broken words of prayer and praise shine with a brilliancy not their own.

Our pleasant task must now be over: we can only end as we began, by saying-O! writers, helpers, friends, take from grateful hearts the only guerdon they can offer take our simple "THANK YOU."

HOW MR. FRYE WOULD HAVE PREACHED IT.

MR. FRYE and his little wife live at our house. They took a room for themselves and their little girls, with full board, last December. This is how it happened that one Sunday, after dinner, in quite an assembly of the full boarders and of the breakfast boarders, also-all of whom dine with us on SundayMr. Frye told how he would have preached it.

What made this more remarkable was, that the Fryes are not apt to talk about themselves, or of their past life. I think they have always been favourites at the table; and Mrs. Frye has been rather a favourite among the "lady boarders." But none of us knew much where they had been, excepting that, like other men, he had been in the army. He brought out his uniform coat for some of the charades the night of the birthday party. But till Sunday I did not know, for one, anything about the things he told us, and I don't think anyone else did.

Everyone had been to church that Sunday in the morning. Mrs. Whittemore gives us breakfast on Sunday only half an hour late, and almost all of us go to church. So at dinner, naturally enough, we talked over the sermons and services. More of us than usual had been to the new church below Clinton

Street. We had not found Dr. Warren there, however, but a strange minister. Some said it was Mr. Broadgood, one of the English delegates. But I knew it was not he. For he said, "If you give an inch, they take an ell," and this is a sentence the English delegates cannot speak. The sexton thought it was Mr. Hapgood, from South Norridgewock. I asked Mr. Eels, one of the standing committee, and he did not know. No matter who it was. He had preached what I thought was rather above the average sermon, on "The way of transgressors is hard."

Well, we got talking about the sermon. My wife liked it better than I did. George Fifield liked it particularly, and quoted, or tried to quote, the close to the Webbers; only, as he said, he could not remember the precise language, and it depended a good deal on the manner of the delivery. Mrs. Watson confessed to being sleepy. Harry said he had sat under the gallery, and had not heard much, which is a less gallant way of making Mrs. Watson's confession. The Fryes were both at church. They were the only ones who said nothing about the sermon. Mrs. Frye never does say much at table. But at last the matter became quite the topic of after-dinner discussion, and I said to Frye that we had not had his opinion.

"Oh," said he, "it was well enough. But if I had had that text, I should not have preached it so."

"

How would you have preached it?" said Harry, laughing. Frye's face evidently flushed a little, but he only said-" Well, not so I should not have preached it that way."

I did not know why the talk should make him uncomfortable, but I saw it did, and I tried to change the subject. But Harry has no tact; and after a little more banter, in which the rest of them at that end of the table joined, he said

"Now, Mr. Frye, tell us how you would have preached it." Mr. Frye turned pale this time. He just glanced at his wife and then I saw she was pale too. But whatever else Frye is, he is a brave man, and he has very little back-down about him. So he took up the glove, and said, if we had a mind to sit there half an hour, he would tell how he would have preached it. Harry was delighted and screamed, "A sermon from Mr. Frye! -a sermon from Mr. Frye !-reported expressly for this journal. No other paper has the news." Poor Mrs. Frye said she must go up and see to her baby, and she slipped away. A gentleman whom I have not named said, in rebuke of us all, that we might be better employed, and he left also. He is preparing for a Sunday paper a series of sketches of popular preachers, and it is my opinion that he spent that afternoon in writing his account of the Rev. Dr. Smith. I do not know, but I used to think he was a correspondent of the "New York Observer," for

I noticed once that he spoke of Jacqueline Pascal as if Jacqueline were a man's name, and as if she wrote the Pensées. When they were gone, Mr. Frye told us

nerve.

HOW HE SHOULD HAVE PREACHED IT.

"I should have said," said Mr. Frye, "that when Jenny and I were married, fourteen years ago, at Milfold, there was not so good a blacksmith as I in that part of Worcester County. To be a good blacksmith in a country town requires not only strength of arm, and a reasonably correct eye, but a good deal of And when I first worked at the trade, and afterwards here, once when I worked at Hawley Road for good Deacon Carter, I got the reputation of being afraid of nothing. And I think I deserved it, as far as any man does. Certainly I was not easily frightened. So it happened that I was at work at the highest journeyman's wages, and with lots of perquisites for shoeing the ugly horses. For a circle of fifteen miles round, there was not a kicking horse of the Cruiser family who in the end, was not brought to our shop for Herbert Frye to shoe. I have shod horses from Worcester, who came down with all four of their shoes off because nobody dared touch them. Now in the trade all such work is well paid for. As I say, I had the highest journeyman's wages. And in any such hard case, I was paid extra and as likely as not, if they had had trouble, I got a present beside. And if I had chosen to lay up money, I could have made myself-what I never did make make myself-a forehanded man.

"Well, I fell in with Jenny there. And while we were engaged she took care of me, and made me stick to work, and kept me near her. I did not want any other excitement, and I did not want any other companion. She would not go where I could drink, and I would not go where she did not go. And for the six months of our engagement, I was amazed to find how rich I was growing. When we were married, I was able to furnish the house prettily-as nicely as any man in Milfold-though it was only on a baby-house scale, of course. But as Tom Hood's story says, we had six hair-cloth chairs, a dozen silver spoons, carpet on every room in the house, and everything to make us comfortable.

"We were married, and we lived as happily as could be, a great deal more happily than I deserved, and almost as happily as my wife deserves, even. But, I tell you, there is nothing truer than the saying, 'Easy earned, easy spent;' and I believe that perquisites and fees, unexpected and uncertain remunerations, are apt to be rather bad for a man. At least they make a

sort of excuse for a man. I spent pretty freely, and then I would get short; and then I would find myself hoping some half-broken, kicking beast would be brought in, which nobody could manage but me. And if one came, and I managed him. and shod him, instead of feeling proud of the victory, as I fairly might, I would feel cross if the owner did not hand me a dollarbill extra as he went away. Then I knew this was mean, and then I would be mad with myself; and then as I went home I would stop at the public-house and get something to drink; and then when I got home I would scold Jenny, and after the baby came I would swear at the baby if she cried and then Jenny would cry, and then I would swear again; and I would go out again, and would not know when I came home at night, and would be down at the shop late the next morning, and what was worse, had not the nerve and grit which had given me the reputation I had there. Dutch courage for practical purposes ranks with Dutch gold leaf or German silver.

"

'Well," said Frye, rather pale again, but trying to laugh a little; "perhaps, my beloved hearers, you don't know what this sort of thing is. If you don't, lucky for you. All this time my employers were getting cross. At last they got trusteed for my wages, and said they would discharge me if it ever happened again. Then one day, Tourtellot's black mare got away from me, knocked me down, and played the old Harry generally in the shop; and the other hands said it was because I did not know what I was doing, which, by the way, was a lie. It was because my hand was not steady, nor my eye. What is it we used to speak at school, about failing brand and feeble hand? It was not that night, but it was some other night, when I was blue as Peter and cross as a hand-saw, that I stopped to take something on my way home. I remember now

that Harry Patrick, who was always my true friend, tried to get me by the publics. He did get me by the hotel, for a strong man can do almost anything with a broken one; but after I had promised him I would go home, he was fool enough to leave me, and then I stopped somewhere else,-no matter where,-and when I got home, it might as well have been anybody else. I don't remember a thing. If the Prince Camaralzaman had gone there, I should now know as little what he did from my own memory. But what I did,-or rather what this hand, and arm, and leg, and the rest of the machine did,-was, to kick the baby's cradle over into the corner; to knock poor Jane down with a chair, on top of it; to put the chair through one window, and throw it out of the other; then to scream, Murder! fire! murder fire!' and then to tumble on the hair-cloth sofa,' which was to make us so comfortable, and go into a drunken sleep.

It was a

"This was what I learned I did, the next morning, when I found myself in a justice's court; and for this the judge sent me up to the House of Correction for three months. 'first offence,' or it would have been longer. As for poor Jenny and the baby, neither of them could come and see me.' By this time, Frye was done with pretending to smile. He stooped a minute, drank a little water from his tumbler, and said: "Now you would think that would cure a man. Or you would think, as the law does, that three months in the House of Correction would 'correct' him. That is because you do not know. At the last day of the three months I thought so. There is not a man here who dreads liquor as I did that day. Harry Patrick, who, as I said, was my best friend, came to meet me when I went out. Richardson, the sheriff, as kind a man as lives, took pains to come down and see me, and said something encouraging to me. Harry had a buggy, that I need not be seen in the cars. And as we went home, I talked as well to him as any man ever talked. Jenny kissed me, and soothed me, and comforted me. The baby was afraid of me, but came to me before night;--and so, before a month was over, we had just such another scene again, and went through much the same afterscene, but that this time I went to Worcester for six months. For now it was not a first offence, you see.

"Well, not to disgust you-more than I can help,"-and the poor fellow choked for the only time in the sermon-" not to disgust you more than I can help,-this happened three times. I believe things always do in stories. This did in fact. The 'third time' you go for twelve months. And one Sunday Harry had been over to see me, and had brought me a dear kind letter from poor Jenny, who was starving, with two children now, in an attic, on what washing she could get, and vest-making, and all such humbugs,-one Sunday, I say, we were marched out to chapel, they have a very good chapel in Worcester,-and a man preached; and he preached from this very text you talk about, The way of transgressors is hard.'

4

"What the man said, I know no more than you do. I don't think I did then. Indeed, I do not think I cared much when he began. But it is a great luxury to hear the human voice, when you have been at work on shoes for a week in a prison on our Massachusetts system, which they call the silent system,' where you have heard no word except the overseer's directions. So I sat there, well pleased enough-even glad to hear a sort of 'yang, yang,' they had for music-and very glad to have some good souls who had come to sing. I remember they sang "Devizes," which my father used to sing. So I got into a mood of reverie as this preacher went on, and was thinking of Harry and