[vaniflii. 
ome 
OUR BESSIE. 
BY MRS. E. B. DUFFEY. 
She’s a wonderful girl, is this Bessie of ours, 
None like her, I’m sure, in the east or the west; 
And whether she’s out like a bee ’mid the flowers, 
Or whether she's quietly taking her rest, 
She’s the sweetest, the best. 
She can dance like a butterfly, sing like a bird, 
Like a bee, ever busy, her hands never still; 
And as for her talking, there is not a word 
That her tongue will not try for the mast’ry, until 
She can say it at will. 
A beautiful artist is dear little Bess; 
She would rather sit down and draw 
pictures than play; 
To be sure, what she’s drawing you can’t 
always guess, 
And though “ ’Tis a man or a donkey,” 
you say, 
It may be a sleigh. 
But genius must bud ere it reaches its 
bloom, 
And all the great artists were first very 
small. 
What though in her pictures there’s 
plenty of room 
For improvement! ’Tis best so than 
find none at all! 
She’ll yet beat them all. 
But whatever pictures the darling may 
draw— 
The sweet little curly-browed, roguish¬ 
eyed elf— 
She’ll make none—you’d say if our Bes¬ 
sie you saw— 
As sweet as the picture of her little 
self: 
Her sweet, precious self! 
— Arthur's Magazine . 
Willie jumped off the saw-horse, and began to pick 
up the sticks, without a word, and though he said noth¬ 
ing, he thought the more. 
“I’ve wasted a lot of time in thinking what 
great things I might do, if I only had the chance, 
and I’ve neglected the things I could and ought 
to do, and made a lot of trouble for mother. I 
guess I’d better begin my heroism by fighting my 
own laziness.” 
Will any boy adopt Willie’s resolution, and carry it 
out in his daily life? 
lap a second time at the letter S, whereat the receiver 
shouted “Sinnamon” so triumphantly that somehow 
or other there was so much laughing that it was 
thought best to try another game. 
A Play-Spell. —Among the 
guests 
at Lebanon 
HEROISM. 
“0 dear,” said Willie Gray, 
as he sat down on the saw-horse, 
and looked at the pile of kind¬ 
ling wood which he ought to 
have been - splitting up for his 
mother; “I do wish I could do 
something for the world. Some 
great action that every one could 
admire, and that would make 
the whole world better and hap¬ 
pier. I wish I could be a hero, 
like Washington, or a famous 
missionary, like Judson; but I 
can’t do anything nor be any¬ 
thing.” 
“Why do you Want to be a 
hero?” asked his cousin, John 
Maynard, who, coming up just 
then, happened to overhear his 
soliloquy. 
“0,” said Willie, coloring, 
every one admires a hero, and 
talks about him, and praises him 
after he is dead.’" 
“That’s the idea, is it?” said John. “You want 
to be heroic for the sake of being talked about.” 
M illie did not exactly like this way of putting it. 
“Not only that, but I want to do good to people— 
convert the heathen—or—or save a sinking ship, or 
save the country, or something like that.” 
“ That sounds better, but believe me, the greatest 
heroes have been men who have thought the least 
about themselves and the most about their work. And 
so far as I can recollect now, the greatest—I mean 
according to the Christian standard—have always be¬ 
gun by doing the nearest duty, however smalland 
here John took up the axe and split the wood. 
A fond mother in Ralls county, Missouri, has named 
her daughter Mazin Grace. A neighbor inquired 
how she came to select such an odd name. “La,” said 
she, “ I got it out of the hymn book.” The neighbor 
expressed surprise, and said she had never seen the 
name in any hymn book she had used. “ You haven’t?” 
said the mother of Mazin Grace. “Why, don’t 
you rememuer that familiar old hymn commencing, 
'Mazin Grace, how sweet the 
sound’?” 
Miss Jane Ainslie, who has 
died recently in Edinburgh, was 
the originator of “The Flower 
Mission” in Glasgow. So long 
as her strength permitted she 
personally supervised the mis¬ 
sion, carrying baskets full of 
bouquets to the infirmary, where 
smiles and words of welcome 
always awaited her. When she 
could no longer pay these visits, 
in her sick room her hands and 
thoughts were ever busy in the 
work. A change to Grantown 
in the early part of the summer 
was deemed advisable. There 
her thoughts were still for the 
sick and suffering. Almost to 
the last day of her existence she 
occupied herself, in the intervals 
of pain, with making small wire 
baskets to hold ferns for the pa¬ 
tients in the infirmary. 
Our Bessie. 
Springs is a wealthy bachelor, whose bank account is 
much better than his orthography. A party of guests 
were playing a game where a ball made of a handker¬ 
chief is thrown from one to another with the saluta¬ 
tion of “Here comes a ship laden with--,” each 
successive receiver being obliged to name a commodity 
for cargo, beginning with the letters of the alphabet in 
turn. When the handkerchief alighted at the letter K 
in the bachelor’s lap, he shouted “Krockery,” which 
excited a smile, and the game hastily proceeded, when 
it was found the word was really given in good faith 
and not as a joke. The roguishness of a young lady, 
however, caused the flying messenger to alight in his 
Genuine Compliments. — 
We have heard of a lady of 
rare beauty who said, upon a 
certain occasion, that the only 
real, disinterested compliment 
she ever received was from a coal- 
heaver, who asked permission to 
light his pipe in the gleaming 
of her eyes. 
Another compliment, true and 
genuine, was paid by a sailor 
who was sent by his captain to 
carry a letter to the lady of his 
love. The sailor, having deliv¬ 
ered the missive, stood gazing- 
in silent admiration upon the 
face of the lady, for she was 
very beautiful. 
“Well, my good man,” she 
said, “for what do you wait? 
There is no answer to be returned.” 
“Lady,” the sailor returned with humble deference, 
“I would like to kno.w your name.” 
“Did you not see it on this letter?” 
- “Pardon, lady—I never learned to read. Mine has 
been a hard, rough life.” 
“And for what reason, my good man, would you 
know my name?” 
“Because,” answered the old tar, looking honestly 
up, “in a storm at sea, with danger of death afore me, 
I would like to call the name of the brightest thing 
I’d ever seen in life. There’d be sunshine in it, even 
in the thick darkness.” 
