iring friend, and continued: 'You have all promised to love me:
if I do not live, be careful of this coffee-plant, which held out to
us such brilliant prospects. I ask it of you as a favour, and
bequeath to you the distinction I hoped to have gained by it.' At the
moment they were distributing the scanty portion of water, and though
he was perishing, he threw the whole of it upon the shrub--Louisa did
the same. It was, as it were, a sacred bond between them--an
indissoluble tie. I am convinced that many of my readers have
frequently felt a lively and almost inexplicable pleasure in watering
a flower dried up by the scorching sun, and, in seeing it revive,
have felt as if benefited themselves. What pleasure, then, it must
have given to Desclieux and Louisa to see their plant raise its
sickly leaves once more!

At length the wind began to rise lightly, and the vessel moved,
though slowly. Desclieux was ill--in a burning fever; but he
continued to share with the plant his allowance of water; and Louisa
added hers. It increased their happiness that it owed its recovery to
their mutual self-denial; and it seemed as if their household life
had begun in a common endurance of suffering.

The breeze still freshened: and when the vessel anchored in the port
of St Pierre, there was not a single drop of water on board. But the
coffee-plant was saved; the colony enriched by it; Desclieux's pledge
redeemed; and, three months after, Louisa was his wife.

THE TREE AND THE FOREST.

A STORY WRITTEN FOR THE YOUNG, BUT WHICH MAY BE READ BY THE OLD.

'What splendid trees!' said Monsieur D'Ambly, as he was passing by a
fine forest of oaks.

'What a splendid fire they would make!' replied his son Eugene.
Eugene had read a few days before in a book of travels the
description of a wood on fire, and he could think of nothing else. He
was an admirer of everything that was uncommon, everything that
produced an effect or a commotion, and, like most children, he
seldom carried his ideas beyond what he saw.

'If it would not injure any person,' said he, 'I would be very glad
this forest would take fire; it would be a glorious sight. I am sure,
papa, that its light would extend as far as the chateau.'

'Would it then be such a pleasant thing to see a tree burning?'

'Oh, a tree,' said Eugene, 'that would be hardly worth the trouble;
but a forest would be magnificent.'

'Since we are on the subject of burning,' said Monsieur D'Ambly, 'I