e have
gone for the replenishing of a sister's wardrobe. While the brother
sailed off for a resounding sphere, the sister watched him from the
banks of self-denial.

THE ELDER SISTER'S POWER.

Miriam was the oldest of the family, Moses and Aaron, her brothers,
are younger. Oh, the power of the elder sister to help decide the
brother's character for usefulness and for heaven! She can keep off
from her brother more evils than Miriam could have driven back
water-fowl or crocodile from the ark of bulrushes. The older sister
decides the direction in which the cradle-boat shall sail. By
gentleness, by good sense, by Christian principle she can turn it
toward the palace, not of a wicked Pharaoh, but of a holy God; and a
brighter princess than Thermutis shall lift him out of peril, even
religion, whose ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are
peace.

HER TOILSOME LIFE.

The older sister, how much the world owes her! Born while yet the
family was in limited circumstances, she had to hold and take care of
her younger brothers. And if there is anything that excites my
sympathy it is a little girl lugging round a great fat child, and
getting her ears boxed because she cannot keep him quiet. By the time
she gets to young womanhood she is pale and worn out, and her
attractiveness has been sacrificed on the altar of sisterly fidelity,
and she is consigned to celibacy, and society calls her by an
ungallant name, but in heaven they call her Miriam.

In most families the two most undesirable places in the record of
births are the first and the last, the first because she is worn out
with the cares of a home that cannot afford to hire help, and the last
because she is spoiled as a pet. Among the grandest equipages that
sweep through the streets of heaven will be those occupied by sisters
who sacrificed themselves for brothers. They will have the finest of
the Apocalyptic white horses, and many who on earth looked down upon
them will have to turn out to let them, pass.

HELP TO MAKE MEN.

Let sisters not begrudge the time and care bestowed on a brother. It
is hard to believe that any boy that you know so well as your brother
can ever turn out anything very useful. Well, he may not be a Moses.
There is only one of that kind needed for six thousand years. But I
tell you what your brother will be--either a blessing or a curse to
society, and a candidate for happiness or wretchedness. He will, like
Moses, have the