laying you have also done something else. I think
you have done a good work for temperance, and you have been kind to
another in trouble. I think you have tried to keep your badge clean, and
not stain it by bad words. You have tried to get hold of some useful
knowledge through your club. All that is excellent as far as it goes. But
I am thinking, while you are on this ladder, whether there may not be a
round you haven't touched, and yet one you ought to put your foot on.
Between this time and next Sunday, please think what that other round may
be, the round higher up."

The boys looked sober, but no one made a reply.

"The round higher up," Charlie would sometimes say to himself during the
week.

Sometimes in the midst of his play and his studies, that thought would
visit him, "the round higher up." It came to him in his dreams. Looking
up, he saw a silver ladder and it stretched above him, reaching at last a
beautiful palace. Over the palace, flashed out, in letters of gold, the
words, "God's Palace." But what was it Charlie saw not far from this
ladder? Another, but O, so mean and little! Charlie knew it.

"My ladder!" he shouted. "Let me see how many rounds are there!"

"I think there is room for a round higher up," said a voice. "That, as it
is, wont touch God's Palace."

Startled by the sound Charlie awoke.

The next Sunday Miss Barry said: "Boys, I don't think I need ask about the
round higher up which your ladder needs. You understand me, and I want you
to put it in. We never can climb very high, unless our life is pure and
lovely and noble. It must be like Christ's life, and filled with the
beautiful thoughts and purposes he had. That is the round higher up we
need."

These words stirred Charlie still more deeply. He thought about that round
higher up. If he could only put it into his ladder and get his feet on it!
One night he went to his little bedroom, thinking still about the round
higher up. He could lie in bed and look up to the white, silver stars
that, like ladder-rounds, seemed to stretch across the sky in lines going
higher and higher. If he only had rounds by which he could climb as high
as they, his ladder would be tall enough. But how find and where get "the
round higher up?" Once more he dreamed and he was looking again at a
ladder that starting on the ground stretched up a little way and then
suddenly stopped.

"My ladder!" exclaimed Charlie. Then it seemed to him as if above his
ladder