w!

16. Anna did not know her mother in the delirium of fever, and her
melancholy cry of "Mother! mother! come back!--I will never be so bad
again!" wrung Mrs. Elmore's heart.

17. For three weeks Anna lay between life and death; and when she was at
length pronounced out of danger, she was as helpless as an infant.

18. One day, as she sat propped up by pillows, she told her mother all
that had passed during her absence, and awaited her decision respecting
the use she had made of her time.

19. "My dear child," said Mrs. Elinore, "I trust the past will afford a
lesson you will never forget. So far from having made good use of your
time, you have done harm in everything you have undertaken.

20. "Your attempts at study, instead of affording you any real
instruction, have only given you habits of inattention, which you will
find very difficult to overcome; for your eyes have wandered over the
page, while your thoughts have been with the fool's, to the ends of the
earth.

21. "Your irregular care of my plants, which you thought would serve
instead of habitual attention, has been the means of destroying them as
effectually as if you had allowed them to perish from total neglect.

22. "Your injudicious benevolence to the Wilsons served only to make the
children envious of each other, without giving them habits of neatness,
which are essential to the well-being of such a family; while it had a
worse effect upon yourself, because it not only wasted your precious
time, but excited in you a feeling of vanity, on account of what you
considered a good action.

23. "If, instead of trusting so boldly to your good resolutions, you had
entered upon your duties with an humble mind, and resolved to _try_ to
do right,--if you had apportioned your time with some degree of
regularity,--you might have performed all that was required of you,
enjoyed all your amusements, and gratified every kindly feeling, without
a single self-reproach.

24. "As it is, you feel sensible of having failed in everything,--of
having exposed yourself to great peril, and subjected your mother to
great anxiety, simply from your disposition to loiter, when you should
labor.

25. "I trust that, in the solitude of your sick chamber, 'the still
small voice' of your many wasted hours has made itself heard, and that
hereafter you will not so utterly fail to make good use of your time."

LESSON XXXI.

_Verse, or Poetry._

1. All the lessons in thi