T REST ON THIS BEAUTIFUL DAY."]

Sweet Summer-time dawns with a flush o'er the skies,
The bees and the butterflies come in her train,
While the dear little children, with joy in their eyes,
Stand watching the lark as he mounts to the skies,
While singing his joyous refrain.

The meadow is sprinkled with beautiful flowers,
The hedge with its sweet-scented blossoms of snow.
How bright is the sunshine! how fresh are the showers!
How happy the children, these holiday hours,
As shouting and singing they go!

But Summer (who stole on the footsteps of Spring)
Is driven in turn far out of our view,
When ruddy-hued Autumn her mantle must fling
O'er meadow and orchard, till each growing thing
Is transformed to a beautiful hue.

Then the little ones, laughing, must hie them away
To the blackberry wood and the nut-growing ground;
But in the home-garden our dear little May
Sits calmly at rest, on this beautiful day,
Contented with what she has found.

D. B. McKEAN.

LITTLE FE.

So he was left an heir at the age of ten years--heir to all the fortune
of his dead aunt, which consisted of two shillings and fourpence, a
flower-basket, a pebble with a hole drilled through it, and a dying
woman's blessing. "Truly," you will say, "he was rich."

He was small and thin, this little heir, and one poor leg was drawn up
three inches higher than the other, which obliged him to walk with those
wooden things called crutches. He was called Fe; but his name was of
very little use to him, as he could neither read nor write it.

An old woman had promised "to see after him for a bit" at his aunt's
death. She lived in a room in the same wretched lodging-house which had
sheltered Fe and his aunt for the past six years.

I have not told you yet that my heir did not live in London, but in a
large busy town in the south of England.

Fe's temporary guardian, Mrs. Crump, was short and cross, and not very
young; her nose was slightly hooked, her eyes were black, and rather
sharp. She wore a jet black frizzled wig, which contrasted well with the
primrose-tinted skin; her voice showed her bad temper, for it was sharp
and harsh, like the creaking of a door.

After having settled and arranged everything, she bade Fe follow her
into her black little room, and that was the last he ever saw of his
poor little old home, where for ten long grown-up years he had lived, to
go to rest weak,