ey both wear brilliant colors, and
sing enchanting songs, but they depart with the sunshine; the first
leave us to battle the storms of adversity, and the others, the cold and
barren prospect of winter; these little snow-birds, however, remain, and
through all its dark hours they cheer us by their presence. They seem to
tell us that we are not entirely destitute of pleasure, but that the
darkest hours have something of beauty; and, while they serve to awaken
in our minds a remembrance of the bright days that have gone, they bid
us look forward to the end of our sorrows, and welcome the bright spring
days, which shall return to us the joys that departed.

_C._ I declare! you have preached quite a sermon, and from a funny text;
I confess there is both truth and poetry in what you say. I do not
wonder that you love the snow-birds, if they awaken such pleasant and
pretty thoughts in your mind. Henceforth I will love them myself, for
the good lesson that, through you, they have imparted. I trust you will
forgive me the rudeness of laughing at you.

_M_. Cheerfully, Clara; but learn from this never to despise any of
God's creatures; they can all teach us some important and beautiful
lesson which we should be happy to heed. And now, if you please, we will
go and feed the snow-birds.

_C_. With all my heart!

[Illustration: MOUNT CARMEL.]

MOUNT CARMEL.

SELECTED.

Mount Carmel is a high promontory, forming the termination of a range of
hills running northwest from the plain of Esdraelon. Mount Carmel is the
southern boundary of the Bay of Acre, on Acca, as it is called by the
Turks; its height is about fifteen hundred feet, and at its foot, north,
runs the brook Kishon, and a little further north the river Belus.

Mount Carmel is celebrated in Scripture history as the place where
Elijah went up when he told his servant to look forth to the sea yet
seven times, and the seventh time he saw a little cloud coming up from
the sea "like a man's hand," when the prophet knew that the promised
rain was at hand, and girded up his loins, and ran before Ahab's chariot
even to the gates of Jezreel. (1 Kings xviii. 44-46.)

Towards the sea is a cave, where it has been supposed that Elijah
desired Ahab to bring Baal's false prophets, and where fire from heaven
descended on the altar he erected. The present appearance of Carmel is
thus described by Dr. Hogg, who visited it in 1833. "The convent on
Mount Carmel was destroyed