y have given me all I wanted.

Thinking I had suffered enough already, he promised not to tell my
parents, in case I continued a good boy, and advised me to destroy the
box and bring him back the nails, as no one could then suspect what had
been done but ourselves.

His kindness, I confess, pained me very much. I think nothing could have
tempted me to do him any wrong again.

I loved him better than ever before. He never alluded to the subject
afterwards, but I always thought of it when I saw him. He died in a
short time; and, twenty years after, as I stood by his grave, the
circumstance came up, clear and distinct, to my recollection. I have
not, indeed, from that to the present hour, felt the least temptation to
commit any wrong of the kind without recalling it; and, if all my young
readers will think seriously how much suffering that one act cost me,
and how much happier I should otherwise have been, I am confident that
they will never commit a similar offence so long as they remember the
story of _the boy who stole the nails_.

THE CHILDLESS MOTHER.

BY MRS. M.H. ADAMS.

There are many childless mothers in our land. In some homes there never
lived a little child to make them happy; but in others the spirits of
the little ones have departed. They dwell in another home--the "dear
heavenly home." Their mothers, those childless mothers, weep day and
night in their loneliness and sadness. This sketch is of a mother who
had buried all her little babes--four precious children--all her little
family. The mother's name was Ellen Moore.

For many months after the birth of her first child, Ellen was free from
sorrow as a bird in the morning. She never thought affliction might come
to her blessed home. It was not surprising, for she had never known what
bereavement and bitter disappointment were. She was educated to be a
child of sunshine. She had always lived amid smiles and tenderness, and
when the fearful cloud of sorrow broke, in an unexpected moment, upon
her head, she seemed bowed down, never to rise again in health and
beauty.

It was a sad day in our neighborhood when Ellen's first little babe
died; we all wept. Not so much because he was dead, for we all felt that
_he_ was at rest; but his dear mother was so sorely troubled, her heart
ached so grievously, it seemed as if she too would die. Days and nights
Ellen wept, and moaned, and walked her house. The tears seemed to burn
their way down her cheeks.