ssings, direct its eyes--no matter how narrow
your sphere--to the nearest object of suffering, and relieve it.

"I say, my dear young friend, take the word of an old man for it, who
has tried every known panacea, and found all to fail, except this golden
rule,

"_Forget self, and keep the heart busy for others._"

CHARITY.--ITS OBJECTS.

THE great Teacher, on being asked "Who is my neighbour?" replied "A man
went down from Jerusalem to Jericho," and the parable which followed
is the most beautiful which language has ever recorded. Story-telling,
though often abused, is the medium by which truth can be most
irresistibly conveyed to the majority of minds, and in the present
instance we have a desire to portray in some slight degree the
importance of Charity in every-day life.

A great deal has been said and written on the subject of indiscriminate
giving, and many who have little sympathy with the needy or distressed,
make the supposed unworthiness of the object an excuse for withholding
their alms; while others, who really possess a large proportion of the
milk of human kindness, in awaiting _great_ opportunities to do good,
overlook all in their immediate pathway, as beneath their notice. And
yet it was the "widow's mite" which, amid the many rich gifts cast into
the treasury, won the approval of the Searcher of Hearts; and we have
His assurance that a cup of cold water given in a proper spirit shall
not lose its reward.

Our design in the present sketch is to call the attention of the
softer sex to a subject which has in too many instances escaped their
attention; for our ideas of Charity embrace a wide field, and we hold
that it should at all times be united with justice, when those less
favoured than themselves are concerned.

"I do not intend hereafter to have washing done more than once in two
weeks," said the rich Mrs. Percy, in reply to an observation of her
husband, who was standing at the window, looking at a woman who was
up to her knees in the snow, hanging clothes on a line in the yard.
"I declare it is too bad, to be paying that poking old thing a
half-a-dollar a week for our wash, and only six in the family. There she
has been at it since seven o'clock this morning, and now it is almost
four. It will require but two or three hours longer if I get her once a
fortnight, and I shall save twenty-five cents a week by it."

"When your own sex are concerned, you women are the _closest_ bei