with ourselves, but who
has said--"The wages of him that is hired, shall not abide with thee all
night until the morning."--Lev. 19 chap. 13th verse.

The husband of Phoebe was a day labourer; when not intoxicated he was
kind; but this was of rare occurrence, for most of his earnings went for
ardent spirits, and the labour of the poor wife and mother was the
main support of herself and four children--the eldest nine years, the
youngest only eighteen months old. As she neared the wretched hovel she
had left early in the morning, she saw the faces of her four little ones
pressed close against the window.

"Mother's coming, mother's coming!" they shouted, as they watched her
approaching through the gloom, and as she unlocked the door, which she
had been obliged to fasten to keep them from straying away, they all
sprang to her arms at once.

"God bless you, my babes!" she exclaimed, gathering them to her heart,
"you have not been a minute absent from my mind this day. And what
have _you_ suffered," she added, clasping the youngest, a sickly,
attenuated-looking object, to her breast. "Oh! it is hard, my little
Mary, to leave you to the tender mercies of children hardly able to
take care of themselves." And as the baby nestled its head closer to
her side, and lifted its pale, imploring face, the anguished mother's
fortitude gave way, and she burst into an agony of tears and sobbings.
By-the-by, do some mothers, as they sit by the softly-lined cradles of
their own beloved babes, ever think upon the sufferings of those hapless
little ones, many times left with a scanty supply of food, and no fire,
on a cold winter day, while the parent is earning the pittance which is
to preserve them from starvation? And lest some may suppose that we are
drawing largely upon our imagination, we will mention, in this
place, that we knew of a child left under such circumstances, and
half-perishing with cold, who was nearly burned to death by some hops
(for there was no fuel to be found), which it scraped together in its
ragged apron, and set on fire with a coal found in the ashes.

Phoebe did not indulge long in grief, however she forgot her weary
limbs, and bustling about, soon made up a fire, and boiled some
potatoes, which constituted their supper--after which she nursed the
children, two at a time, for a while, and then put them tenderly to bed.
Her husband had not come home, and as he was nearly always intoxicated,
and sometimes ill-tre