remendous burst of applause that rang through the house as the
last note trembled away into silence. He started up. It was no dream.
The greatest singer in Europe had sung his little song before a
fashionable London audience. Almost dazed with happiness, he never knew
how he reached his poor home; and when he related the incidents of the
evening, his mother's delight nearly equaled his own. Nor was this the
end.

Next day they were startled by a visit from Madame M----. After gently
greeting the sick woman, while her hand played with Pierre's golden
curls, she said: "Your little boy, Madame, has brought you a fortune. I
was offered this morning, by the best publisher in London, 300 pounds
for his little song; and after he has realized a certain amount from
the sale, little Pierre here is to share the profits. Madame, thank God
that your son has a gift from heaven." The grateful tears of the
invalid and her visitor mingled, while the child knelt by his mother's
bedside and prayed God to bless the kind lady who, in their time of
sorrow and great need, had been to them as a savior.

The boy never forgot his noble benefactress, and years afterward, when
the great singer lay dying, the beloved friend who smoothed her pillow
and cheered and brightened her last moments--the rich, popular, and
talented composer--was no other than our little Pierre.

"IF I REST, I RUST"

"The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight;
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night."

The significant inscription found on an old key,--"If I rest, I
rust,"--would be an excellent motto for those who are afflicted with
the slightest taint of idleness. Even the industrious might adopt it
with advantage to serve as a reminder that, if one allows his faculties
to rest, like the iron in the unused key, they will soon show signs of
rust, and, ultimately, cannot do the work required of them.

Those who would attain

"The heights by great men reached and kept"

must keep their faculties burnished by constant use, so that they will
unlock the doors of knowledge, the gates that guard the entrances to
the professions, to science, art, literature, agriculture,--every
department of human endeavor.

Industry keeps bright the key that opens the treasury of achievement.
If Hugh Miller, after toiling all day in a quarry, had devoted his
evenings to rest and recreation, h