mble' very
much to be at home?"

* * * * *

Letters From Very Little Pupils.
................................

_My dear teacher_:--I would like to have grace and truth before God, and I
hope I am now his little girl.--LUCY.

_Dear teacher_:--I want religion.--ARTELIA.

_My dear teacher_:--If I had my choice of anything I wanted, I would
choose a Christian life, so when I came to die I would die in Jesus, like
Daisy Holt died.--ROXY.

* * * * *

Pictures In The Pines.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Prof. Amos W. Farnham.

In the Sunny South, in the Land of Pines,
Is a whitewashed cottage, old and grand;
Its ample grounds of jessamine vines,
Are bright with crystals of sparkling sand.
Broad stairways lead to its airy hall
And cool piazzas, where the sun
His shining arrows ne'er lets fall
Till his daily race is almost run.

Within are walls of panels high,
And great fire-places that laugh at night,
When the blazing splinters of lightwood fry
And wrap the rooms in a flood of light.
'Tis then the cabins in the rear,
Low and little and plain and old,
Are vocal with the Negro'a cheer,
For his heart is light when the day is told.

But there's one who sits from the rest apart,
With folded hands and turbaned head,
With a nameless burden upon her heart,
And the light of youth forever fled.
And she sits a swaying to and fro,
Like the billowy pine with plume and cone,
While a minor strain subdued and slow,
She sings in a plaintive monotone:

("I'm mos' don' a trablin' an' I boun'
To carry my sould to Jesus
I'm mos' don' a trablin' an' I boun'
To carry my sould to de Lord.")

Then 'neath the whitewashed cottage vines,
From its window that looks on the dying day,
I gaze at the pictures in the pines,
Made by their plumes and cones of gray.
'Mong the leafy pictures is a crown,
Bedecked with a brightly shining star,
By angel hands held out and down
From the western gate that stands ajar.

My crown is bright when the year is new,
Nor changes, when its frosts appear:
For the star still shines in its ground of blue,
And the pine tree lives when the rest are sere.
From the pine my thoughts ascend above
To the Tree of LIfe that Heaven adorns;
From the star to the Star of my Saviour's Love,
That grandly shone in a crown of thorns.

Oh, Star of Love, thy beams shall guide
Me through the shadows of earth and sin,
Till Heaven's ga