we convey the reader to a scene of beauty that might
compare favourably with any of the most romantic spots on this fair
earth--on the Riviera, or among the Brazilian wilds, or, for that
matter, in fairyland itself.

It is a garden--a remarkably small garden to be sure, but one that is
arranged with a degree of taste and a display of fancy that betokens the
gardener a genius. Among roses and mignonette, heliotrope, clematis and
wallflower, chrysanthemums, verbenas and sweet-peas are intertwined, on
rustic trellis-work, the rich green leaves of the ivy and the graceful
Virginia creeper in such a manner that the surroundings of the miniature
garden are completely hidden from view, and nothing but the bright blue
sky is visible, save where one little opening in the foliage reveals the
prospect of a grand glittering river, where leviathans of the deep and
small fry of the shallows, of every shape and size, disport themselves
in the blaze of a summer sun.

Beauty meets the eye wherever turned, but, let the head of the observer
be extended ever so little beyond the charmed circle of that garden, and
nearly all around is ugliness supreme! For this is a garden on the roof
of an old house; the grand river is the Thames, alive with the shipping
of its world-wide commerce, and all around lies that interminable forest
of rookery chimneys, where wild ungainly forms tell of the insane and
vain efforts of man to cope with smoke; where wild beasts--in the form
of cats--hold their nightly revels, imitating the yells of agonised
infants, filling the dreams of sleepers with ideas of internal thunder
or combustion, and driving the sleepless mad!

Susy--our Susy--is the cause of this miracle of beauty in the midst of
misery; this glowing gem in a setting of ugliness. It is her modest
little head that has bent over the boxes of earth, which constitute her
landed property; her pretty little fingers which have trained the stems
and watered the roots and cherished the flowers until the barren
house-top has been made to blossom like the rose. And love, as usual,
has done it all--love to that very ugly old woman, chimney-pot Liz, who
sits on the rustic chair in the midst of the garden enjoying it all.

For Liz has been a mother to that motherless bairn from her earliest
years. She has guarded, fed, and clothed her from infancy; taught her
from God's Book the old, old story of redeeming love, and led her to the
feet of Jesus. It would be