misphere, leaving a son and daughter. The son soon followed her and
was laid by the side of his mother and grandmother.

The crimson spot upon the daughter's cheek, accompanied by the hacking
cough, seem to denote that the tardy messenger will soon bear another
victim to the mansions of death. Another daughter too is lingering
upon the confines of the grave, while the fatal seeds are taking
deep root in the constitutions of two of the sons, and heralding by
unmistakable evidence the approach of death.

But why particularize? Many, very many who have walked with us side
by side, in the sweet associations of life, are mingled with the long
train that are buried beneath the "clods of the valley," while there
is a long train of living victims marching before the fearful blight
to the open tomb.

No monarch sways his despotic sceptre over so numerous a population as
this fell destroyer, in his unseen lurking places, "drinking up the
very fountains of human life." But when will the sons of men learn to
think? with all the blight of death around, cutting one down upon the
right hand and another upon the left, the thoughtless crowd pass on,
little seeming to heed their own mortality. They look into the open
grave, or watch the passing funeral perhaps with a momentary sadness,
and turns lightly again to the active concerns of life, mingling in
its gaities and dissipation, dancing on to the very whirlpool that is
soon to engulf their frail bark, and bear it away where hope can never
come.

Happy they who receive instruction from the revelations of God's holy
word, and imbibe its precepts into their heart; who, cleansed in a
Saviour's blood, are made recipients of his rich grace, and are thus
prepared to enter that "land where death comes not."

To Mrs. A---- B----,

On the Death of Her Child.

"Are they not all ministering spirits?"

"Mother, do not weep for me,
Shining angels guide my way;
And oft they lead me back to thee,
Through realms of everlasting day.

I may not burst the spirit's tie,
Or lift the dim, mysterious screen,
That hides me from thy mortal eye;
But I may visit thee unseen.

Night comes not here; no evening shade
Ere gathers round the throne of God;
And when your setting sunbeams fade,
I visit then your lone abode.

The twilight hour was dear to me,
With murmur'd tone of evening prayer;
When with hands clasp'd upon your knee,
And