id to overcome the deadly, besetting sin. He pleaded that,
indulging in that disposition, he was alienating from himself his
boy and his wife; yea, that he was alienating his own better self
from himself, for he was losing his own self-respect. And here his
voice sank from a murmur into silence; he remembered that he was
thus alienating from his bosom and his side--God!

And then he remembered that just such a daily disposition as he
lacked was exactly that disposition which characterized God when God
became man. The excellence of such a disposition rose serenely
before him, embodied in the person of Jesus Christ; the young lawyer
fell forward on his face and wept in the agony of his desire and his
prayer.

From that sweet spring morning was Arthur Leland another man; a
wiser, abler, more successful man in every sense. Not all at once;
steadily, undoubtedly advanced the change. The wife saw and felt,
and rejoiced in it. Willie felt it, and was restrained by it every
drop of his merry blood; the household felt it, as a ship does an
even wind; and sailed on over smooth seas constrained by it. You saw
the change in the man's very gait and bearing and conversation.
Judge and jury felt it. It was the ceasing of a fever in the frame
of a strong man; and Leland went about easily, naturally, the strong
man he was. The old, uneasy, self-harassing feeling was forgotten,
and an ease and grace of tone and manner succeeded. It was a higher
development of the father, the husband, the orator, the gentleman,
the Christian. Surely love is the fountain of patience and peace.
Surely it is the absence of passion which makes angels to be the
beings they are.

Men can become very nearly angels or devils, even before they have
left the world.

THE SCARLET POPPY.

ONE warm morning in June, just as the sun returned from his long but
rapid journey to the distant east, and sailed majestically up
through the clear blue sky, the many bright flowers of one of the
prettiest little parterres in the world, who had opened their
eyes--those bright flowers--to smile at the sunbeams which came to
kiss away the tears night had shed over them, were very much
surprised, and not a little offended to find in their very midst an
individual who, though most of them knew her, one might have
supposed, from their appearance, was a perfect stranger to them all.

The parterre, I have said, was small, for it was in the very heart
of a great city, where