oly, heavenly light.

He had only heard of Jesus from a ragged singing girl,
He might well have wondered, pondered, till his brain began to whirl;
But he took it as she told it, and believed it then and there,
Simply trusting in the Saviour, and his kind and tender care.

In the morning, when the mother came to wake her crippled boy,
She discovered that his features wore a look of sweetest joy,
And she shook him somewhat roughly, but the cripple's face was cold--
He had gone to join the children in the streets of shining gold.

Tommy's prayer had soon been answered, and the Angel Death had come
To remove him from his cellar, to his bright and heavenly home
Where sweet comfort, joy, and gladness never can decrease or end,
And where Jesus reigns eternally, his Sovereign and his Friend.

_John F. Nicholls._

The Two Pictures

It was a bright and lovely summer's morn,
Fair bloomed the flowers, the birds sang softly sweet,
The air was redolent with perfumed balm,
And Nature scattered, with unsparing hand,
Her loveliest graces over hill and dale.
An artist, weary of his narrow room
Within the city's pent and heated walls,
Had wandered long amid the ripening fields,
Until, remembering his neglected themes,
He thought to turn his truant steps toward home.
These led him through a rustic, winding lane,
Lined with green hedge-rows spangled close with flowers,
And overarched by trees of noblest growth.
But when at last he reached the farther end
Of this sweet labyrinth, he there beheld
A vision of such pure, pathetic grace,
That weariness and haste were both obscured,
It was a child--a young and lovely child
With eyes of heavenly hue, bright golden hair,
And dimpled hands clasped in a morning prayer,
Kneeling beside its youthful mother's knee.
Upon that baby brow of spotless snow,
No single trace of guilt, or pain, or woe,
No line of bitter grief or dark despair,
Of envy, hatred, malice, worldly care,
Had ever yet been written. With bated breath,
And hand uplifted as in warning, swift,
The artist seized his pencil, and there traced
In soft and tender lines that image fair:
Then, when 'twas finished, wrote beneath one word,
A word of holiest import--Innocence.

Years fled and brought with them a subtle change,
Scattering Time's snow upon the artist's brow,
But leaving there the laurel wreath of fame,
While all men spake in words of praise his name;
For he had traced full many a noble work
Upon the ca