ur poor boy in his
last distress.

It is one of the most refined and characteristic modifications of
Christianity, that those who are themselves sheltered, guarded, fenced
by good education, knowledge, and competence, appoint and sustain a
pastor and guardian in our large cities to be the shepherd of the
wandering and lost, and of them who, in the Scripture phrase, "have none
to help." Justly is he called the "City Missionary," for what is more
truly missionary ground? In the hospital, among the old, the sick, the
friendless, the forlorn--in the prison, among the hardened, the
blaspheming--among the discouraged and despairing, still holding with
unsteady hand on to some forlorn fragment of virtue and self-respect,
goes this missionary to stir the dying embers of good, to warn, entreat,
implore, to adjure by sacred recollections of father, mother, and home,
the fallen wanderers to return. He finds friends, and places, and
employment for some, and by timely aid and encouragement saves many a
one from destruction.

In this friendly shape appeared a man of prayer to visit the cell in
which Fred was confined. Dick listened to his instructions with cool
complacency, rolling his tobacco from side to side in his mouth, and
meditating on him as a subject for some future histrionic exercise of
his talent.

But his voice was as welcome to poor Fred as daylight in a dungeon. All
the smothered remorse and despair of his heart burst forth in bitter
confessions, as, with many tears, he poured forth his story to the
friendly man. It needs not to prolong our story, for now the day has
dawned and the hour of release is come.

It is not needful to carry our readers through all the steps by which
Fred was transferred, first to the fireside of the friendly missionary,
and afterwards to the guardian care of a good old couple who resided on
a thriving farm not far from Cincinnati. Set free from evil influences,
the first carefully planted and watered seeds of good began to grow
again, and he became as a son to the kind family who had adopted him.

THE CANAL BOAT.

Of all the ways of travelling which obtain among our locomotive nation,
this said vehicle, the canal boat, is the most absolutely prosaic and
inglorious. There is something picturesque, nay, almost sublime, in the
lordly march of your well-built, high-bred steamboat. Go, take your
stand on some overhanging bluff, where the blue Ohio winds its thread of
silver, or the