his children well educated: so he sent my brother Ben to the university. But things went ill with my father; and as the saying is-worse always comes behind to kick bad down hill. Still, Ben was a good scholar, and my father did not take him from the college, hoping and striving all the time to make things improve: so he got in debt to the college, for Ben's instruction.

"Well, one day my father had a sheriff's officer sent after him, and as he could not pay the debt, he was taken to prison. Now, I do not mind being sent to prison myself, for J am a poor good-for-nothing. I have been sent there several times, and though I never knew what it was for, still it is all the same to Silly Simon. But my father was a sensitive man, and to be shut up in a stone room, where the air was damp and close, was a strange thing to him. He was a little nervous too, I believe, for it affected him very much. He had been respected by the world at large, and had spent his life in acts acknowledged to be beneficial to mankind: and now, to be confined as if he were guilty of some crime, and unworthy of breathing

the fresh air, and of holding intercourse with his fellow-men! all this turned his head. It affected him the more, that the blow came from the college which ought, as he said, to set examples of humanity.

A friend went to the president and begged him to let my poor father out of prison, but he pretended to know nothing about it, and refused to interfere. At last some friend, hearing of my father's situation, paid the debt and he was released. But the affair sunk deep into his heart; and perceiving that the richer and more respectable members of society took part with the president; that the latter was kept in his place, and not only vindicated but cherished-while he was himself neglected and despised, because he had become poor and been put in prisonhe lost his confidence in mankind and himself, and soon died of a broken heart.

"Misfortunes never come single you know-so, soon after my father died, poor Ben followed. I was left destitute, and there was no one to care for me. By and by I was taken sick of a fever: it settled on my brain, and left it at last in a terrible

state. I never could get it fairly cleared up, and all the better is it for me. If I had my

senses, then the things of which I tell you would make me unhappy; but as it is, I am contented. I can see the president's son pass by in scorn, and feel sorry for him; for, after all, I think it must give him more pain than it does me. Poverty is a sad thing, Mr. Parley, but there is something worse." "Ard what is that?"

"Selfishness," said Simon; "that kind of selfishness which makes a man forget how others feel. I am poor, silly, as they call me, but still, I never forget what is going on in the breasts of others. There are some men so proud, so lofty, that they regard a great part of their fellow-men as little as we do worms and insects in our path. They stride proudly on, thinking that if any one is crushed beneath their mighty tread, it is because he gets in their way, and this is all they think or care about it. Now I am one of those worms and I have often been trod upon. I know the agony-the cruel agony which attends such cases; and I therefore feel for every human being who suffers. I

would not even tread upon a worm, if I

knew it."

I left the poor beggar with his words treasured in my heart: and I drew this lesson from his story,-that a beggar may still impart truth and wisdom; that under the garb of poverty, there may be something to respect and admire; that even seeming weakness has often a touching moral for those who will listen and learn; and that God sends down to the crushed bosom, in kindness and for consolation, that mantle of charity, which is even better than garments of purple and fine linen.

A dog and a cat were once sitting by a kitchen door, when the cook came out and threw several pieces of meat to them.

They both sprang to get it, but the dog was the strongest, and so he drove the cat away, and devoured all the meat himself. This was selfishness; by which I mean, that the dog cared only for himself. The cat wanted the meat as much as he did; strongest, and so he took it all.

but he was the

because the

But was this wrong? No, dog knew no better. The dog has no idea of God, or of that beautiful golden rule of conduct, which requires us to do to others as we would have them do to us.