MY EARNINGS.

INTRODUCTION.

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IT often happens that people find themselves doing the very thing which of all others they least expected to do. There is a common saying, "Many men, many minds;" but it is just as easy to find one man in many minds, if you take him in his different moods. The fact is, we not only live in a changing world, but we are all of us changeable creatures. suppose it must be so, seeing we are imperfect creatures. Many and many is the time that to-day's knowledge has to correct yesterday's ignorance; and what we do to-morrow may often be the contrary to what we plan to-day. But I did not sit down to write a moral. I sat down to write a history-the history of a life-of my own life. And this is the very thing I should least have expected to find myself doing. If there were any two things I ever disliked more than all beside, they were these,-old people that were talkative—and

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people that talked about themselves. I made up my mind long ago that nobody should have to complain of me either for the one or the other. Yet here I am, old Ann Ellison, going to have "a paper-talk," as the SouthSea-Islanders used to call it; and all about myself, and the helps and hindrances I have met with. But I have a reason for it. Better do this, I think, than let others fall into the quagmires or the snares I so narrowly escaped. I feel bound to set up a waymark just at those corners where I took, or was near taking, a wrong turn; and though it may be a be a roughlooking post, and the writing none so plain, no matter for that, if it serves to help any travel after me in the same path.

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As I said, I am an old woman, but I have not forgotten my young days. I have not forgotten how young people think and feel. I love the bright sunny spirit, and eager joyous hopes, and warm gushing heartiness of youth. I like to remember it in myself, and I like to see it in others. Many a day I am cheered by dear children's faces that look in to gladden me in this little room.

This little room! aye, it is small, but large enough, if not too large for the like of me. It is bigger and better far than I have deserved. I should not always have thought so, but I see it now. Small as the room is, it has its share of comforts. There are no draughts, to give me rheumatic pains; and yet no close

ness, to make my breathing hard. The latticed window faces the south, and looks into a small square bit of green, with a gravel-walk all round, and one flower-bed in the middle. On the window-seat I have a pot with a choice rose-tree in it; a slip from one which Miss. Rosa gave me, saying its very name would remind me of her. That was Miss Rosa who went away to India; but I shall have more to say about her another time. She gave me some of the books, too, that stand on that chest of drawers. Opposite the chest of drawers is a good fire-place, that gives out a great deal of heat, while it takes very little fuel;—a capital thing, in these hard times, when coals are so dear. My neighbours and I get a sack given us free at Christmas-time, and a good Christmas dinner too. All else we find for ourselves; but it is a mighty help to have the house over our heads, and no rent to pay.

It is true I am only in an alms-house. I cannot forget that. Not that I complain of it! No, I feel that it is a mercy to be here. I have great cause to be thankful to the friends who got me in, and to Him who put it into their hearts to do so. Still I cannot help remembering that I might have been better off, and that I ought to have been better off. The reason why I need this help is what I want to tell. I shall try to set down the history of my earnings. I mean to show how I got my wages, and how I spent them, or perhaps, I should

say, how I often mis-spent them. I hope to tell my story pleasantly, and yet to tell it so as that it may do good. Cheerful and profitable may go hand in hand. There can be soberness without dulness, as there can be lightsomeness without folly. Whatever I write, I shall write it from the depths of my heart; and that, I have heard say, is the likeliest thing to make it reach the hearts of others.

No doubt I shall ramble a great deal, which I have been told good writers never allow themselves to do, except when they can hide it cleverly, and come round again in a quiet and easy way to what they were speaking of before. But I must be content to do the best I can, and if I find myself sailing far from where I should be, I must "tack about," as my Jack used to say, who went to be a sailor. A fine boy, though it is not for me to say it. To think that I shall never see him here again! never! How I used to sit and watch for him to come back with his long "yarns," as he called his sea-stories! How I used to lie awake on stormy nights, listening to the wind as it howled about the chimney-top, and thinking of the ship with him in it tossed about upon the waves! But that is all over now: and there is just one verse in the Bible that I can take to heart better than I should otherwise have done,—the verse which tells of the "sea" giving up all the dead that are in it. Who could ever have thought of that being

true, if God himself had not said it? But He has promised, and He will bring it about.

I have had to stop, and take off my spectacles, and wipe away a tear or two, even though I know it has been wisely ordered in love.

I will begin my story, as soon as I have just said that I should be very sorry to step out of my place, or put myself forward in any way. But the fact is, I have had more advantages, in the long run, than some have. Not so great in my early life, but many in later years. My means of picking up knowledge were scanty at the first, but they came thicker and thicker as my wish to make good use of them grew stronger. Our Father in heaven has different ways of dealing with us. Το some He gives a heaped-up measure of privileges when they are young, and then leaves them to trade with the knowledge that was laid up betimes, gaining fresh thoughts mostly by using their old ones. To others He gives only a little light at a time, and keeps on leading them from the dungeon of darkness through one open door after another, and from one degree of brightness to a higher. This last was my case. At home I learned to read. At Sunday-school I was taught how to search. my Bible. As maid-of-all-work, I had many a sharp lesson taught me by my own folly. As sick-nurse, I had the best training for what I am now setting myself to do. From spending much of my time with ladies, I came to