perform the duties of a nurse so well as Sarah. Sarah loved Ann as a sister, doubly dear by nature and by grace; and Ann could not endure the absence of Sarah. Now it was that the latter heard how her former labours had not been in vain. True, as Ann often told her, she and her sister Mary had frequently ridiculed all she once said and did; and yet, some how or other, they could not but feel that she was right and that they were wrong. Long after Ann was obliged to keep her bed, she would be assisted down stairs in the evenings, when her father and brothers were at home; and so long as strength and breath would at all allow, she continued, on these occasions, to read to them from the Scriptures, and to exhort them to attend to the salvation of their souls. This I learnt from the mother, and on conversing with Ann about it, I asked her how the family seemed to like it. O Sir,' said the dear girl, with a deep sigh, I try to pick out such passages as I think will strike their minds, but they don't appear to mind them. Sometimes they are angry with me, and generally they go to sleep.' "Poor girl," said I," she soon found out what I believe all the ministers of God's word have to lament, that there are more angry and sleepy hearers than spiritual attendants on the means of grace." "Yes, and I could not but make this observation to her," said my friend. "But I do hope, and believe," continued he, "that even these readings and exhortations will not fall to the ground. One of the brothers has lately been visited with a fever, and under that visitation he was considerably alarmed, and expressed to his mother how much better state

his soul might then have been in had he but followed Ann's advice and attended to the Scriptures she read to them in the evenings. This lad is recovered, and though by no means deserving the character of a serious person, yet his conduct is improved, and Ann's words and conduct have certainly not been forgotten.

"As to the poor father, whatever his end may be, his present course is a great improvement on his former. He attends the means and will hear his wife talk on the concerns of their souls, neither of which, until of late, would he do. About a fortnight before Ann's death, a circumstance occurred as connected with the father, which, when dear Ann told me one day in the absence of Sarah, I could not refrain from laughing, while at the same time I was much rejoiced. I had more than once told both Ann and Sarah to endeavour, by all means, to get into conversation with him on the best subjects; and often had they made the attempt, and as often had they seen him hurry away. Immediately on Sarah's return home to attend her sister, she and her mother and Ann regularly united in prayer before the family retired to rest. They of course much wished the father to be present with them, but they could not prevail, until one evening he was in a measure entrapped into it. The simple relation which Ann gave me of the matter was as follows. Smiling and much delighted, she said, 'O, Sir, we got our father with us the other night to prayer, and last night he came himself.' "And how was this, I enquired?" "Why, Sir, mother, and Mary, and Sarah, were

all up in the room when father came in and sat down; after a little while Sarah got up and said, 'Now we are all here, and it is getting late, we had better go to prayer;' mother and Mary knelt down, and father got up and seemed quite surprised, and was going out, but Sarah said, 'Father stay with us-now do stay and kneel down. So father knelt down and Sarah went to prayer, and father was a good deal affected and cried, and last night he came himself.' Such was Ann's account of this affair, and certainly his manner is much softened down, and, as I before observed, he often attends on those means of grace which formerly he quite neglected; and under a recent hurt he received, his tears and his inward fears and workings of conscience were such as he had never exhibited before. On the whole, the family in that cottage are very different to what they once were, and that change began with, and has been much carried on through, the instrumentality of the children. Nor did the benefit end here; Ann's patience and pious conversation so struck the attention of a lady who lives not far hence, that she almost daily came to visit her, and often has she passed an hour in listening to and conversing with her. Thus, for the first time, she saw with her own eyes, and heard with her own ears, what the grace of God can do. It was very pleasing to see the mutual affection of this lady and poor Ann for each other. They partook together of the elements of bread and wine, in commemoration of a Saviour's dying love, not many days before Ann's depar

ture; and by and by they will, I trust, greet each other by the side of those living fountains of water where God wipes away all tears from his children's eyes; and where ministers and their redeemed people meet to part no more."

Thus ended my friend's tale of poor Ann, and it certainly added another to the many proofs I had already seen and heard of, that Erastus was correct in cherishing his greatest hopes of seeing the advancement of religion among the members of the rising generation.

No. XVI.

In another excursion we passed by an old building, once a substantial farm house, but long since divided into tenements for the labourers who worked on the farm. "There," said Erastus, "beneath that roof expired the pious Charlotte who once lived servant at the house I pointed out in our ride the other serious day.* She had certainly become a

There

character before I knew her, but the Lord was pleased to carry on his work through my poor instrumentality for a good while before her death. I have frequently thought," said my friend," that were I called on to select any one individual from among the people of my charge as a pattern to poor girls, I should, on the whole, recommend Charlotte for their imitation. was a degree of prudence, conscientiousness, industry, cleanliness, humility, and piety about her, which at all times would be well worthy of following. The complaint of which she died, was a protracted and distressingly painful consumption, and through the whole of her illness I was enabled to see her once or twice every week. Poor dear girl, her gratitude for the

See page 50.