fatigue and of the most painful exertion. Every
moment the stranger betakes himself to peaches,
grapes, or figs, of which he keeps a pocketful:
and, when these are gone, to sherbet, lemonade,
or some sort of fruit broth. Imagine, then, what
life-blood the poor penniless vagabond draws
from the street fountain.

SNOW.

LAST night the snow was falling,
It fell throughout the night,
I woke this morning, mother,
And saw the ground was white.

White were the peaceful meadows,
And white the tall, dark pines;
And white was yonder mountain,
On which the sun first shines.

And in our own dear valley
The snow was lying deep;
And in the quiet churchyard
Where my little sisters sleep.

And o'er their little tombstones
The snow-flakes form'd a wreath;
But nought are flowers or snow-flakes
To those who sleep beneath.

We deck'd the graves last summer
With many a primrose gem;
But whether flowers or snow-flakes
It matters not to them.

But, oh! the snow is lovely,
So beautiful and bright;
Pure as the little spirits
Who wear their robes as white.

But in our valley, mother,
The footsteps come and go;
And then how soon they sully
The pure new-fallen snow.

The trace of earth is on it,
On earth all soiled it lies,
How soon it lost the beauty
It brought from yonder skies.

My child, on yonder mountain
The snow lies pure and high;
No foot of man invades it,
It is so near the sky.

It sinks not to the valley,
Where earth's dark traces are,
And nought can soil its whiteness:
'Twas kept from falling far.

Wouldst thou be pure and holy,
Remember, my child!
That an earth-seeking nature
Must be by earth defiled.

Then let thy childish spirit
Stoop not to things below;
Live in the light of Heaven,
Like yon pure mountain snow.

——————————————————————————————

THE MULE-MAKER.

TOWARDS the close of the last century, in an
old Elizabethan house near to the rough
manufacturing town of Bolton, lived one Betty Holt,
widow of George Crompton, farmer and weaver;
one of those farmers who, as the saying went,
"paid their rent through the eye of the shuttle,"
and helped out cow-keeping and egg-hatching by
the spindle and the loom. Betty Holt was a
character: a stern, rigid, upright dame,
passionate and violent, but not without a rude
kind of Spartan tenderness lying underneath her
fierceness, which redeemed it from absolute
brutality; inexorable, self-willed, with strong
Puritan leanings, yet, with true Puritan logic, a
pope to herself, consecrated infallible by her
own grace. She cuffed and thrashed, and maybe
swore at her son Samuel with tremendous zeal
and energy; but she loved him, nevertheless, as
a she-bear loves its young, or a tiger-cat, or a
rhinoceros, which yet are not exactly types of
maternal tenderness. Betty Holt was clever as
well as strong-willed, and in her way even a
celebrity. She was famous for her elderberry
wine, and her butter got the topmost price of
the market; she kept bees and made a good
thing of their honey; she was parish overseer
for one while; and, not content with her own
industry and bustling habits, she set her children
to earn their bread betimes, and tied them down
to the loom so soon as their little legs were
long enough to work the treddles. No idleness
was allowed in her house; no unthrift, no useless
dawdlings, no new-fangled ways, nor even
learning that had not its pound and pence
value: not an hour spent for pleasures that had
not been fairly earned by labour not an inch of
ground left for flowers that were not planted at
the roots of potherbs. Work, thrift, a rigid
order of morality, and the gloomy pietism of
the Puritan school reigned over her and hers;
and what amusements or dissipation the children
got were got by force of youth and nature, for
Betty Holt gave none of her own making, nor
thought it needful that any should be had. Add
to this hard-handed discipline the saddening
presence of "Uncle Alexander," lame and as
ascetic as the rest of them, and we can understand
in what an unnatural, stifling, narrow
atmosphere young Samuel Crompton lived. He
bore the marks or that suppressed early training
of his to his last day, in the shyness, want of
facility, and savage pride, which rendered all his
talent unavailing and his life a miserable failure
for himself. Had Betty Holt of Turton been an
easier-natured woman, and had she not thought
it the best manner of education to set her
children on stepping-stones far apart from their
kind, in all probability Samuel Crompton would
have been a successful man. As it was, he was
only a successful inventor; which is by no means
the same thing.

One little trait of Uncle Alexander, and then
I dismiss him for ever to the oblivion of the
past. Sick and crippled, he could not stir out
from the house, nor make more exertion than
the one step which was necessary to carry him
from his bed to his loom; but he observed the
Sabbath and attended church in his own way.
So soon as the bells began to ring, Uncle Alex-
ander took off his week-day working coat, and
put on his Sunday's best, then slowly read the
church service to himself, and may be thought
out his own sermon as well as spelled out one
of a favourite divine. When the "ringing out"
bells told that all was over, and that the congregation
was streaming homewards to their potato-pots