promised to sustain and comfort, and assist, and cherish her, to bear and share with her the trials and cares of life (and what care is greater than the right training of our offspring), she again and again strove with earnest faith and humble prayer, to cast all her care upon Him, who she was assured cared for her, and go forward in every duty with the determination to fulfill it to the utmost of her power.  Many times did the cold and stern manner of her husband, his anger at trifles, and his thoughtless punishment for accidental offenses, cause her heart to bleed for the effects of such government, or want of government, upon her children’s hearts and minds.  But she uttered no word of blame in their presence, she ever showed them that any want of love or respect for their father grieved her, and was, moreover, a heinous sin, and by patient continuance in well doing, she yet hoped to reap the full reward.  Her eldest, Charles, felt most keenly his father’s utter want of sympathy, and to him she gave her most constant tender care.  Affectionate, but hasty, he was illy constituted to bear the harsh command, or the frequent fault finding of his father, and often she trembled lest he should throw off all parental control, and goaded by his irritated feelings, rush into sin without restraint.  And so, probably, he would have done but for the unbounded love and reverence with which he regarded his “blessed mother.”  Her gentle influence he could not withstand, and it grew more and more powerful with him for good, till the glance of her loving eye would check his wayward spirit, and calm him often, when passion struggled for the mastery.  Often did she venture to hope he had indeed given himself to his Savior, and her conversations with him from time to time, showed so much desire to conquer every evil passion, and to shun every false way with so much affectionate reverence for his God and Redeemer, that the mother’s heart was sweetly comforted in her first-born.

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Original.

THE TREASURY OF THOUGHTS.

The days of primer, and catechism, and tasks for the memory are gone.  The schoolmaster is no longer to us as he was to our mothers, associated with all that is puzzling and disagreeable in hard unmeaning rules, with all that is dull and uninteresting in grave thoughts beyond the reach of the young idea.  He is to us now rather the interpreter of mysteries, the pleasant companion who shows us the way to science, and beguiles its tediousness.  If there is now no “royal road,” certainly its opening defiles are made easier for the ascent of the little feet of the youthful scholar.  The memory is not the chief faculty which receives a discipline in the present system of things.  The “how,” the “why,” are the subjects of interest and attention.  This is well; but it may be that in our anxiety to reach the height of the hill, and to keep up with the progress of the age, we are neglecting