Fathers!  Plead as you will, that you are full of care and labor to support your families.  Say it over and over, till you really believe it yourself, if you please, that when you come home tired at night, you cannot be crazed with the clatter of children’s tongues.  You want to rest and be quiet.  So you do, and so you should—­but have you any right to be so perfectly worn out with business, that the voice of your own child is irksome to you?  Try, for once, a little pleasant, quiet, instructive chat with him.  Enter for a few moments into his feelings, and pursuits and thoughts—­for that child has feelings, that need cherishing tenderly, for your own future comfort.  He has pursuits, and you are the one to talk with him about them, and kindly tell him which are right and useful, and which he would do better to let alone.  He has thoughts, and who shall direct that mind aright which must think forever, if not the author of his being?  Ask of his school, and his playmates, and see if your own spirit is not rested and refreshed, and your heart warmed by this little effort to win the love and confidence, and delight the heart of this young immortal, who owes his entrance into this weary world to you, and whom you are under the most solemn obligations, to strive to prepare to act well his part in it.  Do not say this is his mother’s business.  Has the Bible laid any command upon mothers?  Would it not seem that He who formed her heart, knew that she needed not to be told to labor, in season and out of season, for her beloved offspring?  But to you is the strong command, “Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

Mothers, do you not reap a rich reward for curbing your own spirits, for every self-denial, for untiring devotion to the immortals given to your care, with souls to be saved or lost?  Oh! neglect them not, lest conscience utter the fearful whisper, “Mother, you might have saved that soul!”

                          ELLEN ELLISON. 
  Feb. 1852.

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Original.

NEVER TEMPT ANOTHER.

There are thousands of persons in the United States to whom the name of Jonathan Trumbull, formerly a governor of Connecticut, is familiar—­I mean the first governor of that name.  He was a friend and supporter of General Washington during the Revolutionary War, and greatly contributed by his judicious advice and prompt aid to achieve the Independence of America.

This Governor Trumbull had a son by the name of John, who became distinguished in the use of the pencil, and who left several paintings of great merit commemorative of scenes in the history of our revolutionary struggle.  My story relates to an incident which occurred during the boyhood of John.

His father, for the purpose of giving employment to the Mohegan Indians, a tribe living within the bounds of the Connecticut colony, though at some distance from the governor’s residence, hired several of their hunters to kill animals of various kinds for their furs.  One of the most successful of these hunters was a sachem by the name of Zachary.