“In the cold moist earth we laid her,
    When the forest cast his leaf;
  And we mourn’d that one so lovely,
    Should have a life so brief. 
  Yet not unmeet it was, that one,
    Like that young child of ours,
  So lovely and so beautiful,
    Should perish with the flowers.”

On the return of her birth-day, February 22, when if she had lived, she would have been seven years old, the following lines were sent to the bereaved mother by Mrs. Sigourney.

THE BIRTH-DAY OF THE FIRST BORN.

  Thy first born’s birth-day,—­mother!—­
    That cold and wintry time,
  When deep and unimagined joy
    Swell’d to its highest prime.—­

  Thy little daughter smileth,—­
    Thy son is fair to see,—­
  And from its cradle shouts the babe,
    In health and jollity: 

  But still thy brow is shaded,
    The fresh tear trickleth free,
  Where is thy first born darling? 
    Oh, mother,—­where is she?

  And if she be in heaven,
    She, who with goodness fraught,
  So early on her Father—­God
    Repos’d her bursting thought:—­

  And if she be in heaven,
    The honor how divine,
  To give an angel to His arms,
    Who gave a babe to thine!

L. H. S.

* * * * *

Human improvement must begin through mothers.  It is through them principally, as far as human agency is concerned, that those evils can be prevented, which, age after age, we have been vainly endeavoring to cure.

* * * * *

He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse; vice, virtue, and time, are three things that never stand still.

* * * * *

Original.

SABBATH MEDITATIONS.

John 5:1.

It is a time of solemnities in Jerusalem—­“a feast of the Jews”—­and crowds throng the sacred city, gathered from all parts of Judea, mingling sympathies and uniting in the delightful services which the chosen people so justly prize.  The old and young, the joyful and the sad, all classes and all conditions are there, not even are “the impotent, the blind, the halt, the withered,” absent.  Through the aid and kindness of friends they have come also, cheered and animated by the unwonted excitement of the scene, and doubtless hoping for some relief in known or unknown ways, from their various afflictions.  Among these, a numerous company of whom are lying near the sheep-gate, let us spend an hour.  By God’s help it shall not be wasted time.  How many are here who for long years have not beheld the sun, nor looked on any loved face, nor perused the sacred oracles.  A lesson of resignation we may learn from them, in their proverbial peacefulness under one of the severest of earth’s trials, for “who ever looked on aught but content in