Tusser, in his “Points of Huswifry united to the Comforts of Husbandry,” published in 1570, recommends the country housewife to select servants who sing at their work as being usually the most painstaking and the best.  He says—­

    “Such servants are oftenest painful and good
    That sing in their labour, as birds in the wood.”

A HINT FOR WORKERS.—­St. Bernard has said that the more he prayed and read his Bible the better he did his ordinary work and the more clearly and regularly did he conduct his correspondence.  An increase of private devotion will be found not to lessen one’s power of work or one’s efficiency in ordinary duties.

OUR OWN SELVES.—­How can you learn self-knowledge?  Never by meditation, but best by action.  Try to do your duty, and you will soon find what you are worth.  What is your duty?  The exigency of the day.—­Goethe.

USELESS ANXIETY.—­I shall add to my list as the eighth deadly sin that of anxiety of mind, and resolve not to be pining and miserable when I ought to be grateful and happy.—­Sir Thomas Barnard.

THE MOONLIGHT SONATA.—­The “Moonlight Sonata” is an absurd title which has for years been attached, both in Germany and England, to one of Beethoven’s sonatas.  It is said to have been derived from the expression of a German critic comparing the first movement to a boat wandering by moonlight on the Lake of Lucerne.

[Illustration:  THE SHEPHERD’S FAIRY]

THE SHEPHERD’S FAIRY

A PASTORALE.

BY DARLEY DALE, Author of “Fair Katherine,” etc.

CHAPTER I.

THE FAIRY’S ORIGIN.

“Die Eifersucht ist eine Leidenschaft der mit Eifer sucht muss Leiden schaffen.”—­German Proverb.

Very many years ago, in a valley a few miles from the coast, there stood a French chateau, beautifully situated in a handsome park near the Norman village of Carolles.  The rich woodland scenery, the green pastures with their large wild fences now laden with wild roses; the shady lanes, whose banks will soon be covered with the long, bright green fronds of the hartstongue, and the delicate drooping trichomanes; the fine timber, and the picturesque farmhouses with their thatched roofs nestling in the valleys—­all tend to give a home-like English air to the scenery of Normandy.  And the district in which the Chateau de Thorens stands possesses all these attractions for an English eye.  Not that any English people lived in the chateau; the De Thorens were French, or rather Norman, to the backbone, descended from the great duke, and proud as Lucifer of their birth.  Pride and poverty are generally supposed to go together; and though poor is perhaps hardly the word to apply to people who could afford to live in the ease and luxury which prevailed at Chateau de Thorens, yet for their rank the De Thorens were not rich, and, consequently, after the fashion of many French families, there were three generations of them now all living under the ancestral roof.