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Show ! BOYS AND GIRLS. '! Nov. 26, 1S9D, Salt Lake City. Dear Aunt Busy: As this is my first letter to you I will make it very short. I have a pet bird, but it will not sit on my finger, and I have a cat and a dog. The dog is black and white. Its' hair is curly, and the cat is a black and white cat too. But none of my peas can do a trick. I have to take care of the baby now and will close my letter. From your affectionate neice, OR A M'DERMOTT. i Salt Lake City. Nov. 27. 1S99. Dear Aunt Busy: I thought I would write you a little letter. My letter won't be very long. I have a very pretty kitty. I have a brother and sister. I go to choir practice every Saturday. I love to go to school. - Baby likes the kittie is very gentle.. I like to write little letters. I like to read the little letters in the paper. Baby can. not play very good. She IS VdJ BIJUUJWC. Good Bv. Tours truly, : BESSIE VAN PELT. Salt Lake City, Nov. 26, 1S93. Dear Aunt Busy: " I am thirteen ears old and until the past month lived in Bingham three years. j I have just started to go. tp Sunday School and Choir, practice, which I think I will like very much after L become be-come acquainted. I have a brother fifteen fif-teen years old. He went to the All Hoi-, laws College. He is very fond of football foot-ball playing. We are having delightful weather now which I hope will last un-till un-till Xmas. I will say good bye now and write vou more next time. I hope you will spend a happy Thanksgiving. Your loving niece. GENEVIEVE BROCKS. A LULLABY. Sleep little baby of mine, Night and tho darkness are near. But Jesus looks down through the shadows that frown, ; And baby has nothing to fear; Shut little speepy blue eyes; Dear little head, be at rest: Jesus, liko you. was a baby once, too, And slept on his own mother's breast. Sleep littlo baby of mir.e. Soft on your pillow so white. Jesus is here to watch over you. dear, And nothing can harm you tonight; O. little darling of mine, What can you know of the bliss, The comfort I keen, awake and asleep, Bocause I am certain of this. IF I WERE YOU. If I a little girl could be. Well just like you. With lips as rosy, cheek? as fair. Such eyes of blue, and shining hair. What do you think I'd do? I'd wear so bright and sweet a smile, I'd be so loving all the while. I'd be so helpful with my hand. So quick and gentle to command, You soon would seo That everyone would' turn to say. '"Tis good to meet the child today," Yes yes. my bird, that's what I'd do. If" I were you. . Or if I chanced to be a boy, Like some I know. With crisp curls shining in the sun. And eves all beaming bright with fun Ah if I could be so. I'd strive and strive with all my might To be so truthful, brave, polite. That in me each cne might behold A knight, as in the days of old, 'Twould be a joy To hear one, looking at me, say: "My cheer and comfort all the day." Yes, if I were a boy, I know I would be so. But now. perhaps, you ask of me: When it was you Who had the young and merry face, With smiles and roses all in place, Tell us. what did you' do? Ah, dearies, if I ever fell Far short of doing wisely, well-It well-It was, you see. Because none ever took thru time To tell me in sucti lovely rhyme, What I should now rejoice to do,. If I were you. I CHARACTER. A misstep may destroy life; one sin may ruin your character. Did you ever reflect on the consequences of a single indulgence in vice? The best of men. have fallen, through the- suggestion of another. .How careful should you be, while in the freshness of your days, lest a blight fall on your character, and ruin you forever! Abstain from the appearance of evil. If invited to places of resort, when it is difficult to decide, lake the safe course, stay away and save rour reputation. This is a. jewel of inestiriiable value, too precious to be put in jeopardy-No jeopardy-No man ever regrets that' he kept aloof from temptation, and. to the close of life, he expresses his joy that he was saved from the path of shame, by giving giv-ing a decisive negative when the voice of pleasure beckoned him on. Be . decided de-cided and you will be saved. Yield and you may be lost.' Watch with diligence, and gnard every avenue through which she may reach you. JESSICA'S CAREER. Jessica's mother stood in the doorway, door-way, shading her eyes with her hand and gazing very wistfullydown the long line of railway w'hichskirted the sea. The house was perched high on a bluff. You had to climb a steep and rough pathway id reach it, but every- . i ' ', body who stayed at the inn last summer sum-mer sooner or later did climb from the shore to get the view of the sunset, to drink a glass of milk and to talk with Jessica's mother. A bit of a house it was. very stanchly built with double windows, because in winter the winds were bleak, and in summer there was so much sun. that the second sliding casement protected the rooms from the heat. A small flower garden, crowded with bloom, rioted by the front door, pushed itself up against the weather-boards and wreathed the palings, and you might go far to find such four o'clocks and prince's feathers and day lilies and nasturtiums as lifted their sweet faces there. The small house was quite by itself; Jessica's mother had no near neighbors. She gave me her hand in welcome, with a cordial smile, as I came to. her side. I speak of her as the villagers and inn people did, for although her name was Mrs. Macdonald. she was always alluded to as the mother of her daughter. daugh-ter. Five years had passed since Jessica Jes-sica Macdonald had been seen in that Massachusetts hamlet, but the countryside coun-tryside was still proud of her, and it was somehow felt to be a great thing for the little old lady on the Point to have such a connection with the worlci as her relationship to Jessica gave her. "I've had a letter from my girlie," said the mother, her thin cheek flushing and her eyes shining, as I breathlessly sank into her Boston rocker a little wearied, being stouter than I used to be, with my pull upward over the rocks- to her blue-painted porch. "She writes as often as she can. but she can't write often; it's not to be expected," the mother wrent on, forestalling fore-stalling any blame for Jessica. "That music study is wearying work, and Jessica never was one to be contented with half learning a thing. She's always al-ways been bound to know it all. Ever since she was a baby, nothing common would do for my Jessica. There's her parlor organ now: if you could only hepr her play on it of a Sunday night and sing 'Jerusalem, the Golden,' you'd think yourself in heaven for sure!" The tiny parlor was spotlessly clean; and from the porch I had a good view of it, with the organ standing just in front of the mantel shelf, on which were queer shells, a Chinese idol or two, and vases filled with dried grasses, with crystals cf alum in blue and green clinging forlornly to their feathery ends. A bright', braided rug lay before the organ. Over the mantel, in a gilt and black frame, hung the picture of a young girl. Her dark eyes, loose golden hair and earnest face reminded me of a print called "The Future," which somebody once gave me for my birthday. birth-day. "Is that your Jessica?" I asked. "That's Jessica," was the answer. "Madame Emaline had it taken in Boston and sent, it to me, framed and all, before they sailed for Europe. I arn, very proud to have it. But, oh! sometimes at night in winter, when the sea. raves down on the shore like a wild beast, and the wind rages and shakes the house, and I don't meet a soul to speak to for days together, I'm that lonely and homesisk with longing that I almost al-most wich my child had never gone away; that she'd been like other girls, and never had that angel's voice. It's selfish, but I can't help it if 'tis." "Tell me about her going away," I said, as Mrs. Macdonald took her knitting knit-ting and sat down with the air of one glad to have a friend to talk to. "It all came about through that little parlor organ over there. You see, Jessica's Jes-sica's heart was set on- having a piano in the first place, but her father never thought he could afford one. After he was gone, when we came to settle up things I found that if I skimped and contrived I could buy her an organ on instalments, and I did, and so she had her heart's desire, and at last she was happy, for she was so clever she learned learn-ed to play on it out of a book without any teacher, and she had been singing I like a thrusfn all her life: she was soprano so-prano in the church. They've never had anybody since who could hold a candle to -her, and I hats to hear the poor cinp-insr thpv havp Kinee Jessica, went away. Ask any one in town, at the store or the hotel, or ask the minister; they'll tell you just what I do. Poor, thin singing beside hers!" She paused and thoughtfully rounded the heel of her stocking. "What puzzles me," she said, "is how It was that Jessica, singing so beautifully, beauti-fully, singing, you might say, by nature, na-ture, should ned to go aVay and stay so. long, and have to unlearn that's what Madame'. Emaline said her bad habits. Why, she hadn't any bad habits! hab-its! That made me mad when Madame Ernaline said it, and I'm mad whenever I think of it. But Jessica told me I didn't understand, and she was. wild to go, from the minute madame proposed it: and I, being her mother, couldn't stand in her way. Why, 'tisn't every woman whose child has the chance of i a career. ' I lock at it so. I couldn't stand in her way!" "No, dear heart," I said. "Being her mother, you couldn't do that." "We made our living. Jessica and I, by taking in sewing from the Boston shops. They paid us very well. Every Tuesday morning I sent a box away by express, and every other Saturday a great package of cut-out thing3 came to us. Yes. I do some work still. My eyes are good and my back is strong. But I can't do as well as when Jessica was- with me. She did lovely mending, too, for the inn. people in. summer, and that's how Madame Emaline came to get acquainted with her." Tho dear old lady paused, then added; "Madame Emaline, as I suppose you know, was an artist." I cannot repeat, for you who read, the sort of awed expression this out-of-the-world woman put into the word artist. ar-tist. It meant something very mysterious myste-rious and grand to her; it represented power; it had been a spell strong enough to change the whole current of her life and whirl her daughter away from her side half . over the glebe. Whenever she shaded her eyes with her hand and gazed down the long railroad track and far. far over the blue, sounding sound-ing waves, and yearned for Jessica and silently called for her, and sternly shut her heartache into the background lest somebody should suspect her of having one, that word "artist" was behind be-hind it ail. For Jessica was an artist, too! To be an artist and have a carter! ca-rter! But before all that was thought of she had known how to use her needle. " 'Jessica Macdonald can be trusted to repair your laces, said the innkeeper's inn-keeper's wife to the French lady, and so one morning shs showed madame the way up here. A bright summer morning morn-ing it was, I remember, with the waves creaming yellow and soft out there on the shingle, and the roses laughing at you as if they were glad to bloom, and the skies so blue, oh, so blue and bright! Our work was rather scant then, and we didn't have to confine ourselves, our-selves, and Jessica was at the organ, practicing and picking out bits of new tunes and singing away to herself, and just as Madame Emaline got here the child began to sing 'Annie Laurie.' " 'Maxwelton's braes are bonny,' you know the sweetness of it, don't you?" I nodded. I saw it all; the summer sky and the sea and the garden; the mother pottering about among her flowers, and the great lady panting up the narrow, crumbling footpath to the cottage on the rocky shelf, and the country girl singing "Annie Laurie," with her-heart in her voice. "Madame never rested from that hour," went on Jessica's mother, half vexed, half triumphant: "never rested till she had my girl away with her, and the townfolks were as set about it as she was. Jessica was to become a great singer! Jessica was to make her fortune! 'Why, it wouldn't be the first time,' said Madame Emaline, 'that a wonderful singer had come from a small farmhouse in the woods.' She talked and she planned, and she carried Jessica away almost before I knew what was happening, and I settled down to the short days and the long nights all alone." "Wasn't it hard for your daughter to leave you here?" I asked. I wanted to say, but did not dare, facing the mother's eyes, "Wasn't it selfish?" "Certainly it was hard. Lots of things are hard. But the hardest part was raising the money for her passage and her outfit. Madame wanted to pay it j all, but we couldn't be beholden to a stranger. Once Jessica was over there, she could do enough for madame to pay for her board and lodging and her tuition; tui-tion; madame made that quite plain, or I wouldn't have given my consent to let her go; but I had to borrow the money from my cousin Josiah, over at Marble-head, Marble-head, and I hated to do it like poison; and though osiah hasn't pressed me much, and I've paid him interest regular, reg-ular, still I wouldn't go to Marblehead, even to a funeral, while I'm still owing him the most of that &J00. It keeps me awake nights. It makes me sick thinking think-ing of it. It frightens me that I may die surrenly in debt to Josiah, me that never owed anybody on- God's- earth 3 cents till Madame Emaline carried Jessica, Jes-sica, off to Paris." "What success has Jessica had?" I inquired. For it seemed to me that in five years she might have learned enough to make a beginning- at least. "Why. haven't you heard?" asked Mrs. Macdonald in much surprise. "She sang in London, and she made a great sensation. Let me show you what the paper said." Her face glowed with pleasure. From a thin, worn pocketbook which she took from the bosom of her gown, she proceeded to extract a cutting from an English journal. ' Somehow that newspaper slip, kept next to the faithful faith-ful heart, touched me pitifully with it's sense of contrast. For the mother, the lonely days in the lonesome cottage, the poor comfort of an occasional letter, the drudgery of sewing for her bread, the housework, ths care of her cow. the comnnnv of hoy cat that great yellow cat blinking in the lasf of the sunset was the only friendly thing about the place. For the daughter, a life of continual excitement, excite-ment, something to happen, something to anticipate, swift days, splendid crowds in a lighted theatre, flowers poured at her feet, flatteries whispered in her ear, the brilliant pageantry of existence which belongs to the queen of the operatic or the star of the concert stage! If not all at once, yet all this to hope for and strive to gain. I read the few words about the new-American- singer, words treasured in this quiet home so far from the scene cf her triumph, and the mother told me what a stir they had made in the village. vil-lage. They had given her a little trouble trou-ble as well as much joy. "Josiah heard how well Jessica was getting along, and wrote to ask when I thought we could return the loan. I've paid him part of it since then, but not very much. If Jessica gets so- siie can pay it up, it'll be more to her and me than all the applause the paper tells about." She folded the bit of paper and put it carefully away again. "Hasn't Jessica been able to send you any money?" I asked, and was sorry the next moment, for the old face clouded, and I knew by her look that I had both hurt and annoyed the loy;d woman by my intrusive qucsti-m. "Somehow, since that iir: ti ne sh.: has never done so well. Shi had bronchitis, and she's had to spend fast as she'.s. earning. It's a weary road, a weary road, my Jessica's treading." tread-ing." I found many occasion to take m ti Mrs. MacdonaM after that cull. TIu? gloamings were golden anil red, thi moon came out over the s-a. and t!i,- solemn stars lit their liis many a tiim; before I left her. You could .o freely about that hamlet with no f jar of nwt-ing nwt-ing anybody to molest y-.u. 'and I lingered lin-gered or. at the inn tiil the- guosts had all gone home, and the landlord and hi.- family were the only ones left, keeping keep-ing house- there in an ordinary way, like anybody else, in one of the whiijx. But every visic comes to an end at . last, and my trunk was packed to go. and I went to the different friends in the village, to the postmistress at the corner, to the blacksmith shop, to the farm where I sometimes went to sketch, to the parsonage, saying j;ood-by to all the kind, cordial people, and promising, if I could, to return another year, j Last of all, I made my adieus at the little cottage on the bluff. I hated t- leave Mrs. Macdonlad by herself, and I confess that I put off going to the very latent hour I could before I began the climb to her house. I i?tcod n ion time, crazing over the great, restless, beautiful sea the sea that holds so many secrets and never tells any of them, the sea that k-eps the world alive, that I love and I tear, and that now and then calls' me back to it shoulder-s with a peremptory voice, let me wander inland a; I may. I was half way up the road whrn suddenly there came to me the knowledge knowl-edge taht my old friend was not. ast usual, alone. I heard voices. I heard soft laughter. I stopped for an instant, uncertain whether or not to go on, when, breaking out on the stillness of the night, insistent, sweet, wonderful, I heard Jessica's silent parlor organ. Otiiy a cheap, small organ, but its tonesi were full and thrilling, and presently there floated down to me the swetest. most silvery voice, a voice of fire an i color and unutera'ole melody, singing, as surely it had never in that countryside country-side sung before: Jerusalem the golden. With milk and honey blest, Beneath thy contemplation Sink heart nn ( voice oppressed. I know not. oh: I know- not Wha.t joys- await us there. What radiance of glory, j What b'ia beyond compare! The sweet strain died away. On the still air I heard the mother's ,tons clear iy. "Why. Jessica. I don't know what they meant by saying you couldn't sing. You sing better than you ever did in your life!" "Dear mother." answered a voice I ' had never heard, "I'm glad I can sing for you, and perhaps they'll let me sing in the choir; but we didn't know what we were about. Ic has been a great mistake, mis-take, the whole of it." Against my wnl I was playing the I eavesdropper, so I called out that I had come to say good-bye. and Mr. Macdonald Mac-donald rushed out to nelp me in. "My daughter has returned," she said. "She's given me a surprise. She isn't going away again I'll' She whispered all this breathlessly, bei'ore she drew-me drew-me into the little parlor, where a fire of pine knots blazed cheerily on the hearth and a slender figure stood leaning one white hand on the organ. "S'he's made enougn try pay Cousia , Josiah," the mother told me, proudly, as she drew me in and presented me to Jessica- The career was a failure, but tha ! price had net been paid in ain. I had j renunciation! and victory in the strong, f. sweet face of the girl who had gone out in the world and been defeated in the struggle, but who had returned to I trample selfish desire under foot, and J make the evening of her mother's day bright with an afterglow of peace. I Margaret E. Sangster in. the Youth's j I Companion. j |