MAY AND MIGHT.



OH! Thought Anna Markham to herself as she closed the book she had been reading, a history of the mission in Madagascar, "How I wish it were possible for me to do something like this for Christ," and here Anna lost herself in a sort of heroic dream. She pictured herself teaching, exhorting the heathen in India, or in some far African station, where the gospel had never before been heard. She thought of herself as parting, almost without a regret from her friends, to encounter all the hardships of a mission life, the dangers of fever, wild beasts and persecution, especially the persecution. Anna fancied herself enduring suffering, starvation, imprisonment and torture for her faith, and had just come so far in her romance as to be "led out for execution," and "forgive her murderers with her last breath," when her mother called her from the next room.

The rapt ecstatic looks on Anna's face gave way instantly to a fretful frown. "Oh, dear!" she said sharply to herself, "I never can be let alone a minute."

She threw down the book and went to her mother.

"Well, what is it?" she said in a most ungracious tone.

"I want you to run over to Mrs. O'Hara and take her the dinner Katy has got ready for her, and Anna, if you can, get her up and make up her bed."

"Oh, mother!" said Anna, as if she had been asked to perform impossibilities, "I can't bear to go to Mrs. O'Hara's, and the house is so dirty and disagreeable."

"She is an old lady, and all alone," said her mother in some displeasure. "She cannot do anything for herself now, and it is the duty of her neighbors to take care of her till she is well."

"She might go to the hospital and let the Sisters of Charity take care of her."

"She won't go, as you know very well, and there are some good reasons on her side too, and besides do you think it would be any more agreeable for the Sisters to nurse Mrs. O'Hara than it is for you?"

"Well I don't like to," said Anna very crossly.

"I'll go, Aunt Jane," said Anna's cousin, Miss Kent, who was drawing by the window.

"No Milly, Anna will go," said Mrs. Markham. "I advise you to think what manner of spirit you are of, my daughter."  Anna made no answer and she obeyed her mother, for she knew she must; but she performed her errand in so ungracious and uncharitable a manner, and assumed such an air of martyrdom, that Mrs. 0'Hara, who was by no means reserved in speech, told her rather decidedly, that she'd "never be the lady her mother was," and Anna went home disgusted, and wishing herself away from a home where "no one understood her."

By the next day, however, she had forgotten about the matter, and was talking to her cousin Milly about the missionary work of the church.

"Oh," she said with enthusiasm, "I should like nothing better than to go as missionary to Africa."

"What would you do there?" asked Milly, rather amused.

"Oh! Teach the children, and the women, and take care of the sick, and so forth."

"You think the heathen savages of Africa would be less disagreeable than Mrs. O'Hara?" said Milly.  Anna was very much vexed for a moment, but then she began to feel a little ashamed.

"Isn't it rather better on the whole," said Milly, "to look about us and see what little things we can do if we will, than to spend the time fancying what great things we would do if we only could?" 



Child's World.



SENSIBLE ADVICE.


A great many boys, as well as men, complain that they cannot get employment. Perhaps it is hard to get such a place as you like, but when you get a place, make yourself useful in it; make yourself so necessary, by your fidelity and good behavior, that they cannot do without you. Be willing to take a low price at first, no matter what the price is, if it is honest work. Do it well, do it the very best you can. Begin on the very lowest round of the ladder, and climb up. The great want anywhere is faithful, capable workers. They are never a drug in the market. Make yourself one of these, and there will always be a good place for you.