SPLICING THE LADDER.



ONE night the large and splendid Sailor's Home in Liverpool was on fire, and a vast multitude of people gathered to witness the conflagration. The fury of the flames could not be checked. It was supposed that all the inmates had left the burning building. Presently, however, two poor fellows were seen stretching their arms from an upper window, and were shouting for help. What could be done to save them?

A stout marine from a man-of-war lying in the river said, "Give me a long ladder, and I will try it."

It was done, and he mounted the ladder; but it was too short to reach the window. 

"Pass me up a small ladder!" he shouted.  It was passed up; but even that did not reach to the arms stretched frantically out of the window. The brave marine was not to be balked. He lifted the short ladder up on his own shoulders, and holding on by a casement, he brought the upper rounds within reach of the two men, who were already scorched by the flames.

Out of the window they clambered, and creeping down over the short ladder, and then over the sturdy marine, they reached the pavement amid the loud hurrahs of the multitude.

It was a noble deed, and teaches a noble lesson. It teaches us that when we want to do good service to others we must add our own length to the length of the ladder.

Harry Norton saw that his fellow-clerk, Warren Proctor, was becoming a hard smoker and a hard drinker, although he was only sixteen years old. When he urged him to stop smoking and drinking, Warren replied, "Why, you sometimes take a cigar and a glass of wine yourself."

"If you will sign a pledge never to smoke a cigar or touch a drop of liquor, I will do the same," was the reply.

The bargain was made, and Harry saved his friend by adding the length of his own example to the length of the ladder.

A widow lady near me was suffering from sickness and poverty. Her daughter, a delicate, refined girl, said to herself, "My mother must be taken care of; I'll advertise for a place as a servant girl."

She did so. A rich man saw the advertisement, and determining that the brave girl should not undertake that, he procured her a situation as secretary in an institution where she gets six hundred dollars a year. 

An unselfish daughter thus brought relief to a suffering mother. She spliced the ladder with her own self-denying exertions.

It is a noble thing to be unselfish, and to give up gratifications for the sake of other people. I could tell of two Christian lads, well educated and refined, who go every Sabbath to a mission-school in a dirty, degraded street, that they may encourage some poor ragged boys to go there too. 

Those two boys have the spirit of Jesus Christ. They are not selfish; and they mean that the poor, ignorant lads shall climb up in the world over them.  That is the way to imitate the Divine Master, who gave himself that men might climb up out of the folly and degradation of sin into Heaven itself. 




T. L. Ouyler.