THE LEADING HAND.



A LITTLE child, in the great city, drew away his hand from his mother, as she stood talking with a friend, and was soon lost in the crowd. There was a long and weary search; the anxious mother went up and down the streets for hours, seeking the little wanderer, and gave herself no rest until she held him in her arms again. "If my little boy had kept hold of his mother's hand, he would not have been lost," was her only chiding; and the child heeded the lesson, and as he grew to manhood, the remembrance served often to remind him of another and higher Hand of which he needed to keep" "fast hold," the Hand that so many, in their impatience, "let go," to lose themselves in paths beset with evil.