Preface. The requirement of the gospel is that, having first given ourselves to Christ, we should then devote all we have, be it little or much, to His service. The largest gifts fall infinitely below what He deserves from us; the smallest will not be rejected by Him. For it is the motive, not the gift, which our Lord regards. The poor widow’s mite was more acceptable to Him than the ostentatious and... more...

CHAPTER I. IN WHICH PHIL HAS A TALK WITH HIS FATHER, AND REVIEWS HIS PAST HISTORY. "I must go to Chicago, father," said I, one evening, after we had been discussing our domestic relations with more than usual earnestness. "Why go to Chicago, Philip? What put that idea into your head?" replied my father, with a kind of deprecatory smile. "I don't feel as though I could live any... more...

BABY TED."Where did you get those eyes so blue?""Out of the sky as I came through."Christmas week a good many years ago. Not an "old-fashioned" Christmas this year, for there was no snow or ice; the sky was clear and the air pure, but yet without the sharp, bracing clearness and purity that Master Jack Frost brings when he comes to see us in one of his nice, bright, sunny... more...

A NEW HOME 'Meet is it changes should controlOur being, lest we rust in ease.'—Tennyson. A golden cornfield in the still sunshine of a warm August afternoon. In one corner of it, bordering a green lane, a group of shady elms, and under their shadow a figure of a young girl, who, gazing dreamily before her, sat leaning her head against an old gnarled trunk in quiet content. A small-shaped... more...

THE OLD ORGAN. "Home, sweet home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home," played the unmusical notes of a barrel-organ in the top room of a lodging-house in a dreary back street. The words certainly did not seem to apply to that dismal abode; there were not many there who knew much of the sweets of home. It was a very dark, uncomfortable place, and as the lodgers in... more...

CHAPTER I. SATURDAY EVENING'S WORK. Down in a little hollow, with the sides grown full of wild thorn, alder bushes, and stunted cedars, ran the stream of a clear spring. It ran over a bed of pebbly stones, showing every one as if there had been no water there, so clear it was; and it ran with a sweet soft murmur or gurgle over the stones, as if singing to itself and the bushes as it ran. On one... more...

CHAPTER I. Here you sit, Horace, Prudy, Dotty, and Flyaway, all waiting for a story. How shall I begin? I cannot remember the events of my life in right order, so I shall have to tell them as they come into my mind. Let us see. To go back to the long, long summer, when I was a child: There once lived and moved a little try-patience, called Margaret Parlin; no more nor less a personage than myself, your... more...

A Supplanter 'For troubles wrought of men,Patience is hard.'—J. Ingelow. The firelight shone upon a comfortably-furnished drawing-room in one of the quiet London squares, and upon four girlish figures grouped around a small tea-table. Agatha Dane, the eldest, sat back in her chair with a little wrinkle of perplexity upon her usually placid brow. Rather plump and short of stature, with no... more...

INTRODUCTION. One evening, when all the children, after the usual frolic with Crocus the cat and the tremendous dog, had settled themselves for their "nightcaps," (their meaning of which word, of course, you all know,) the little mother cleared her throat, and paused, for she was feeling for a letter that was in her pocket. "Something particularly good is coming to-night," whispered... more...

Esau Tankardew. Certainly, Mr Tankardew was not a pattern of cleanliness, either in his house or his person. Someone had said of him sarcastically, “that there was nothing clean in his house but his towels;” and there was a great deal of truth in the remark. He seemed to dwell in an element of cobwebs; the atmosphere in which he lived, rather than breathed, was apparently a mixture of fog and dust.... more...