The clerk started and looked up. Old William Burns was watching him wistfully. "Sir," Stammered the young man, "I promise I swear-" His voice failed him, and he struggled with rising emotion.

"Very well, we will consider that arranged. No word of it will be said again by any one."

He held out his hand and Hanbury grasped it feverishly. "You are the second man who fell and was pardoned in this business, Mr. Hanbury," said the old man in a low tone. "I was the first. What you have done, I did. The mercy you have received, I received. God help us all." They shook hands upon it, the two men who had been spared. -The British Weekly.

LESSON LIII

Do you notice what a large proportion of human speech is more or less saturated with emotion? Almost every utterance that is worth while is at least tinged with some feeling. The following passages are not taken from great orations or dramas, where we expect expression of strong emotion; they are bits from comman human experience, taken mostly from the newspapers. Analyze, paraphrase and read them.

Did you ever see a dandy fisherman? He has the correct suit on, his pole is a beauty from Conroy's, his line is of the best silk, his book is full of artificial flies,plenty of artificial flies, his fish-basket hangs behind him; and he is a fisherman. May be. Let us go to the stream. Standing with a knowing air, he throws his fly; but the fish do not rise at it; and he throws again, and again, and they do not rise. And all the while, a barefooted, coatless boy on the other side of the brook is catching fish as fast as he can pull them in. He has just a rough hook on a bit of string, and a worm for bait, but he gets the fish.-Henry Ward Beecher.

George G. Lake, the benevolent merchant of New York, used to be an errand-boy of the old-fashioned kind, one who received two dollars a week wages, slept under the counter of the store, and lived chiefly on crackers and cheese. But he was a good boy, attended to business, and made friends. In a year or two he obtained a better place, in a better store, where he advanced rapidly from one post to another until at nineteen he was placed in charge of the silk department.

Salaries at that period were so small, that he thought himself lucky in getting four hundred dollars a year, and he engaged to remain for four years in the service of the firm at that rate of wages.

As head of the silk counters he had frequently to visit a great importing house to buy silks for his own firm, and there he attracted notice by his excellent taste in selecting silks, and his sound judgment as to what patterns would be likely to please customers.

One day he was asked to step into the counting-room of the importing house, where one of the partners invited him to enter their service at a thousand dollars the first year, two thousand the second, and three thousand afterwards. The young man replied that he had just made a

contract with his employers for four years at eight dollars a week.

"That contract was only verbal, I suppose," said the merchant.

"I don't break contracts," replied the clerk, "whether verbal or not."

So he went back to his silks in the old store, and to his eight dollars a week. He served out his four years faithfully. At the end of the period he had made himself indispensable to his employers, who offered him ten thousand dollars a year or a partnership. He chose the salary, and, after some years, entered the firm, of which in due time, by the retirement of his partners, he became the head.

Notice how many facts are presented in these dozen lines, yet these facts would be unimportant if the lines were not filled with deep feeling.

MEETING AT NIGHT

The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon, large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed in the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm, sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick, sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
-Browning.

Thirty years ago, a barefooted ragged urchin presented himself before the desk of the principal partner of a firm in Glasgow and asked for work as errand boy.

"There's a deal o' rinning to be dune," said the man. "Your first qualification wud be a pair of shoon." The boy, with a grave nod, disappeared. He lived by doing odd jobs in the market, and slept under one of the stalls. Two months passed before he had saved enough money to buy the shoes. Then he presented himself before Mr. Blank one morning and held out a package.

"I hae the shoon," he said quickly.

"Oh," said the employer, with difficulty recalling the circumstances. "You want a place? Not in those rags, my lad; you would disgrace the house."

The boy hesitated a moment, and then went out without a word. Six months passed before he returned, decently clothed in coarse but new garments. Mr. Blank's interest was aroused. For the first time he looked at the boy

attentively. His thin, bloodless face showed that he had stinted himself of food for months in order to buy these clothes. The manufacturer now questioned the boy closely, and found, to his regret, that he could neither read nor write.

"It is necessary that you should do both before we could employ you to carry packages," he said. "We have no place for you."

The lad's face grew paler, but without a word of complaint he disappeared. He now went fifteen miles into the country, and found work in stables near to a night-school. At the end of a year he again presented himself.

"I can read and write," he said briefly.

"I gave him the place," the employer said, "with the conviction that in process of time he would take mine if he made up his mind to do it. Men rise slowly in Scotch business houses, but he is now our chief foreman."

"Oh, yes, I have all kinds of tenants," said a kind-faced old gentleman; "but the one I like the best is a child not more than ten years of age. A few years ago I got a chance to buy a piece of land over on the West Side, and did so. I noticed that there was an old coop of a house on it, but paid no attention to it. After awhile a man came to me and wanted to know if I would rent it to him.

66

'What do you want it for?' said I.

"To live in," he replied.

'Well,' I said 'you can have it. Pay me what you think it is worth to you.'

"The first month he brought two dollars, and the second month a little boy, who said he was the man's son, came with three dollars. After that I saw the man once in a while, but in the course of time the boy paid the rent regularly, sometimes two dollars and sometimes three dollars. One day I asked the boy what had become of his father.

66

'He's dead, sir,' was the reply.

"Is that so?' said I. 'How long since?'

"More'n a year,' he answered.

"I took his money, but I made up my mind that I would go over and investigate, and the next day I drove over there. The old shed looked quite decent. I knocked at the door, and a little girl let me in.

"Where is your mother?' said I.

"We don't know, sir. She went away after my father died, and we've never seen her since.'

"Just then a little girl about three years old came in, and I learned that these three children had been keeping house together for a year and a half, the boy supporting his two little sisters by blacking boots and selling newspapers, and the elder girl managing the house and taking care of the baby.

"The next time the boy came with the rent I said,

66

"My boy, you are a little mah! You keep right on as you have begun, and you will never be sorry. Keep your little sisters together, and never leave them. Now look at this.'

"I showed him a ledger in which I had entered up all the money that he had paid me for rent, and I told him it was all his with interest. 'You keep right on.' says I, 'and I'll be your banker, and when this amounts to a little more I'll see that you get a house somewhere of your own.' That's the kind of tenant to have."-Chicago Herald.

An ocean steamer was approching the Canadian_coast, dense fogs had prevailed for three or four days. It was moving at reduced speed, and whistling frequently, when suddenly, in the early morning, the lookout heard through the fog a warning cry or shout just ahead. Peering more intensely into the gloom, the keen-eyed captain saw, not far from the steamer's bow a little fisher's boat, with two men trying to attract his attention. Hearing the constant whistles those men in their boat had pushed out from the rocky shore risking their lives to warn the ship. But almost at the moment that the boat was discovered, the captain saw looming up through the fog just before him a granite cliff or wall several hundred feet high, toward which the steamer in deep water was pressing to instant destruction. His only safety, as he saw, was in instantly putting hard down his helm. But to do that would drive the great steamer over the little boat, with the two men who were striving to save us.

"There was no alternative," said the noble captain. "It was my only way to save the hundreds of passengers entrusted to my care. If I could only have died for those brave men, how gladly would I have done it, but I had no such choice."

The helm was put hard down. The steamer with all its passengers was saved. But the two men who had wrought this deliverance went down in their fisher's-boat. They saved others,-themselves they could not save. -Herman Livingstone.

Note how much discrimination there is in this poem; yet it is of course, saturated with emotion. What is the prevailing emotion? What sort of man is the Duke? What was his accusation against the Duchess? Was the Duchess lovable?

have?

Did the Duke think so? What feeling did he

MY LAST DUCHESS

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.