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SPEAK to me, Lord, I listen, O, I listen,

Give me the words which Thou would'st have me say;
Thou know'st my lips would move but at thy bidding-
Teach me, O teach, I pray!

Lord, I am tired,--but in Thee there is resting;
And I am sorrowful,-but Thou canst cheer;
O comfort me-and let me comfort others

With the sweet words I hear :

For Thou dost gently soothe the worn and weary;
And whisper heavenly hope unto the sad----
That by the gladness which to them Thou givest
They may make others glad.

Happy the visions, Lord, which oft Thou sendest,
Of the fair land far from this world of care:
Would that these faltering lips were graced with language
To paint the glories there!

Oh, for fit words to tell of radiant mansions
Within a city shining jasper-bright:
Or speak of crystal sea, or throne resplendent
Circled with rainbow light!

Oh, for an echo of the swelling chorus
Which angel-multitudes delight to sing,
All the redeemed from earth glad voices joining,
To praise the Saviour-King!

And oh, to tell how, in the homes supernal,

Where friends long sundered meet to part no more,
Pure joys abide; and sweet, sweet rest remaineth-
Sorrow and suffering o'er!

But ah! I may not-cannot shall the earthly
Attempt the things of heaven to portray?
Yet still I yearn to cheer the weary pilgrims
Treading life's toilsome way:

O teach me, Lord! all eagerly I listen!

With Thine own words my feeble lips endow ;

Thou know'st that they would move but at Thy bidding;
Speak, for I listen now!

TORONTO.

5

THE HOUSE ON THE BEACH.

CHAPTER XI.

BY JULIA M'NAIR WRIGHT.

IN PRAISE OF TEMPERANCE.

THE most stringent temperance legislation can result in nothing more than to make it difficult for men to obtain strong drink. It cannot be made impossible. It is always true that where there is an evil appetite evil ways for its gratification can be found. The chief benefit of temperance legislation and prohibitory law is that temp tation is by it prevented from being thrust upon people; the man who is making honest efforts to reform is helped up by the law; he does not find at every corner something to pull him down; the safety of youth is also in a large measure conserved. But there are those who are joined to their idols, and who draw sin as with cart-ropes; as soon as one evil path is hedged up they will open another.

Thus it was with Ralph Kemp. Faith's warning to the liquor-seller Hill had not been effective, for Hill or her father, or both, had found a means of evasion. Faith was a girl of vigorous spirit, and when she had undertaken anything she persisted; accompanied by Kiah Kibble she went to the two other places in the little town where liquor was sold, and warned them also. Now those three places paid high license, and to protect them under that nefarious license, the druggist was not allowed to sell liquor, except as called for by a prescription. One day Faith was at the town and went into the only drug store to buy some fine white wax for her work. As she stood by the counter a man from the country was handed two bottles, each holding a quart of whiskey.

"I think," said Faith, looking the clerk in the eye, "that that is a very large prescription."

The clerk had the grace to blush.

The sight of that "prescription" made Faith uneasy. Was this the place where father got his liquor? She went across the street to try to match some floss for Letty's work, and while she sat in the store she saw her father enter the drug store. She waited a little, and returned there. Her father did not look around as she entered; the clerk did not know of their relationship, and the proprietor came from behind the screen-which hides a good deal of suspicious doings in some drug stores and was handing her father a pint bottle of brandy. Faith stepped forward and laid her strong white hand on the evil thing just as her father was putting it in his pocket.

"You cannot have this, father." Then to the amazed clerk: "This is my father. I have warned the saloons not to give him liquor. I did not know that I had to give a warning here also! What he buys is not for medicine, but for poison. A prescription! Who wrote the prescription? Did you? Take back the stuff. He cannot have it."

Father stood silent. He was intensely angry and deeply humiliated, but he was sober, and when sober he never forgot respect toward his daughters.

The druggist received back the bottle, then said sharply, "He owes us for ten pints, at fifty cents a pint -five dollars. Will you settle the bill, as you assert control over him?" "No, I will not," said Faith roundlv. "I do not call liquor bills just debts, any more than I call gambling debts debts of honour. Not

one of the dimes my sister and I earn by hard work shall go for this poison which is destroying as good a father and as accomplished a gentleman as ever lived! I shall go and ask Judge Blakely if this is an honest debt; if it is credible that you gave ten pints of whiskey to one man, as a prescription! Your druggist license is in some danger to-day!"

There was nothing childlike in Faith now this was a woman, wounded and insulted, rousing in defence of her home and her kin. The druggist trembled before the wrath that blazed in the big gray eyes. Here was not a person to intimidate, but to placate. The man began to hesitate: "I didn't understand it, you see. Of course it is all a mistake, and you may make sure, miss, that I'll never sell him another drop. We'll let it go at that."

Faith went out with her father. She felt that it was her duty to the community to complain of the druggist, but then it would bring her unhappy home into just that much more notoriety, and now that the immediate excitement was over she felt abashed, and as if she wanted not vengeance but a hiding-place.

"Is this," said her father, with a voice shaking with rage, 66 a proper line of conduct for a young lady? What will people think of you when you usurp authority over your father and threaten druggists and make yourself so conspicuous?"

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They will think that I am my father's daughter, and am doing the best I can," said Faith bitterly.

anything. Come-suppose you wait for me at the first milestone, and I will go and see if there are any papers for you at the school, and then we will go home and go to work, both of us."

"I won't go with you," said Kemp sullenly, "nor forgive you."

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Yes, you must, father. See now; if you cannot like me for myself, you will put up with me for Letty's sake, and for our dear mother's sake. Besides, you do like me sometimes, and you like to read Latin to me. Let us make friends and go home, and let us keep this secret and not bother Letty. Suppose we find some arbutus for her as we go over the hill. It is early in April, but the spring is early this year."

Finally they patched up a peace and went home together.

There remained yet in the village a source of liquor supply, of which Faith knew nothing, neither did Kiah Kibble. It was a low little den in the outskirts, kept by a negro, and frequented by the lowest class of negroes and whites who could not buy drink elsewhere. Hitherto father had not fallen low enough to go there; the former gentleman and scholar had yet enough native refinement to shrink from a resort so foul. But when liquor was to be had nowhere else, the overmastering passion drove him even to that fiendish place.

There would be some weeks of quiet and peace, and then an outbreak. Faith grew more moody, and longed more intensely for summer, that she might have the comfort that nature yields to hearts that love her well. Letty looked at Faith pitifully, and up to the limit of her small strength wandered with her on the beach and on the dunes, making out-of-door time pay by if I want to," getting flowers, leaves, mosses, sea

"You are a rash and undutiful girl, and I have a mind never to go home where you are any more!" cried Kemp.

"Where will you go, then?" asked Faith, still angry.

"Into the sea shouted her father.

"Then you will not see Hugh when he comes home. And what about Letty? Letty has not done.

weeds, shells, to afford designs for her work. When work was slack Faith and Letty arranged for themselves a new industry, collecting

quantities of delicate and beautiful seaweeds, mounting them on cards, and sending them to the city for sale. They also painted little sea scenes on the inner surface of great clam shells, and sent them for sale with the weeds. In all these ways they earned money enough to keep the wolf from devouring them altogether.

Sometimes Faith's spirits would rise in the very reaction of youth and health, especially after she had had an excursion on the hills or over to the woods; then she would jest and make Letty and father-who had forgotten his grievances-laugh.

"Here now," said Faith in lively mood, standing at the table, her sleeves rolled up from her round white arms, a basin of seaweed before her, "all these cards are my little ships, to bring our fortune home-not very strong little ships, but they have to carry me a pair of shoes and a sun umbrella. There, Letty, how does that spray look? Fine, I think. As the French say, 'I'm not an eagle,' but I am a good hand at seaweeds. How many did you say you had put to press, Letty ? twenty-six? There, you wolf at the door, won't that scare you away? Letty, I'm going to commit the extravagance of getting me a hat with daisies on it. What do you think of that, my dog? And what do you think of that, my cat?"

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By all means get it and don't think so often about the wolf."

"The wolf," said Faith, "is with us a domesticated animal. Ever since I was acquainted with any zoology, the wolf shared our hearth as freely as a kitten. I have have been long hoping that he would get tired of having his head and shoulders in our door, and would go away. I have a scientific interest to see the tail end instead of the head end of this wolf. As he won't go, nor even turn around, I might as well get what fun I can out of him, Letty, by commenting on the size and shape of his jaws."

Week by week went on, and now once more the air was mild with the breath of summer, and the skies were vivid with her smile. Faith sat in her rock-bound bower and worked, and marked the sails drift by, like white clouds on the horizon line, and Letty sat by the open window, and the door, too, was open, and sometimes the bees and butterflies drifted in.

Of what was Faith thinking as she sat on the rocks? She was in the age of hope; life was strong within her; perhaps she had pleasant dreams about days to come. But Letty built her nest among the stars. Earth had little to offer her; life did not leap vigorously in her veins, but, cramped and burdened, tarried on its way as in old age. Faith's visions were full of unrest and of anxious questionings and doubts, while Letty lived in a deep interior calm. Even when father's vagaries most grieved her she had where to lay her burden down.

Faith was looking for some good in this world as it is.

Kiah Kibble was looking for the dawn of a new era here below, but Letty was looking for the days of heaven, and through her heart sang the promises: "The people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem: thou shalt weep no more: He will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when He shall hear it, He will answer thee." "Ye shall have a song as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, to the mighty One of Israel."

Sometimes the face of Faith was joyful in what of good the Lord had given her; sometimes it was heavily sad with the sorrows that had come upon her. But the face of Letty was always at peace; she dwelt near Him who is given to be a "hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a

dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." It is often thus with the early called, with those who are set to stay on earth but a short time, and have little in them of the earthly.

Now that it was fair weather they went to the boathouse again, and when there Kiah Kibble and Faith took counsel that Kiah should try to find out where father got liquor. "If we can only keep the stuff from him," sighed Faith.

But one day she came down to the boathouse alone, running swiftly in her excitement, panting, her cheeks aflame.

"Kiah, I can't stand it! I won't stand it ! You must help me! Father came back very-bad last night. We heard him coming and went upstairs, and he went to his room and then Letty locked him in. This morning I found that he had been hunting among our little things to find something to carry off to pay for drink, but he did not seem to have taken anything. When he was asleep I went into his room and found that he had taken away his clothes-the new ones, very good yet, for he had been so careful of them and his good overcoatHugh's present. Mr. Kibble, do you understand? His clothes are all gone now, but a very shabby, mended, frayed old suit. He has not a decent thing left-and-and soon people will be coming to the beach, and he is not fit to be seen. I can't stand it! I won't! I want those clothes back!"

Kiah had laid down his chisel, shaken himself free of sawdust and shavings, and was pulling on his

coat.

"Miss Faith, I'll go to the town, and I won't come back without those clothes. I'll sift this out as sure as my name is Kiah Kibble!"

Darkness had gathered about the house on the beach and father was in the heavy sleep that succeeded his outbreaks, when the sisters heard

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Yes," said Faith; "and, oh, thank you so much! Where did you get them ? Of course not at the druggist's. At Hill's?"

"No. I went there first and opened the matter, and Hill bluffed me and played sulky; but I said to him, See here, Hill, you may be mad because we kept you out of a customer, but you'd be a deal madder to know some fellow was selling liquor here right and left without paying any license and you paying a high one. Do you wink at that game?' No, I don't,' says he. Show me the man!' 'Help me to find him,' says I; for he's here in town, selling on the sly, and he has a suit of clothes and an overcoat that I'm after.' So Hill and the sheriff and I went to work, and by

into his den;

seven we ran our fox and I got out the clothes and the den is shut and the liquor confiscated, and the negro in gaol for selling without a license. So good-night, Miss Faith. I'd like to shut up one of those shops every day."

After a very wild outbreak came always the period of rebound; the pendulum swung back toward abstinence in proportion as it had oscillated toward intemperance. As in the pendulum the acceleration of motion is proportional to the sine of the displacement, so in the father's mental oscillation, just in proportion to the depth of his drunkenness was the loftiness of his temperance views when he returned to himself. His high state of virtue on the present occasion was increased by having a good suit of clothes and a welllaundered shirt to get into. It never

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