fined here before he was taken away to his trial and execution. A comely, bright-eyed Matron, the very personification of health and cheerfulness, will gladly show you over the little establishment-from the kitchen, that produces meat and pudding for each child every day, to the clean bed-rooms, which, in the summer time, will accommodate twenty-three little cockneys, boys and girls; in the winter time the Matron does not care to have so many. Your own eye will soon distinguish the little pale seedlings, the last planted out from the London hotbed, still drooping, and not yet quite at home, and the bright-eyed ones, whose cheeks are rosy, who must soon go back to Town again.

The Matron will tell you of the joys of the parents who come down to see their children on Wednesdays and Saturdays; she will tell you how the children, who know their way in and out of the back lanes of London, immediately get lost when they find themselves on the open Common; how they are as much astounded at the sight of a windmill as ever was Don Quixote; how they do not know the names of anything, "from a hog to a hedgehog ;" and how the jam-pot at the door, containing two minnows, has just been brought as a present by two little rustics who live at the cottage hard by, in order to astonish the ignorant London boys; how the swing is a novelty that never palls, and respecting the grievous misfortune which befell the perambulator.

And who pays for it all? Anybody who contributes a guinea a year may send one child yearly for one month; it is the price of one stall at the Opera; compared with the subscription to the Botanical Gardens, it is a very cheap investment. But subscribers must surely be puzzled to know whom to send, for it would be rather a serious enterprise to hunt out a fit patient, with civil parents, who do not mind being intruded upon. There is no real difficulty about that either, for the Hospital for Sick Children, at 49, Great Ormond Street, Queen's Square, is always full. Of the 400 children who have passed a month at Mitcham, nearly 200 have been sent from the beds in Great Ormond Street.

But, even putting the question of bodily health or sickness aside, consider the enormous educational boon a month's simple country life must be, to children who have heretofore dwelt only in the back streets of London, in rookeries from which they could never take flight to purer air, and whose clearest idea of the country is of "the court where the gentlemen live." It is impossible to realize the ignorance of the London street-boy until we consider what have been his opportunities of knowledge. His acquaintance with the heavens above has been through the inedium of a canopy of London smoke, while his knowledge of the earth beneath him is derived chiefly from the excavations made by the Commissioners of Sewers, and the other authorities who regulate our gas and water pipes; his idea of water is very much that of a witty Frenchman, who defined it as "a colourless fluid, which turns black when human hands are immersed in it;" his impressions of bucolic life are taken from

the sheep and oxen, attended by the drovers and their dogs, through the metropolitan thoroughfares; and of life agricultural, from the contents of the waggons at Covent Garden market, where he sometimes gets a rotten orange thrown to him. His furthest excursions from the slum in which he lives have been on Sundays; once to the New River, fishing, when three of them caught one stickleback, and brought it home alive in a bottle; once to a suburban brickfield, in attendance on a sporting barber, who devoted his leisure hours to bird-catching; and once or twice to the Parks in the far West, where on a fine Sunday afternoon you may often see the costermongers from the East sleeping with the warm sun on their backs, and their faces nestled down into the green though smutty grass.

To such children a summer month in the country must be the introduction to a new world, with new heavens and a new earth. To them, that summer month must be an epoch in life as memorable as the first introduction to the world of fiction or fairyland, or a first visit to Italy, is to others. Would there be any great exaggeration in a parallel drawn between the life of the poor London boy, first playing in his native dirt, and then transferred from his bed of sickness to a spell of country life at Mitcham, when the common is golden with the gorse, and the fields purple with the lavender, and the progressive life of an insect, rising from grub and chrysalis to the winged state?

And may we not imagine, that, when the season is over, and all who can afford it leave the hot town for their travels and their country houses, those who have helped to send these little ones for their spell in the green fields will enjoy the Highlands and the fresh sea-breeze with a zest peculiarly their own?

SOUNDS.

THERE are countless sounds in this world of ours,

Where hidden music dwells:

The song of birds when the day is young,

The chime of distant bells:

The echo of children's voices borne,

From the shady primrose dells.

The tiny tread of a childish foot,

That strays about the room:

The tiny voice of a childish song,

That comes to you through the gloom :

When the evening shadows are long without,

And the light grows dim at home.

There are countless sounds in these hearts of ours,

That speak to us alone:

Voices that reach not other ears—

Unheard save by our own:

Footsteps that echo back again

From the past with a muffled tone.

A STORY FOR THE YOUNG OF THE HOUSEHOLD.

IN COZY NOOK.

THE TWO THIMBLES.

A TRUE STORY.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “A TRAP TO CATCH A SUNBEAM," &c.

WERE you ever in a carpenter's shed, little folks ?-a large shed, with its piles of shavings, its strange, quaint-looking tools, its endless pieces of wood, of all shapes and sizes?-because if you ever were there, you know what a famous place it is to play in. What a mysterious awe hangs over the tools we must not touch, and therefore look at with longing eyesWhat a delight to build houses there, with those pieces of wood, so much nicer than our own neat box of bricks at home-What fun the piling up shavings to "pretend" it's a bonfire; and the still greater delight of having the hammer and the nail-box, and driving a whole row into a piece of wood, with no earthly object but to make the same noise as the carpenter! Such pleasures as these were being thoroughly enjoyed by a little bright-eyed, dark-haired, gipsy-looking child, one warm summer afternoon, when I shall first introduce her to you. Her name is Jessie Hay; she is the second child of one Alfred Hay, the village carpenter; and, perhaps, it may be owned, his darling; for in spite of the never-ending scrapes into which she continually got, she was so merry, so clever, and so winning, that he could not help loving even while he scolded her. Mrs. Hay said her father spoilt her-but I don't quite think that; Mrs. Hay made the mistake too often made with children-she thought if a child was always quiet and never worried her, it was good; but if, on the contrary, it was full of life and restlessness, it required constant correction. So it happened that the little meek-faced, quiet, unexcitable Lucy, Jessie's eldest sister, rarely incurred her mother's displeasure, whilst poor Jessie was in constant disgrace. Mrs. Hay had never been fond of children before she married; and though she had a natural love for her own, all their "little ways" irritated and vexed her. Exquisitely clean, neat, industrious, and remarkably quiet herself, the mess which children make was a source of real pain to her-the ringing of their fond, eager voices-the impatience to be heard and attended to, however much she was engaged herself-the spoiling of their clothesthe destruction of books and playthings-all combined to prevent her finding any pleasure in her children. She loved them with a tender, anxious love, which made her willing and desirous to spare them from pain or illusage; but she wished in her heart that she and her husband had shared their home alone-that the spotlessly clean cloth she loved to spread on the table was never soiled with dirty fingers and clumsy "upsets;" that the nicely-swept floor was never strewn with broken rubbish nor shreds of linen; in short, that she could sit down peacefully to enjoy the neat home she took such pains to keep so. Lucy being a naturally quiet, dull child-she had trained her to her notions of right and wrong, so that before her mother, Lucy was never in mischief, always neat and clean, and supposed by her, and all who visited the cottage, to be a model child; but Jessie-wild, rest

less, joyous Jessie-was her mother's perpetual torment, and, as I have said, constantly in disgrace. And let me pause a moment to address you, the "Young of the Household"-I who love you all, from the tiniest baby cradled in its mother's arms, to the sturdiest boy or girl among you-rich or poor, high or low-the lordly infant in his silks and laces, as well as the cottage child in its patched, and, it may be, dirty pinafore let me tell you I can understand how it was that Mrs. Hay did not like children, and how it is that so many do not; how it is they are so glad to shut them up in their nurseries with their nurses, or turn them out in the streets to play -anywhere so they are rid of them-because you forget, most of you, the good old proverb, "Little children should be like old men's beards, seen but not heard." You should try to remember that there is a time to play and be merry and noisy; and a time to be silent and quiet; when you must be contented not to be noticed, nor engage attention; but to steal away in some little corner, and be so still that no one shall know you are in the room; a time to cease the eager questionings, to rest the restless feet; so that it may be said of you, that, though always in the way, you are never in the way.

Lucy Hay had learned this lesson, but unhappily she had only learned it to serve herself, not because it was right and good; and, moreover, it was not so much merit to her to be still as it would have been to Jessie, because it was no trouble to her. She liked to be quiet-she liked to listen to what other people said-and above all, she liked the sugar-plums and halfpence, and sweet words, her mother lavished on her for being "so good,” as she called it-and dreaded the scoldings that fell to poor Jessie's share.

On the afternoon when I tell you Jessie was so happy in the carpenter's shed, Lucy was quietly seated in a corner of her mother's best room, listening to the conversation between her mother and a visitor who had just arrived. At last, her mother turned to her and said—

"Lucy, love, where is Jessie ?-in mischief somewhere, I'll be bound!" "I don't know, mother," answered Lucy, meekly. "I think I saw her going into father's shed."

"Into father's shed! She heard me say I wouldn't have her go there. I never saw such a naughty child in my life. I declare, Martha," continued the mother, addressing the visitor, "I don't know what to do with her: you'd never think the children were sisters, or had been brought up alike. Lucy's always quiet and good, and no trouble; but as to Jessie, she almost drives me distracted. Go and tell her to come here directly, Lucy; she shall have bread and water for dinner, for not minding what's said to her."

Now, do you know, Lucy knew well that Jessie was not in the room when her mother had said she did not like the children to go into the shed, and she had quite forgotten to tell her sister so; but, fearful of getting scolded herself for not mentioning it, she allowed her mother to imagine Jessie was wilfully disobedient. She found Jessie very happy among the shavings, and, beckoning her out, said—

"Oh! Jessie, Aunt Martha's here, and you're to come in; and mother said we were not to go into the shed any more, and I forgot to tell you. Don't say I forgot, Jessie dear-pray don't; mother will be so cross."

"All right," said Jessie, cheerfully, and throwing down her bundle of shavings, she ran into the house with her sister. Her hair hanging in