pack his chest; and now I have a little monkey to love. Oh, I am so happy.'

Now, children, what made Nina happy?

GAMES.

THE BIRDCATCHER. One of the children is chosen to be the birdcatcher; each of the players then chooses the name of a bird, with the exception of the owl, all sitting in a circle, the birdcatcher in the middle. The players must place their hands upon their knees, and must not move them until the birdcatcher mentions the name of a chosen bird, when the player who represents that bird, holds up his hands and imitates its cry. When the owl is mentioned all must put their hands behind them and keep silent. Suppose the birds chosen, to be cock, hen, lark, goose, duck. The birdcatcher begins: "This morning I went for a walk, when, crossing the road, I met a fine cock (here the cock lifts up his hands, and crows), followed by a hen (the hen does the same and cackles); the sky was bright, and overhead I heard a lark sing. My road lay through some fields where I saw a goose, with her goslings, going towards a pond, on which a duck was swimming. All at once I heard the hooting of an owl (all hands behind the backs) which terribly frightened the cock, the hen, the lark, the goose, the duck.” This should be said quickly to try and catch one of the players tripping, as each one who either lifts his hands, or does not put them behind his back, or fails to imitate his particular bird, or is not silent when the owl is mentioned, must pay a forfeit.

THE CUSHION DANCE.-A cushion or hassock is placed on end, and the players join hands and dance round in a circle. The object is to avoid touching the cushion with one's own feet, and to force one's neighbors to do so, by pulling them forward without letting go their hands. Each one who upsets the cushion pays a forfeit.

THE RULE OF CONTRARY.-Get a small table-cloth, and let each player take hold of it with one hand. A leader is chosen who, holding the cloth with the left hand, pretends to write mysterious letters in the air with the right, singing as they all march round. "Here we go by the rule of contrary; when I say let go, hold fast; when I say hold fast, let go." He then cries either "let go," or "hold fast," and unless the players do exactly the contrary they must pay a forfeit.

THE TRAVELLER'S A. B. C.-All sit in a row, and the first begins, "I am going on a journey to Alnwick;" his neighbor asks, "What will you do there?" to which he must answer in words all beginning with the letter A, something like this: "I shall address admiring assemblies." B then says, "I am going on a journey to Bedford," and to the usual question, he can answer, "I shall bind beautiful blossoms," and so on through the whole alphabet. Those who fail, pay forfeit.

THE SCHOOLMASTER is another A B C game. One player is the schoolmaster, the others sit down in front of him, and he then begins

to examine his class. He can begin in any subject he chooses, such as geography, grammar, history, etc. Turning to a pupil he asks him to tell him a noun beginning with A, or a country beginning with B, or a historical name beginning with C, and so on in different subjects all through the alphabet. Those who fail to answer pay a forfeit.

CHRIST THE CONSOLER.

DURING the first French Revolution, in a gloomy dungeon at Paris, a noble lady was imprisoned. Outside was her little girl, twelve years old, under the care of an old servant. Her father was absent with the Army of Condé, and her mother had been taken from home too suddenly even to bid the child good-by.

The little girl's one thought was to get admission to her mother's prison. At last she made the acquaintance of the gaoler's wife, and the kind soul dressed her in her own child's clothes, and put her in mother's cell.

After that, for three months, she used to visit her mamma, and have just such lovely talks with her as you would have with your own mamma if you had been parted from her for a long time.

But one day the mother took the little girl in her arms, and, with sobs and tears, told her that they must soon part,- she was called to trial, and she certainly would be condemned. When they had spent the violence of their first grief, the mother told her child to go to a certain aged priest, and ask him to let her make her First Communion during her mother's life.

The same evening the little girl went to the priest, and he readily granted her request, heard her confession, and bade her return the next morning. When she went back the following day, he had just offered Mass for her mother's intention, and had put aside two particles.

"My child," he said, "I am going to trust you with a sacred mission. In early Christian times children used to carry the Blessed Sacrament to the martyrs; I am going to let you carry it to your mother, and you shall make your First Communion in her presence.'

The child went in solemn joy to her mother's cell, bearing Christ the Consoler. The gaoler's wife left the two alone, knowing that it must be their last meeting. They fell on their knees, and, placing on the table the Sacred Host, adored in silence for a long time. The mother then bade her say some prayers which she had taught her in infancy; and taking one of the hosts in her hand she received it in viaticum, and then gave to the child her First Communion.

The next day the little girl went to the prison to see her mother; but the gaoler's wife said the orders were positive, and she could not be admitted until the next week. She went to the old priest, but he pointed up to heaven, and said, "Your mother is in heaven, my dear, and there you must look to meet her."

The child grew up to womanhood, and to old age; and in telling

this wonderful story to her friends, she said: "It happened sixty years ago; but I have never forgotten the scene of my First Communion or ceased to join my prayers to those of my dear mother."

ONLY A PENNY.

"It's only a penny, missis," said John Stevens, as he stood potting a root of white daisies he had bought of a costermonger as he came home from his work.

"Only a penny, John; that's what you always say; but you forget how those pennies you waste on such-like useless things tell up, and how they would tell up, too, in the savings-bank. Come, your tea's getting cold while your fiddling with them flowers."

John sat down to his tea without making any answer, after placing the pretty flowers on the window-ledge among a row of primroses, ferns, and polyanthuses. His tea was nicely made, and his eggs and bacon cooked to perfection, and laid on a clean table, over which was spread a cloth as white as snow.

"Here comes Pat," said Mrs. Stevens, with a sigh, as a fine boy about fourteen years of age entered the room, and throwing down his hat and a magazine, took a seat next to Mrs. Stevens.

"Another penny wasted, I do declare, while I'm slaving from morning to night to save a penny."

"Don't bother the lad, missis; he's not yours, and I won't have him teased. He'd better be reading of an evening than running the streets, and fighting and smoking and drinking as some of our neighbors' lads do at his age."

"Perhaps, Mr. Stevens," said his wife, drawing herself up, "you'll be glad of my savings some day. I earned them honestly in good situations."

man.

Stevens was sorry he had been cross, for he was a kind-hearted

"Mary," he said, “you are a good, honest woman, and as notable a wife as a man could have, but you spoil it all by your stingy ways and the want of interest you take in my way of amusing myself. But I don't care so much for that if you'd let the lad alone. You'll be driving him into the streets," continued Stevens, as Pat left the room, slamming the door after him, "to find amusement there, if you go on nagging at him every time he brings in a book or a magazine.'

"If he were my own child, and not your first wife's," said Mary, "I'd say the same to him; and I'll teach that child," said Mrs. Stevens, pointing to a rosy baby lying in a cradle in a corner of the room, "as she grows up, the old proverb, ‘A penny saved is a penny got."'"

Mr. Stevens was not naturally a passionate man, but when once roused to anger, it was long before he could control himself; and as he rose and left the house, his wife was alarmed at the paleness of his face and the lightning-flash from his eyes. She had never seen him very

angry before since their marriage about a year previously. A light touch on his shoulder, a gentle "John, I am sorry," would have brought him back, but Mrs. Stevens was too proud, and felt she was an injured woman, and busied herself clearing away the tea-things, angry tears filling her eyes from time to time.

The church clock struck ten. Stevens and Pat had never been out so late before, but they came not when the quarter chimed. The half-hour chime sounded like a knell in the young wife's ear. The baby awoke and cried, and she took it up and paced the room with it in her arms. She listened as the chimes warned her that it was a quarter to eleven. She placed the baby in the cradle, opened the door and looked down the street. In the dim gaslight she saw a man coming towards the house with unsteady step. She was disappointed for she thought she recognized a neighbor's drunken husband, and hastily entered the house, shut the door, and fastened it.

In a few minutes there was a loud knock. Mary's heart beat quickly as she opened the door; and John, her own John, staggered into the room, sank on the nearest chair, and asked her in that unmistakeable voice that has saddened the heart of many a wife and mother, to give him more brandy.

"Oh, John, John!" cried Mary, falling on her knees beside him, "don't talk so, or you'll drive me crazy."

John's eyes wandered till they rested on the innocent babe that was crying in the cradle, and the strong man sobbed like a child.

Mary watched her husband through that dreadful night. She resolved never to drive him away from home by selfishness or ill-temper to seek recreation elsewhere.

The next morning, unaccustomed to drinking hard, poor Stevens was too ill to go to work. His first sign of remembrance of the scene of the previous evening was a sorrowful look at Pat's magazine, which still lay among the plants.

"Has Pat gone to work, Mary?" said he, as she gave him some tea. Mary trembled. She had been wondering all night what had

become of Pat.

"He's not come home since last he went out before you; maybe he's at his aunt's."

Pat often went to his deceased mother's sister when in trouble. Upon inquiry, however, it was found that he had not been there. In the evening a letter came from the boy, saying, he had gone to the the docks to see his uncle, the captain of an American trading-vessel, and if he did not hear from his father that he objected to his going, he would sail with him the next morning, and try his fortune in the New World.

Early on the following morning Stevens went to the docks, but Pat and his uncle were gone. The poor father was heart-broken. He could not blame the boy, who had taken silence for consent; but to lose him, the child of his blue-eyed, sweet-tempered Kathleen, who on her deathbed had charged him to be gentle with him for her sake, and bring him up a good Catholic, was almost more than he could bear. The tempter came, the companion who had invited him the night

before to "take a drop to cheer him," and dreading the sight of Mary, John turned into the tavern.

Many a weary night for years did Mary watch and listen for the heavy tread of her husband's foot, sometimes till the gray light of morning streamed through the window-shutters. As she had craved

for money, so he now craved for drink - maddening drink.

The white daisies died. One by one, all the pretty plants her husband had so carefully tended, perished; watered only by Mary's tears, for she knew not how to manage them. Sometimes she would buy a pretty geranium, and put it in the window to see if it would tempt him to stay at home, but all in vain; the drunkard's senses were deadened: the beautiful in nature and in art had no longer any charms for him. Many are the sources from whence the love of drink first springs, and many also are the attractions that will preserve a man from falling a prey to the hateful vice. A taste for the cultivation of flowers, for good reading, for collecting pictures and curiosities, all within the reach, to some extent, of every class now for a small expenditure, will rob the tavern of many a miserable victim.

Mary Stevens had tried many a plan to lead her husband back. Her savings were all drawn out of the bank, her clothes were often pawned to get the necessaries of life for herself, and some comfort for John and her child her sole consolation.

Ten miserable years passed away, when one day the little girl came home from the convent-school looking unusually thoughtful.

"Mother," said she, "the Sisters are going to make a Novena to Our Lady of the Angels for father's conversion, and we are to join it, and get as many as we can to do so."

Mary's face brightened. She had often prayed for her husband's conversion in a vague way, and very hopelessly, but now she determined to have confidence in God. She started off to the Catholic shop, which was at some distance, and bought a miraculous medal, and took it to the priest to bless it, asking him to offer up the Holy Sacrifice for her intention.

When John came home at night, she put the medal, attached to a blue ribbon, around his neck. Instead of throwing it off, as she had expected, he smiled saying:

"It seems like old days, Mary. I used to wear one always."

On the last day of the Novena, Mary and her child were sitting at tea, wondering whether Stevens would come home as he sometimes did, or go straight to the tavern after his work; when he walked in perfectly sober, and asked for some tea.

"Missis," he said, "I've taken the 'pledge;' I'm going to give up drink. I'm certain our Lady and my Guardian Angel have watched over me; they've never given me up, though all the world has. Many an escape of my life do I owe, under God, to my Guardian Angel. Don't blame yourself, Mary"-for her tears were falling fast "I'd no business to drink because you bothered me when I came home, and Pat shouldn't have gone off so sudden. But it's all over now, and, by the help of God, I've been to confession, and I'll try to lead a better life."