DO not think that my neighbours, a young married couple named Peters, were very happy in the early part of their career, as far as I knew it. Mr. Peters was a bookbinder, and a clever young man, but he was not "diligent in business," nor did he at all think about the whole of that wonderful text"fervent in spirit, serving the Lord."

A friend of mine, a surgeon in Battersea, attended Mrs. Peters in an illness she had, and I heard from the good doctor's wife, that there was heavy trouble in the humble dwelling.

It did not arise from this illness, for Mrs. Peters soon recovered; but her husband had a dislike to his business, thought himself above it, and was neither punctual nor industrious; and I need not tell my readers that those two qualities are indispensable if a man-or a woman either -is to succeed in life.

Some small acts of neighbourly kindness that I was able to render to Mrs. Peters in her illness, made me intimate with her. I learned that her husband, of whom she was both fond and proud, had been led to expect that an old uncle of his would put him in business; and that on the expectation of being a "master-man," as it is called, he had taken a wife, and launched out into many expenses on his marriage, in the way of clothes and a wedding trip to the Channel Islands. To his great dismay, on his return he found that his aged uncle had married also, a widow with a large family, and that all the expectations in which he had indulged for years were overthrown.

thousands of other young men have to depend, on his own diligence to gain a living for himself and his Bessy. They were young, loving, and healthy. Surely they had some of nature's best gifts; and if grace to use these gifts aright had been added, they would have begun the world well.

But the gnawing of discontent was eating into Peters's heart. He got work and hated it, because he was only a journeyman. He disliked his master, for the simple reason that he was his master. Is not a dislike always the most bitter when it is unreasonable? He disliked the men, his companions, because he thought them his inferiors. He would have seen in another the folly and sin of such feelings, but he did not see himself. Had he looked in the Gospel mirror he would have seen "the beam" in his own eye, and ceased to complain of "the mote" in his brother's eye. It was very weary work with him; and if his wife had not possessed a gentle temper, there would have been dark days indeed in their dwelling.

It was wonderful how she contrived to make the home comfortable, and keep herself neat, and their one little child bright and even smart, on the small wages her husband earned; for he wasted so much time, what with his low spirits, and his going off to inquire about some easier way of getting a living, that he lost his regular situation, and often had only "piecework." This was the case when, in the second winter of their union, Mrs. Peters fell ill; and I suspected that the illness was caused by a want of the comforts needful in the depth of winter for a nursing mother.

went short of anything in that home, it Iwas not the husband. There was a clear fire and a clean hearth when he came home; and as all her little stock of coals was bought a scuttle-full at a time, I fear, nay I know, she often went without fire in the day, so as to have one at night for her husband. I think I see, even now, the bright-eyed fragile little creature, still in her earliest womanhood, and the smile of welcome on her face that almost hid its thinness.

But who can minister to a mind diseased with discontent? Peters loved his wife, but that very love made him bitter about what he considered his misfortunes.

I called just as Mrs. Peters was again beginning to do the work of her little home. I found her crying bitterly, with her baby in her lap. To my endeavour at consolation, she replied in such anguish as I had seldom seen. Amid her sobs I gathered that Peters had "resolved to go to America to better himself:" that his uncle had agreed to advance the money for him as steerage passenger, but not a fraction to enable him to take his wife with him. They owed rent, and the landlord's claim prevented his selling his furniture, nor did he seem to wish to encumber himself on the voyage with a wife and infant, both then very helpless.

I need not dwell on the wife's bitter sorrow. The parting took place. He was to send for her as soon as possible: nay he talked himself and her into the belief that he would be so fortunate,—that his talents would so immediately command success, that he should return speedily, and take her out in comfort-"as his wife ought to go."

I did not see Mrs. Peters for a few days after her husband left. When I called, I saw the parting, and those days, had done the work of years. She had hope to sus

tain her-the full belief that her husband

These were her human consolations. But she had more than these. In the dreary weeks that followed, old teachings of a higher hope, old prayers uttered in childhood, old memories of a mother's dying words, came to her mind; and in her loneliness and desolation she prayed-prayed for her husband, for her child, and for herself. I saw her on the Sabbath, sitting in a pew near the door of the house of God, hushing her baby, and listening with tearful eyes to words that never fail to comfort mourning souls.

That she found such comfort I felt sure, by what I saw of a new energy manifested by her. She was a skilful needlewoman, and it was in the days when baby-caps were most beautifully and elaborately worked. With all a young mother's pardonable vanity, she had worked a very exquisite cambric cap for her little one; but she had never been able to buy a lace to trim it. She took this cap to a shop, kept then by a Scotchman in Burlington Arcade, where embroidery for ladies was sold. She was paid more than she had expected, and, better still, she had work offered her. That summer saw her early and late at her task-a labour of lovefor she was intent to get enough to take her out to her husband.

But the murmuring complaining spirit was still his cherished companion; and when she had good hope of attaining her object, her husband's letters told her he was "not satisfied with New York-it was worse than England."

Weeks followed and he wrote again, from Boston. "Ill luck," he said, "followed him, and he meant to go West."

Then came a long time when she had no letters; and the poor thing who had worked in hope, now worked with the energy of despair, and actually saved enough by the year's end to send him his passage money to bring him back again.

pleton!" Yes; love is both the most foolish and the most wise thing in this world. It is not measured by the merit of those towards whom it is felt; and in this it resembles "Love DIVINE, all love excelling."

An anxious grave little woman was Mrs. Peters, but a tender holy sweetness often came into her pale face; and all who knew her (they were but few) respected her. She was so industrious, so kind and wise a mother to the little prattler that toddled about her room, and cheered her with her smiles.

Meanwhile her work increased. Her landlady had two young daughters willing to learn, and she taught them, and was able to find employment for them. A business grew up under her skilful fingers. "Oh, if I had but known I could do what I have done, Alfred need never have gone!" she often said.

It was a bitter trial to her that she never got a letter that seemed to tell her he was settled. He was always going somewhere else, and her replies she justly feared often missed him. There was no want of apparent tenderness in his letters, and the faithful wife never doubted his love. If she came to the conclusion that the fault was in himself, his want of stability and settled principle, she never said so.

But God was now dealing with her absent husband, as in after-years he himself told her. It was the third winter after he went that he fell down in the streets of Cincinnati, and broke his wrist. In all his wanderings he had managed, and barely managed, to keep himself from want; but how bright to him now was the sweet vision of a past that he had murmured over. Bessy had not been much prized in England, but when he was without her he learned her value. On his sick bed he met with kind Christian friends; but he was lonely and wretched, and his misery threw

write, and it was perhaps as well that his wife did not know of his trouble. He was placed in the hospital of the district, and his recovery was very tedious. But long before his body grew strong, his soul sprang up to the light. All his discontent, neglect of God, and of His best blessings, all his selfishness, became clear to him. Ah, it would have been too terrible-the storm of his feelings would have overwhelmed him-but that there came a Divine voice, saying in the depths of his spirit "Peace, be still." In that peaceful stillness he found the Saviour.

During the long interval when Mrs. Peters had no letters, and feared she knew not what, she had to remove to Pimlico. The people she lodged with removed, and she went with them to a better residence. Owing most likely to this cause, one letter sent from America did not reach her. She had now been left alone for four years, and it was the fear of the voyage for her child, and the advice of friends, that alone kept her from going in search of her husband, though she had never gone twenty miles beyond London in her life.

One Friday morning there came a letter with a Liverpool postmark. It had evidently made a circuit. She did not know the handwriting, for it was written with the left hand, but it was from her husband.

In an hour

were gone. She did not

He was ill in Liverpool. after, she and her little one The journey was long then. reach Liverpool until Saturday night; and there, in a poor lodging in Park Lane, down by the docks, she found her husbandcrippled in his right hand, poor, indebted to some kind souls for the means to reach his native shores.

Oh, what must it have been to the poor wanderer, to see his Bessy come to welcome him! For welcome him indeed she did. There were no words of reproof,