FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY.

DRIFT on my bark! The sunbeams sleep Yet I never once have wondered

Drift on my bark! The night winds chill Or shall needful shelter fail them,

"I WON'T tell a lie! I won't be a coward!" said a fine little fellow, when he had broken a little statuette of his father's in showing it to his playmates, and they were telling him how he could deceive his father, and escape a scolding. He was right. Cowards tell lies; brave little boys tell the truth. Charlie Mann was right, and was rewarded for it, as the following story will show :

“A young offender, whose name was Charlie Mann, smashed a large pane of glass in a druggist's shop, and ran away at first, for he was much frightened; but he quickly began to think: 'What am I running for? It was an accident: why not turn about and tell the truth ?”

No sooner thought than done. Charlie was a brave boy: he told the whole truth-how the ball with which he was playing slipped out of his hand, how frightened he was, how sorry, too, at the mischief done, and how willing to pay if he had the money.

Charlie had not the money, but he could work, and to work he went at once, in the very shop where he broke the glass. It took him a long time to pay for the large and expensive pane he had shattered, but when it was done he had endeared himself so much to the shopkeeper by his fidelity and faithfulness, that he could not hear of his going away, and Charlie became his clerk.

'Ah! what a lucky day it was when I broke that window," he used to say.

'No, Charlie,' his mother would respond, 'what a lucky day it was when you were not afraid to tell the truth.""

He was indeed a brave boy, and he did right. He is a mean sneaking fellow, who will run away after he has done a piece of mischief, and let somebody else pay for it, and perhaps let another boy get punished for it too. Accidents will happen, and when they happen, tell all about it, and take the consequences, no matter what they are. There can be no consequences so dreadful as those which follow falsehood; and then how small and contemptible a boy feels when he knows he has told what was not true!

THE HEROINE OF LAKE ERIE.

THE dark, stormy close of November, 1854, found many vessels on Lake Erie, but the fortune of one alone has special interest for us. About that time the Schooner "Conductor," owned by John McLeod of the Provincial Parliament, a resident of Amherstberg, at the mouth of the Detroit River, entered the lake from that river, bound for Port Dalhousie, at the mouth of the Welland Canal. She was heavily loaded with grain. Her crew consisted of Captain Hackett, a Highlander by birth, and a skilful and experienced navigator, and six sailors. At nightfall, shortly after leaving the head of the lake, one of those terrific storms, with which the late autumnal navigators of that " Sea of the Woods" are all too familiar, overtook them. The weather was intensely cold for the season; the air was filled with snow and sleet; and the chilled water made ice rapidly, encumbering the schooner, and loading down decks and rigging. As the gale increased, the tops of the waves were shorn off by the fierce blasts, clouding the whole atmosphere with frozen spray, or what the sailors call "spoon-drift," rendering it impossible to see any object a few rods distant. Driving helplessly before the wind, yet in the direction of its place of destination, the schooner sped through the darkness. At last, near midnight, running closer than her crew supposed to the Canadian shore, she struck on the outer bar off Long Point Island, beat heavily across it, and sunk in the deeper water between it and the inner bar. The hull was entirely submerged, the waves rolling in heavily and dashing over the rigging, to which the crew betook themselves. Lashed there,

numb with cold, drenched with the pitiless waves, and scourged by the showers of sleet driven before the wind, they waited for morning. The slow, dreadful hours wore away, and at length the dubious and doubtful gray of a morning of tempest succeeded the utter darkness of night.

save

Abigail Becker chanced at that time to be in her hut with none but her young children. Her husband was absent on the Canada shore, and she was left the sole adult occupant of the island, the lighthouse keeper at its lower end, some fifteen miles off. Looking out at daylight on the beach in front of her door, she saw the shattered boat of the Conductor, cast up by the waves. Her experience of storm and disaster on that dangerous coast

THE HEROINE OF LAKE ERIE.

needed nothing more to convince her that somewhere in her neighbourhood human life had been, or still was, in peril. She followed the south westerly trend of the island for a little distance, and, peering through the gloom of the stormy morning, discerned the spars of a sunken schooner, with what seemed to be human forms clinging to the rigging. The heart of the strong woman sunk within her, as she gazed upon those helpless fellow creatures, so near, and yet so unapproachable, She had no boat, and none could have lived on that wild water. After a moments reflection she went back to her dwelling, put the smaller children in charge of the eldest, took with her an iron kettle, tin teapot, and matches, and returned to the beach at the nearest point to the vessel, and gathering up the logs and driftwood always abundant on the coast, kindled a great fire, and constantly walking back and forth between it and the water, strove to intimate to the sufferers that they were at least not beyond human sympathy. As the wrecked sailors looked shoreward, and saw through the thick haze of snow and sleet, the red light of the fire and the tall figure of the woman passing too and fro before it, a faint hope took the place of utter despair, which had prompted them to let go their hold and drop into the seething waters that opened and closed about them like the jaws of death. But the day wore on, bringing no abatement of the storm that tore through the frail spars, that clutched at and tossed them as it passed, and drenched them with ice-cold spray,—a pitiless, unrelenting horror of sight, sound, and touch! At last the deepening gloom told them that night was approaching, and night under such circumstances was death.

All day long Abigail Becker had fed her fire and sought to induce the sailors by signals-for even her strong voice could not reach them-to throw themselves into the serf and trust to Providence and her for succour. In anticipation of this, she had her kettle boiling over the drift-wood, and her tea ready made for restoring warmth and life to the half frozen survivors. But either they did not understand her, or the chance of rescue seemed too small to induce them to abandon the temporary safety of the wreck. They clung to it with the desperate instinct of life brought face to face with death. Just at nightfall there was a slight break in the west; a red light glared across the thick air, as if for one instant the eye of the storm looked out upon the ruin it had wrought, and closed again under lids of cloud. Taking advan

ARABS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

tage of this, the solitary watcher ashore made one more effort. She waded out into the water, every drop of which, as it struck the beach, became a particle of ice, and stretching out and drawing in her arms, invited, by her gestures, the sailors to throw themselves into the waves, and strive to reach her. Captain Hackett understood her. He called to his mate in the rigging of the other mast, "It is our last chance. I will try! If I live, follow me; if I drown, stay where you are!" With a great effort he got off his stiffly frozen overcoat, paused one moment in silent commendation of his soul to God, and throwing himself into the waves, struck out for the shore. Abigail Becker, breast-deep in the surf, awaited him. He was almost within her reach when the undertow swept him back. By a mighty exertion she caught hold of him, bore him in her strong arms out of the water, and laying him down by her fire, she warmed his chilled blood with copious draughts of hot tea. The mate, who had watched the rescue, now followed, and the captain, partially restored, insisted upon aiding him. As the former neared the shore, the recoiling water baffled him. Captain Hackett caught hold of him, but the undertow swept them both away, locked in each other's arms. The brave woman plunged after them, and, with the strength of a giantess, bore them, clinging to each other, to the shore, and up to her fire. The five sailors followed in succession, and were

all rescued in the same way.

A few days after, Captain Hackett and his crew were taken off Long Point by a passing vessel; and Abigail Becker resumed her simple daily duties without dreaming that she had done anything extraordinary enough to win for her the world's notice. In her struggle every day for food and warmth for her children, she had no leisure for the indulgence of self-congratulation. Like the woman of Scripture, she had only "done what she could," in the terrible exigency that had broken the dreary monotony of her life.

ARABS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

THE industrious Arabs revived those useful arts which the barbarians of Europe seemed anxious to forget. They wove the richest fabrics of wool, cotton, or silk; they manufactured cloth of gold and carpets of unequalled splendour; their divans were