when he laid his hands upon our heads and blessed us, and prayed that we might begin now to be useful, and grow up faithful and devoted servants of Christ.

CHAPTER XIII.

FLAX THE EXCELLENT WOMAN.

PROV. xxxi. 10, 13, 20, 25-31.-"Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy. Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all. Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates."

Charlie. I should like very much if you would talk about the flax to-day, we are reading about it at school, and I know it is a Scripture plant.

M. I shall be delighted, and you may choose your subject.

Catharine. The flax is mentioned in the 31st chapter of Proverbs; and may the subject be the excellent woman described in that chapter?

M. It may, and you could not have chosen a better. Have any of you ever seen flax growing?

Frances Jane. Yes, I have; it is about one foot and a half high, almost all stem, with very small leaves, and few of them, and most beautiful blue flowers.

David. Our lesson says, it is the fibres of the stem which is the flax, but there is a very great deal of labour required before it is fit to be spun. In hot climates there is not nearly so much required, before the natives can be clothed. The cotton grows there on trees in pods, all ready to be carded. I have seen a cotton pod.

Rachel. That teaches us one of the lessons the palm did. Man is not able to work much in hot climates, therefore God does not require it from him.

M. And there is another lesson we may learn; God does not require from any one of us more than we are able to perform, neither ought we to require it from our neighbour. I am sorry to say this is done very often in our own country, and to women too. I shall only mention one instance. There are very

many who have no other way of gaining a livelihood than by plain sewing; many of these are widows with families, they frequently work from six o'clock in the morning till ten at night, and all they can earn is a sixpence, and sometimes their work is not even SO well paid as that; and out of this hard earned sixpence a day they have to feed and clothe themselves, their children, and pay a house rent. Now, do not you think this is requiring more from our neighbour than she is able to perform?

Frances Jane. Yes, indeed it is, and it is very cruel too.

M. It is very cruel, and I hope none of you will ever encourage it; if you do, be assured God will re

quire it of you. If you give any one plain work to do, give them a just and reasonable price for their work. God teaches us both from His Word and works that we are not to oppress our neighbour, so that we are without excuse if we do. I am sure the excellent woman in our text was very kind to those who worked for her.

Rachel. Yes, that she was, and spared no pains to be kind to them: our text says, "She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens." And she is a good example of early rising, too: that was the subject we had at school to-day for our exercise.

M. A capital exercise, and I hope you will put it into practice.

Catharine. I think it would be a very good plan for each of us to get up one hour earlier, and keep that hour for one particular work, and at the end of a year reckon up how much we have been able to do in those extra hours.

M. It would, and if you persevere you will be astonished to find how much can be done. Now we shall return to the flax; we never think of it without at the same time thinking of something beautiful, useful, and valuable. When we think of the nettle, we generally think of the sluggard's garden, and waste places where it is always found. It teaches how valuable a useless weed becomes by cultivation and industry. And how valuable the sluggard might become, if he would only lay aside his idleness. But we never think of the flax along with the sluggard; it is never found in his garden, on the contrary, it seems to like to grow where industry is, being found in its

native state in corn fields, more frequently than anyYou can tell me some of the useful things

where else.

the flax makes us think about?

Georgina. Yes; we think of whole webs of beautiful white linen, and cambric, and lace, some kinds of which cost several guineas a yard, and then the great number of people the manufacturing of these gives employment to. And we think of beautiful fine paper of all kinds, some for printing Bibles on, some for writing letters on, some for drawing on, some made into hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of banknotes, and many other uses.

M. There are some more uses besides these; the seeds yield a valuable oil which is used medicinally for burns, mixed with lime water; it has the property of drying and hardening into an elastic varnish, on exposure to the air. After expressing the oil, a cake remains called oil-cake, which is used for fattening cattle; the powdered cake receives the name of linseed meal, and is used for poultices. The seeds when boiled yield a large quantity of mucilaginous matter which is very valuable in complaints of the chest, both for man and cattle.

Helen. Well, I am sure the flax really does deserve to be called beautiful, useful, and valuable: I think it should be called the emblem of the excellent woman in our text.

M. I think so too, because we never think of an excellent woman without thinking of a great deal of good. When we think of Lois and Eunice, what good thing in particular do we think of?

Wilhelmina. Lois was a good mother and brought up her daughter Eunice in the fear of God, and Eunice

profited by her mother's instructions, and brought up her son Timothy in the same way, and God blessed their labours, and chose Timothy to be a minister of the Gospel. I should like to be like them.

Annie. And I would like to be one of those who brought little children to Jesus that He might bless them.

Jessie. I should like to be Mary, with the meek and quiet spirit, who sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word.

Charlotte. And I wish to be like Lydia, whose heart the Lord opened, so that she attended to the things which were spoken by Paul, and who was very kind to him and the other Apostles.

Frances Jane. I choose Dorcas, whom Peter raised from the dead: the Bible says, she was full of alms and good deeds which she did.

Catharine. And I choose the excellent woman in our text, "Who openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children rise up, and call her blessed."

M. You have chosen an admirable list of excellent women, and it is my earnest prayer that each one of you may be added to the number; but remember it is very easy to write or say what an excellent woman ought to be, but it is very difficult to be one; it is impossible, without the grace of God in your hearts. The surest way to be like any one of those you have mentioned is to begin now; be like Eunice, attend to and profit by the instructions you receive from your parents and teachers. If you live, you will all have something to do with the training of the young, either as

F