and all affections are centered on their children. But while this is going on, the children's minds are becoming more and more absorbed in the cares, duties, and new affections of life, until their parents are almost forgotten. Forewarned of this tendency, let every one strive against it, lest he wound by neglect, either seeming or real, a heart that has loved him from life's earliest dawn up to the present moment.

But not alone in deference, respect, and marks of affection lie the limits of a young man's duties to his parents. He should endeavor to take up and bear for them, if too heavy for their declining strength, some of the burdens that oppress them. He should particularly consider his father, and see if the entire support of the family that yet remains upon his hands does not tax his efforts too far; and if such be the case, he should deny himself almost anything, in order to render some aid. For years, he has been receiving all now but fair that he should begin to

that he required, and it is make some return.

How often do we see two or three sons, all in the receipt of good salaries, spending their money in self-indulgences, while their father is toiling on for his younger children, broken in health, perhaps disappointed in his worldly prospects, and almost despairing in regard to the final result of all his efforts! They come and go, and never think that anything is due from them. It does not occur to them that if each were to deny himself the gratification of his desires to the extent of one hundred dollars a year, and the aggrcgate amount were placed in their father's hands to aid in supporting the family, it would take a mountain of care from his shoulders. Why is it that so many young men forget their duty in this important matter? One would think that no prompter was required here to remind them of their part. But it is not so. On the contrary, it is a thing of such rare occurrence for a son to practice self-denial for the sake of his parents, that, wherever it is seen, it forms the subject of remark.

We often see parents who have enjoyed but few advantages themselves, and who, in consequence, are compelled to occupy lower

and more laborious positions in the world, denying themselves many comforts and all the luxuries of life, in order to give their children the very best education possible for them to provide. We see these children growing up, and too often the first return they make is in the form of invidious comparisons between themselves and the parents to whom they owe almost everything! In a little while they step into the world as men, and, becoming absorbed in its pursuits from various selfish ends, seem to forget entirely that their parents are still toiling on, enfeebled by years and over-exertion for their sakes, and with the very sweat of their time-worn brows digging out from the hard earth, so to speak, the scanty food and raiment required to sustain nature. Ah! but this is a melancholy sight. Could anything tell the sad tale of man's declension from good so eloquently as this?

It is plainly the duty of every young man, whose parents are poor and compelled to labor beyond their strength, to aid them to the extent of his ability. They have borne the burden for him for many years. From their toil and self-denial he now has the means of rising higher in the world than they had the ability ever to rise; but he is unjust and ungrateful if, in his eager efforts to advance too rapidly, he forget and neglect them. Nothing can excuse conduct so unnatural, so cruel.

The Spider and the Bee.

Upon the highest corner of a large window there dwelt a certain spider, swollen up to the first magnitude by the destruction of infinite numbers of flies, whose spoils lay scattered before the gates of his palace, like human bones before the cave of some giant. The avenues to his castle were guarded with turnpikes and palisadoes. After you had passed several courts you came to the center, wherein you might behold the constable himself, in his own lodgings, which had windows fronting to each avenue, and ports to

sally out upon all occasions of prey or defense. In this mansion he had for some time dwelt in peace and plenty, without danger to his person by swallows from above, or to his palace by brooms from below, when it was the pleasure of fortune to conduct thither a wandering bee, to whose curiosity a broken pane in the glass had discovered itself, and in he went, where, expatiating a while, he at last happened to alight upon one of the outer walls of the spider's citadel, which, yielding to the unequal weight, sunk down to the very foundation. Thrice he endeavored to force his passage, and thrice the center shook. The spider within, feeling the terrible convulsion, supposed at first that nature was approaching to her final dissolution, or else that Beelzebub, with all his legions, was come to revenge the death of many thousands of his subjects whom his enemy had slain and devoured. However, he at length valiantly resolved to issue forth and meet his fate. Meanwhile the bee had acquitted himself of his toils, and posted securely at some distance, was employed in cleansing his wings, and disengaging them from the rugged remnants of the cobweb. By this time the spider was adventured out, when beholding the chasms, the ruins and dilapidations of his fortress, he was very near at his wit's end; he stormed and swore like a madman, and swelled till he was ready to burst. At length, casting his eye upon the bee, and wisely gathering causes from events (for they knew each other by sight), "A plague split you," said he, "for a giddy puppy; is it you, with a vengeance, that has made this litter here? Could you not look before you? Do you think I have nothing else to do but to mend and repair after you?"

"Good words, friend," said the bee (having now pruned himself, and being disposed to be droll), "I'll give you my hand and word to come near your kennel no more; I was never in such a confounded pickle since I was born."

"Sirrah," replied the spider, "if it were not for breaking an old custom in our family, never to stir abroad against an enemy, I should come and teach you better manners.'

"I pray have patience," said the bee, "or you'll spend your

substance, and for aught I see, you may stand in need of it all toward the repair of your house."

"Rogue, rogue," replied the spider, "yet methinks you should have more respect to a person whom all the world allows to be so much your betters."

"By my troth," said the bee, "the comparison will amount to a very good jest; and you will do me a favor to let me know the reasons that all the world is pleased to use in so hopeful a dispute.”

At this the spider, having swelled himself into the size and posture of a disputant, began his argument in the true spirit of controversy, with resolution to be heartily scurrilous and angry; to urge on his own reasons without the least regard to the answers or objections of his opposite; and fully predetermined in his mind against all conviction.

"Not to disparage myself," said he, "by the comparison with such a rascal, what art thou but a vagabond without house or home, without stock or inheritance? born to no possession of your own but a pair of wings and a drone-pipe. Your livelihood is a universal plunder upon nature; a freebooter over fields and gardens; and, for the sake of stealing, will rob a nettle as easily as a violet. Whereas, I am a domestic animal, furnished with a native stock within myself. This large castle (to show my improvements in the mathematics) is all built with my own hands, and the materials extracted altogether out of my own person."

"I am glad," answered the bee, "to hear you grant at least that I come honestly by my wings and my voice; for then, it seems, I am obliged to Heaven alone for my flights and my music; and Providence would never have bestowed on me two such gifts, without designing them for the noblest ends. I visit indeed all the flowers and blossoms of the field and garden; but whatever I collect thence enriches myself, without the least injury to their beauty, their smell, or their taste. Now, for you and your skill in architecture and other mathematics, I have little to say: in that building of yours there might, for aught I know, have been labor and method enough; but, by woeful experience for us both, it is too

plain the materials are naught; and I hope you will henceforth take warning, and consider duration and matter, as well as method and art. You boast indeed of being obliged to no other creature, but of drawing and spinning out all from yourself; that is to say, if we may judge of the liquor in the vessel by what issues out, you possess a good plentiful store of dirt and poison in your breast; and though I would by no means lessen or disparage your genuine stock of either, yet I doubt you are somewhat obliged, for an increase of both, to a little foreign assistance. Your inherent portion of dirt does not fail of acquisitions, by sweepings exhaled from below; and one insect furnishes you with a share of poison to destroy another. So that, in short, the question comes all to this: Whether is the nobler being of the two, that which by a lazy contemplation of four inches round, by an overweening pride, feeding and engendering on itself, turns all into excrement and venom, producing nothing at all but flybane and a cobweb; or that which, by a universal range, with long search, much study, true judgment, and distinction of things, brings home honey and wax?”