"And now, far removed from the loved situation,
The tear of regret will obtrusively swell,

As fancy reverts to my father's plantation,

And sighs for the bucket that hangs in the well."

This simple incident in the experience of him who was afterwards Israel's royal harper, may serve to remind us how ineffaceable are early impressions. They are like the letters. carved upon the tender sapling, which, when matured to a tree, still shows upon its rugged bark the lines which have grown with all its growth. At last, there comes an old greyhaired man to look at them; and, pensively smiling, he tells his merry grand-children, "Ha! I cut those words myself, with a knife, many a long year ago, when I was just such a sportful boy as you are now."

It is a solemn reflection, that thought is imperishable. Aye; all things whatsoever we have done, every idle word that we have spoken, every vain and sinful thought which has polluted the mind in passing over it, all, all have left an indelible imprint. Though now we see them not, they wait but for the touch of recollection to bring them back to our full consciousness. The soul will be a book of judgment to itself, opened to its own inspection in the dreadful day of God, when it shall read itself like a scroll of destiny, written within and without with the characters of life and death. Let us never think, that early impressions can pass so clean away, as to leave no vestige behind.

"Whate'er the vase may first contain,
That odor longest must remain." *

The old man experiences what his youth prepared him to experience. The stream which stretches and widens along the lengthened valley is tinged throughout by the properties of its far-off mountain-springs.

Let the Christian mother accustom her children to drink at the well of Bethlehem. That hallowed spot was not only

the native city of David, but of David's Son and Lord. For it was written in the prophet, "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of the shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." It came to pass as the prophet foretold. The well-spring of salvation was opened there; and thence the water of life has flowed for man. Happy is he who draws therefrom for his soul's supply. "Whosoever," says our Lord, "drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." As the water so bravely brought to David was the blood of those mighty men, who won it for him by their swords at the peril of their lives, so is the water of life the price of the blood of the Son of God. The three worthies gained the water from Bethlehem's well, by overcoming the enemies of Israel; and Christ hath made the water of salvation ours, by conquering the enemies of his spiritual Israel.

Then let the "mother in Israel" train her children to repair often and habitually to this well-spring of life. We may hope that they will never forsake its "still waters." But should they yield to the impulses of a sinful heart, and to the allurements of a deceiving world, so far as to forsake "the Fountain of living waters," and waste their time and strength in hewing out to themselves broken cisterns, let us still hope for them and pray for them. It may be, that sobered by misfortune, or depressed by affliction, they will be convicted of their guilt and folly. Faint with exhausting thirst, aud nigh unto death, they may remember a mother's teachings, and cry out with earnest longing, "O, that one would give me to drink of the water of the well of life, hard by the gate of heaven!" With the wish may come the blessing; and they may at last lift the healing cup of salvation to their parched and fevered lips, and so drink that their souls may live forever.

FILIA FORMOSA.

BY REV. E. PORTER DYER.

ON lady's bosom never yet one floweret found repose,

Whose boasted beauty might compare with Sharon's sacred Rose;
The lily breathes its fragrance sweet, the pink its perfume there,
Yet wafts no incense up to God, like that of humble prayer.

The light of beauty's smile may send its sunshine through the soul,
And mirth and music fascinate, and pleasure crown the whole;
But there's a light which streams from Heaven, enrapturing the heart
With purer, deeper, holier joy than earth can e'er impart.

The brow, as alabaster fair, may gleam 'mid raven curls,
And witching beauty be the boast of vain and thoughtless girls ;
But nought to me is beauty's brow, or form adorned with grace,
If Jesus' image on the heart I strive in vain to trace.

Give me the modest maiden blush which shuns the passer-by;
Give me the brow, where love, enthroned, lends lustre to the eye;
Give me the lip which never curls at Jesus' name in scorn;
Give me the meek and lowly heart, of God's own Spirit born.
Since all the bloom which pleasure gives must in the grave be hid,
And beauty's light so soon is quenched beneath the coffin-lid,
Can it be wise at Fashion's shrine to bend in worship long,
Forgetting that the soul should learn to sing a deathless song?
O ye, who in your maiden prime with pride the mirror seek,
Put on that beauteous ornament, a spirit calm and meek;
Then, though the giddy multitude may spurn the chaste attire,
ONE FAIRER THAN THE SONS OF MEN your beauty shall desire.
Hingham, Mass.

THE DAUGHTER'S LOVE TO HER FATHER.

Of all the knots that nature ties

The sacred secret sympathies,

That as with viewless chains of gold

The heart a happy prisoner hold,

None is more chaste, more bright, more pure,

Stronger stern trials to endure,

None is more purged of earthly leaven,

More like the love of highest heaven,

Than that which binds in bond how blest
A daughter to a father's breast.

DE RANCE.

SARA MAY, OR HOW TO BE SOMEBODY.

BY MRS. H. C. KNIGHT.

"Now she has come home to stay!" shouted the little ones, clapping their hands, as the mail-coach stopped before the door, and Mr. May handed out his eldest; they ran out to meet her as she ran up the steps, while her father was directing about the luggage. Kiss followed kiss, as the little ones again shouted, "Now she has come home to stay;

Sara has! oh!”

The sitting-room was jubilant, the fire sparkled, the children skipped, the canaries sang, puss ran under the sofa, while Mrs. May busied herself in having the tea-things brought up. The newly-arrived was a bright, intelligentlooking girl of seventeen or thereabouts, possibly eighteen; not handsome, certainly, as heroines are handsome, but handsome with youth, health, and intelligence. Sara May had just graduated from one of the popular boarding-schools, and graduated with honors too; the medal for mathematics had been awarded to her. Dr. Johns could not trip her up in Virgil, and her composition had been asked for by the village editor. Sara's father was proud of her; so was her mother; although she was not Sara's own mother, but a second mother, who nevertheless loved her tenderly, and whom Sara loved, or ought to love; in fact, they were not very well acquainted with each other. After her mother's death, Sara had lived with an aunt; and for the last four or five years she had been kept at a boarding-school, and had only been at home on vacation visits, when she had been regarded more as company than a regular member of the family circle. Then the vacations themselves were broken-up seasons; there was the excitement of her arrival, the coming to and fro of the girls to see her, her paying visits to them, a flitting perhaps to her mother's relatives, her trunks were to be overhauled, old dresses repaired, and the selecting, buying and making new ones, so that the vacation visits did not give her time or op

portunity to take her place as a child and sister in the family circle. She was the visitor for whom much was to be done in reference to her wishes and movements; then she was always looking forward to going away, going back; thus home was not the sphere of her activities, of her proper personal interests; it was rather a convenient stopping-place, to get reIcruited and furnished for duties elsewhere. At school she had been a great favorite; the teachers admired her correct scholarship, and the girls, after fairly yielding to her the palm, were content to sit beneath her influence, not haughtily or imperiously exercised. On the contrary, she was generally willing to lend a helping hand to lagging or faint-hearted learners, who came sidling up to her desk, with woful and disheartened looks, "O, Sara May, you know so much! Do explain this, or that." This perpetual acknowledgment of her superiority, we may well suppose, was not wholly disagreeable to her. Altogether, she had been a young lady of considerable importance at school. Then the compositions. she had helped write, prose and poetry! One would have thought Sara a Prime Minister, by the documents that sometimes lay on her desk. But school-days had had their ending. Sara's class had graduated, and Sara had graduated at the head of her class. Her father had brought her home to stay; that seemed the delightful part to the little circle of brothers and sisters, who welcomed her with almost uproarious joy. The first week was a happy one indeed. The girls flocked to see her. Some of her father's friends, Judge Fenton, and Rev. Mr. Brown, inade calls, particularly upon her; and not only for his sake, but also for hers. Her father had a. pretty book-case placed in her chamber, and brought some of the books from his library to hers. Altogether, everything looked promising, -a delighted father, a kind and judicious mother, brothers and sisters, a large acquaintance, her own chamber and her own library, what could be pleasanter? So Sara thought until the third week, when she began to miss the expectation of a change, the bustle and excitement, the preparation and arranging for going back. The settling