POETIC SELECTIONS.-THE CHILDREN'S CORNER.

The Children's Corner.

"MASTER'S ALWAYS IN."

"JOHNNY," said a man, winking slyly to a lad of his acquaintance, "you must give extra measure; your master is not in."

Johnny looked solemnly into the man's face, and replied; "My Master is always in, sir!"

Johnny's Master was the all-seeing God. Let every one, when he is tempted, adopt little Johnny's motto: "My Master is always in."

FIVE RICH MEN.

It is a common notion among the poor that it is a fine thing to be rich; which, if not happiness, is a very near approach to it. Doubtless it is a very good thing to be rich, if the rich person knows the value of riches, and turns them to a proper account, for his own advantage, and that of his family, his friends and his fellow-creatures. Doubtless it is a very sad thing to be poor, to endure cold, hunger, and nakedness; or to owe debts which one cannot pay. But when the mass of people come to the conclusion that, as a rule, the rich are much happier than the poor, and that the poor have no compensation for the hardship of their lot, and the rich no drawbacks on the luxury of theirs-an error of serious consequences to their own well being takes possession of their minds, and leads to the worst kind of idolatry, money worship, and that worst kind of heresy, that it is everybody's duty to get rich. In the course of a not very long life, I have known the histories of many persons who had, to use the common phrase, "lots of money,"-money that they either acquired by speculation, by industry, or successful commerce, or that they had inherited from their ancestors. Out of seven such people, whose histories I knew, five were either very miserable in their minds, disappointed in their hopes, or would have exchanged all their money for something that poor people had, but which unkind fate had not bestowed upon them.

The first of these little histories is that of a gentleman who had acquired a million of money, at least, by successful commerce, and was able to retire in the prime of life and strength, and to marry for love a lady well born, accomplished and beautiful. The world was fair before them. They had a town house and a country house, and a shooting box in the highlands. They had a large library, and a picture gallery, carriages and horses, and a yacht. They had troops of friends, and the respect of everybody who knew them. They were hospitable, and adorned every society into which they entered. But they were not altogether happy after the first two or three years of their wedded life. Not that their love diminished, but fortune, which had given so much, did not give them everything. The gentleman desired an heir to his estates, and the lady, with a large maternal heart, desired a child for the sake of a child; and the desired boon, for which she would have been so grateful and happy, was denied her. Beggars came to her

FIVE RICH MEN.

gate with twins in their arms, and she sometimes thought such beggars were happier than she; at last the sight of an infant would so excite her envy, and so deeply impress her with the sense of loneliness and of undeserved misery, as to produce paroxysms of passionate hysteria.

Another little story is that of a successful manufacturer, but rude, unlettered, and without much mental resources to help him pass away the time, who retired from business at the age of sixty, and built himself a splendid mansion-he called it a castle—on the shore of a lovely lake, in the highlands of Scotland, far away from the highways of travel, in order that his aristocratic seclusion might not be invaded by tourists or desecrated by the plebian rail and the whiz of the democratic locomotive. When the castle was furnished, and his grounds were laid out to his order, he suddenly discovered he had nothing to do to occupy his time. He was no company to himself, and he and his wife were mentally as opposed to each other as vinegar and oil. Friends and acquaintances occasionally came to visit him; but he lived too far out of the beaten track to expect visits from any but idlers, and what the Scotch call "scorners," and as his conversation was not amusing, and he never lent or gave away money, even such waifs and strays from the great fold of humanity seldom ventured into his remote seclusion. He was too proud to go back to the great city, and recommence business, which might have been the best thing for him to have done under the circumstances. So he continued to dwell in his mountain fortress, without an object in life, or any amusement that he cared about. He had nothing to do but to fish, or to shoot, and he cared nothing for either of these modes of pastime. After about six months of it, he ordered a boat upon the lake to go, as he said, fishing for salmon. Unobserved by any one, he put an old grindstone into the boat, and a few yards of rope line, and rowed himself away to the middle of the lake. He was never seen again alive. The boat drifted on shore without him in the evening, and three days afterwards his body was drawn from the bottom of the lake, with the grindstone tied around his neck.

The third little story is equally suggestive. A very hard-working professional man, careful, prudent, abstemious, but somewhat eccentric, retired from busy life with thirty thousand pounds, in order, as he said, to enjoy himself, and pass the evening of his life in the mild radiance of the setting sun. But it was not to be. A serious, and, as it proved, fatal illness overtook him, before, as he

FIVE RICH MEN.

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expressed it," he had been three months out of business." He did not suffer much, and by no means expected a fatal termination to his malady. After ten day's confinement to his room he was somewhat alarmed by the grave face and demeanor of his usual hearty and cheerful medical attendant. "I think," said the latter, "that it is my duty to recommend to you, if you have any worldly affairs to settle, to do it." The patient sprang up in bed. "Do you mean to tell me, doctor, that I am dying?" Oh, no," said the doctor, kindly, "I hope not, and I trust that many years are in store for you; still, if there is any matter of business for you to settle, settle it. Life is always uncertain; and it is best to be prepared for all contingencies." "Doctor," said the sick man, 'you cannot deceive me. You think I am dying, and you do not wish to tell me the truth. Well! I have toiled, and struggled, and screwed, and saved for forty years, and thought at the last I was going to enjoy myself for a little while before the end. And now you tell me I am dying. All I can say it is aHe added two words that were very comic, very lamentable, very unrespectable; turned his face to the wall, and never spoke more.

Fourth on my list of the unhappy rich, is a gentleman who retired at the age of fifty from a large and prosperous business, with the expectation that his share of the partnership would amount to half a million sterling. On a settlement of accounts, and the valuation of the assets between him and his partners, it was found that his share fell a little, but not much, short of two hundred thousand pounds. All his life from very early youth, he had overworked his weary brain. He had been unwisely eager to grow rich, and had overtasked the energies both of his body and mind in the attempt to build up a fortune, and to become the founder of a family that should rank among the first in the country in which he resided. He loved wealth for its own sake, and with a love beyond reason. Though a clear fortune of two hundred thousand pounds, or even half the money, would seem to men something to be grateful for, and to be well enjoyed and well secured, it did not seem so to this greedy man, who had made money his idol, and the only object of reverence in the world. His brain was weakened by the hard work experienced in making and taking care of this magnificent, but to him disappointing sum, and he brooded so much over the failure to reach the half million he had so long calculated upon amassing, that symptoms of aberration of intellect were soon apparent to his family. His brain softened, and in less

THE REIGN OF VICTORIA.

than a twelvemonth after the winding up of his partnership, his mind was wholly gone, and it became necessary to place him under the protection of keepers.

My last rich man-a very rich man he was-an owner, not of hundreds of thousands, but of millions-was not unhappy; but was on the contrary, cheerful, and happier than most men are permitted to be in this world. But, strange to say, his happiness arose not from his real wealth, but from his imaginary poverty. At the close of a long, honourable and useful life, he took it into his head that the world had entered into a conspiracy to reduce him to pauperism, and that he would end his days in the workhouse. It was in vain to argue the point with him. His faith was fixed and settled. He came to the conviction, though the possessor of millions, that he was de jure and de facto a pauper, and reduced in his old age to labour for his daily bread. When he consulted his son, who was to be the inheritor of his vast wealth, as to what was to be done under these unhappy circumstances, the son, acting under medical advice, offered to settle a handsome annuity upon his father. The pride of the old gentleman was aroused. "No! no!" he said; "give me employment; I am still hale and hearty. I have always taken pleasure in gardening. Make me your gardener, and I will owe no man anything, except my thanks to you, my dear son, for giving me employment such as is consistent with my self-respect to accept. And, mind you, I will accept no more than the usual wages, and no less." Still acting under medical advice, the son humoured the harmless delusion of the father, and paid him regularly his weekly wages. At last the old man died, happy that he could earn his honest bread to the last, and happy in the consciousness that he had so good a son.-All the Year Round.

THE REIGN OF VICTORIA.

Or the persons who occupied thrones when Victoria's reign began, almost all are dead or in exile. Nicholas of Russia, Louis Philippe of France, Ferdinand of Austria, Frederick William of Prussia, Charles-John of Sweden, Leopold of Belgium, William of Holland, Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies, Louis of Bavaria, Maria of Portugal, Sultan Mahmoud, Pope Gregory, and others, all have gone beyond that river which every breathing thing must cross, without the aid of bridge, or boat, or balloon. Don Pedro II. of Brazil is one of the few sovereigns of 1837 who survive, but he was then a