thing that was not true.  Ah, if she had known what kind of people these were, she would never have placed me with them.  But I will try to please them, and try to be content; and I do pray every day that I may not be tempted to lie and swear like those with whom I am obliged to live.  There is a good old man, a tailor, who lives next door to us.  He is going to M——­, and will give you this letter; so good-bye, dear George, and do not forget your friend,

     William Raymond.

He sealed the letter and sent it by the tailor, and he felt somewhat happier, for he had some faint hope that his kind friend, the baker, would interfere in his behalf.  He had not, however, magnified the misery of his condition; for not only did he feel keenly the want of such comforts as he had enjoyed in his humble home, but his life was rendered miserable by the injustice and severity with which he was treated.  His master was a man of violent temper, who, finding he possessed little aptitude for shoemaking, tried to make him love it, first by flogging, and afterwards by half-starvation; following in the last-named measure the advice of his miserly help-mate, who believed it the best way of developing genius.  In vain did William try by gentleness and zeal to soften their harshness; he had no one to interfere in his behalf, and he was made boy of all work, and scolded and blamed from morning till night.  None loved him, and while he pined for the loss of the affection he once enjoyed, he found no one to love.  No one treated him kindly, and gladness became a stranger to his heart.

In the midst of Sabbath privileges, he was in danger of becoming a heathen.  He could not go to church or Sabbath school, because he was wanted to assist in the regular Sunday cooking; he heard no word of prayer or psalm of praise, and he might well have exclaimed with the Psalmist, “I looked on my right hand, but there was no man that would know me; refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul.”

Still, he could not at once forget the teachings of his early childhood.  He prayed that he might be kept from the power of the wicked, and the great and mighty Hearer of prayer was indeed his guard.  His eye fell kindly on the desolate boy, and was only preparing him by present trials for future good.  Still our young hero was not without faults.  There was a little spice of pride in his composition, and, as we have learned from his letter, he hated the humble trade to which he was apprenticed.  This was wrong:  there is no occupation, however lowly, which cannot be made respectable by the proper discharge of the duties belonging to it; and if our young readers will remember that all their needs and changes are known unto Him who bountifully supplieth all, they will also recognise how possible it is to honour Him, whose servants they are, by an upright walk and conscientious advance in the allotted path.