THE CHILDREN'S CORNER.

The Children's Corner.

LITTLE EDWARD.

THE Sweet, soft air of a June morning fanned the red cheeks of a finelooking boy some eight years of age, as with satchel on his back, and smiles on his face, he ran gaily along the grassy path to school. He was a child one might love at first sight-with such an open ex. pression of countenance, that you would feel yourself immediately attached to him. Then so ruddy withal, none would fear that he would soon be the occupant of an early grave. Alas! what are more deceitful than appearances? Nothing.

It is now high noon. The breeze is sleeping, the sun is pouring out the full blaze of heat upon the earth; our little friend, Edward, is returning from school. His step, how ever, is slow and feeble, his cheek pale, his eye dull, and an air of languor has gathered upon all his features. Rapid are the steps by which he descends to the gates of death. There he lies in the last hour of life; the struggle with the king of terrors has commenced. Looking up to his father he says, "Father, must I die?"

"Yes, my dear boy, I fear you must," replies the heart-broker parent. "Father, wont you go into the grave with me?"

"I can't, my child!"

there alone; it looks so dark."

Gradually his features settled into the fixedness of death, his breathing grew less and less distinct until his pulse stood still, bis heart ceased its action, and the suffering boy was changed i..to the bright seraph, floating on silvery wings in the sweet atmosphere of heaven.

Children! would you die as died little Edward? Then pray to him who says, "Suffer little children to come unto me, an forbid them not," and he will forgive your sin and take your souls under his care.

LITTLE MARY.

A MINISTER of the gospel one day speaking of faith, related a beautiful illustration that had just occurred in his own family. He had gone into a cellar, which in winter time was quite dark, and entered by a trap-door. A little daughter, only three years old, was trying to find him, and came to the trap door; but on looking down, all was dark, dark; and she called, "Are you down the cellar, father?"

"Yes, would you like to come?" "It is dark I can't come, father." "Well, my child, I am right below you, and I can see you, though you cannot see me; if you will drop down I will catch you."

"O! I should fall: I can't see you." I know, child, but I am really

"But, Father, I dont like to go here, and you shall not fall, or hurt yourself. If you will jump, I will catch you safely."

"Be not afraid, my son; Jesus, the Friend of children, will go with you, if you ask him."

The boy looked earnestly at his father, slowly turned his face toward the wall, and for a short time his lips moved. Presently he turned his head toward his father with a smile of joy, and said, "I am not afraid to die now, for Jesus will go with me, and I shall be safe."

Little Mary strained her eyes to the utmost, but she could catch no glimpse of her father. She hesitated, then advanced a little farther; then, summoning all her resolution, she threw herself forward, and was received safely in her father's arms.

Young Reader, throw yourself into the open arms of Jesus your Saviour, who is waiting to receive you.

AN ENCOUNTER WITH SLAVE HUNTERS.

"UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" is the name of a wonderfully interesting book, which, when published in the United States, met with such a sale as probably no other book ever did. It has been published in London, and is selling rapidly. Whoever reads it is delighted with it. The tales are all founded on facts.

Uncle Tom is the chief hero of the book; and George Harris, with his wife Eliza, and their child, are an interesting group. We give a scene from the narrative of their escape. George flies one way, and his wife, with her little boy, another. She crosses a river of broken masses of ice with her boy in her arms, and her pursuers dare not follow. After many adventures and escapes, George and his wife and child, with Jim, who has come back from Canada to aid his aged mother to escape, all meet again, and some Quakers are aiding their flight. They are now in a wagon at early morn, and the slave hunters are on their track close behind. They push on for the rocks before them.

"Come ahead," said Phineas, as they reached the rocks, and saw, in the mingled starlight and dawn, the traces of a rude but plainly marked foot-path leading up among them; "this is one of our old hunting-dens. Come up!"

Phineas went before, springing up the rocks like a goat, with the child in his arms. Jim came second, bearing his trembling old mother over his shoulders, and George and Eliza brought up the rear. The party of horsemen came up to the fence, and, with mingled shouts and oaths, were dismounting, to prepare to follow them. A few moments' scrambling brought them to the top of the ledge; the path then passed between a narrow defile, where only one could walk at a time, till suddenly they came to a rift or chasm more than a yard in breadth, and beyond which lay a pile of rocks, separate from the rest of the ledge, standing full thirty feet high, with its sides steep and perpendicular as those of a castle. Phineas easily leaped the chasm, and sat down the boy on a smooth flat platform of crisp white moss, that covered the top of the rock.

"Over with you!" he called; "spring now, once for your lives!" said he, as one after another sprang across. Severa

AN ENCOUNTER WITH SLAVE HUNTERS.

fragments of loose stone formed a kind of breastwork, which

observation of those below. Phineas, peeping over the

sheltered their position from the "Well, here we all are," said stone breastwork to watch the assailants, who were coming tumultuously up under the rocks. "Let 'em get us if they

can. Whoever comes here has to walk single file between those two rocks, in fair range of your pistols, boys, d'ye see?” "I do see," said George; "and now as this matter is ours, let us take all the risk, and do all the fighting."

"Thee's quite welcome to do the fighting, George," said Phineas, chewing some checkerberry leaves as he spoke; "but I may have the fun of looking on, I suppose. But see, these fellows are kinder debating down there, and looking up, like hens when they are going to fly up on to the roost. Hadn't thee better give 'em a word of advice, before they come up, just to tell 'em handsomely they'll be shot if they do?"

The party beneath, now more apparent in the light of the dawn, consisted of our old acquaintances, Tom Loker and Marks, with two constables, and a posse consisting of such rowdies at the last tavern as could be engaged by a little brandy to go and help the fun of trapping a set of niggers.

"Well, Tom, yer coons are farly treed," said one.

"Yes, I see 'em go up right here," said Tom; "and here's a path. I'm for going right up. They can't jump down in a hurry, and it won't take long to ferret 'em out."

"But, Tom, they might fire at us from behind the rocks," said Marks. "That would be ugly, you know."

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Ugh!" said Tom, with a sneer. "Always for saving your skin, Marks! No danger! Niggers are too plaguy scared!" "I don't know why I shouldn't save my skin," said Marks. "It's the best I've got; and niggers do fight hard, you know, sometimes."

At this moment, George appeared on the top of a rock above them, and, speaking in a calm, clear voice, said,

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Gentlemen, who are you, down there, and what do you

want?"

"We want a party of runaway niggers," said Tom Loker. "One George Harris, and Eliza Harris, and their son, and Jim Selden, and an old woman. We've got the officers here, and a warrant to take 'em; and we're going to have 'em too. D'ye hear? An't you George Harris, that belongs to Mr. Harris, of Shelby county, Kentucky?"

AN ENCOUNTER WITH SLAVE HUNTERS.

"I am George Harris. A Mr. Harris, of Kentucky, did call me his property. But now I'm a free man, standing on God's free soil; and my wife and my child I claim as mine. Jim and his mother are here. We have arms to defend ourselves, and we mean to do it. You can come up, if you like; but the first one of you that comes within the range of our bullets is a dead man, and the next, and the next; and so on till the last!"

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"Oh, come! come!" said a short puffy man, stepping forward, and blowing his nose as he did so. 'Young man, this an't no kind of talk at all for you. You see, we're officers of justice. We've got the law on our side, and the power, and so forth; and so you'd better give up peaceably, you see; for you'll certainly have to give up at last."

"I know very well that you've got the law on your side, and the power," said George, bitterly. "You mean to take my wife to sell in New Orleans, and put my boy like a calf in a trader's pen, and send Jim's old mother to the brute that whipped and abused her before, because he couldn't abuse her son. You want to send Jim and me back to be whipped and tortured, and ground down under the heels of them that you call masters; and your laws will bear you out in it-more shame for you and them! But you havn't got us. We don't own your laws; we don't own your country; we stand here as free, under God's sky, as you are; and, by the great God that made us, we'll fight for our liberty till we die."

George stood out in fair sight, on the top of the rock, as he made his declaration of independence; the glow of dawn gave a flush to his swarthy cheek, and bitter indignation and despair gave fire to his dark eye; and, as if appealing from man to the justice of God, he raised his hand to heaven as he spoke.

If it had been only a Hungarian youth, now bravely defending in some mountain fastness the retreat of fugitives escaping from Austria into America, this would have been sublime heroism; but as it was a youth of African descent, defending the retreat of fugitives through America into Canada, of course we are too well instructed and patriotic to see any heroism in it; and if any of our readers do, they must do it on their own private responsibility. When despairing Hungarian fugitives make their way, against all the search warrants and authorities of their lawful government, to America, press and political cabinet ring with applause and welcome. When despairing African fugitives do the same thing-it is-what is it?

AN ENCOUNTER WITH SLAVE HUNTERS.

Be it as it may, it is certain that the attitude, eye, voice, manner of the speaker, for a moment struck the party below to silence. There is something in boldness and determination that for a time hushes even the rudest nature. Marks was the only one who remained wholly untouched. He was deliberately cocking his pistol, and, in the momentary silence that followed George's speech, he fired at him.

'Ye see, ye get jist as much for him dead as alive in Kentucky," he said coolly, as he wiped his pistol on his coat sleeve. George sprang backward-Eliza uttered a shriek-the ball had passed close to his hair, had nearly grazed the cheek of his wife, and struck in the tree above.

"It's nothing, Eliza," said George quickly.

"Thee'd better keep out of sight, with thy speechifying," said Phineas; 66 they're mean scamps."

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Now, Jim," said George, "look that your pistols are all right, and watch that pass with me. The first man that shows himself I fire at; you take the second, and so on. It won't do, you know, to waste two shots on one."

"But what if you don't hit?"

"I shall hit," said George coolly.

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Good! now there's stuff in that fellow," muttered Phineas, between his teeth.

The party below, after Marks had fired, stood for a moment, rather undecided.

men.

I think you must have hit some on 'em," said one of the "I heard a squeal!"

"I'm going right up for one," said Tom. afraid of niggers, and I an't going to be now. after?" he said, springing up the rocks.

"I never was

Who goes

George heard the words distinctly. He drew up his pistol, examined it, pointed it towards that point in the defile where the first man would appear.

One of the most courageous of the party followed Tom, and, the way being thus made, the whole party began pushing up the rock-the hindermost pushing the front ones faster than they would have gone of themselves. On they came, and in a moment the burley form of Tom appeared in sight, almost at the verge of the chasm.

George fired-the shot entered his side; but, though wounded, he would not retreat, but, with a yell like that of a mad bull, he was leaping right across the chasm into the party.