Holy Child's train? To whom does this Child impart himself? Where does he find a cradle and a throne? Connect the first and last stanzas, and see their co-relation.

Frederick William Faber (1815-1863), one of the converts of the famous "Oxford movement," which brought into the Catholic Church Newman, Manning, Bowden, and so many other gifted English minds. Shortly after his conversion in 1845 he was ordained priest, and joined the Oratorians of St. Philip Neri. Of a singularly contemplative and poetical mind, he turned his abilities to the devotional and meditative aspects of religion, and poured forth the inexhaustible treasures of his soul in those marvellous works, "All for Jesus" "Growth in Holiness," "Bethlehem," "The Blessed Sacrament," "The Creature and the Creator," "The Conferences," and "The Foot of the Cross," works which have become fountains of refreshment for devout souls in every land. Wordsworth said of him that "Nature lost a great poet when Faber became a priest." Nature lost, but Religion gained; and the muse that had so sweetly sung the praise of Nature in the "Cheswell Water-lily," "Sir Lancelot" and the "Styrian Lake,” chanted the mysteries of divine love in those beautiful Catholic Hymns which shall cause the name of Faber to be remembered as long as the English language shall be spoken.

THE night was dark and tranquil over the town of

Nazareth, when Joseph went forth. No commandment of God ever found such alacrity in highest saint or readiest angel as this one had found in Mary. She heard Joseph's words, and she smiled on him in silence as he spoke. There was no perturbation, no hurry, although there was all a mother's fear. She took up her treasure, as he slept, and went forth with Joseph into the cold starlight, for poverty has few preparations to make. She was leaving home again. Terror and

hardship, the wilderness and heathendom, were before her; and she confronted all with the calm anguish of an already broken heart. Here and there the night wind stirred in the leafless fig trees, making the bare branches nod against the bright sky, and now and then a watch-dog bayed, not because it heard them, but from the mere nocturnal restlessness of animals. But as Jesus had come like God, so he went like God, unnoticed and unmissed. No one is ever less missed on earth than he on whom it depends.

The path they took was not the one which human prudence would have pointed out to them. They returned upon the Jerusalem road they had so lately trodden. But, avoiding the Holy City, they passed near Bethlehem, as if his neighborhood should give blessing to those unconscious babes that were still nestling warmly in their mothers' arms. Thus they fell into the road which leads into the wilderness, and, Joseph going before, like the shadow of the Eternal Father, they crossed the frontier of the promised land, far on until they were lost to the eye, like specks on the desert sand. Two creatures had carried the Creator into the wilderness, and were taking care of him there amid the stony sands of the unwatered gullies. Sunrise and sunset, the glittering noon and the purple of midnight, the round moon and the colored haze, came to them in the desert for many a day. Still they travelled on. They had cold to bear by night, and a sun from which there was no escape by day. They had scanty food, and frequent thirst.

They knew whom they were carrying, and looked not for miracles to lighten the load they bore. Old tradition said that one night they rested in a robber's cave. They were received there with rough but kind hospitality by

the wife of the captain of the band. Perhaps it was her sorrow that made her kind; for it is often so with women. Her sorrow was a great one. She had a fair child, the life of her soul, the one gentle, spotless thing amid all the lawlessness and savage life around. Alas! it was too fair to look at; for it was white with leprosy. But she loved it the more, and pressed it more fondly to her bosom, as mothers are wont to do. It was more than ever her life and light now, because of its misfortunes. Mary and Jesus, the robber's wife and the leprous child, together in the cave at nightfall-how fitting a place for the Redeemer! How sweet a type of the Church he has founded! Mary asked for water that she might wash our Blessed Lord, and the robber's wife brought it to her, and the Babe was washed. Kindness, when it opens the heart, opens the eyes of the mind likewise. The robber's wife perceived something remarkable about her guests. Whether it was that there was a light round the head of Jesus, or that the mere vicinity of so much holiness strangely affected her, we know not: but, in much love and with some sort of faith, the mother's heart divined-earth knows that maternal divination well. She took away the water Mary had used in washing Jesus, and washed her little leprous Dimas in it, and straightway his flesh became as rosy and beautiful as a mother could desire. Long years passed. The child outgrew its mother's arms. It did feats of boyish daring on the sands of the wilderness. At last Dimas was old enough to join the band; and though it seems that to the last he had somewhat of the mother's heart about him, he led a life of violence and crime, and at length Jerusalem saw him brought within her gates a captive. When he hung upon the cross, burning with fever, parched with agony, he was

bad enough to speak words of scorn to the harmless sufferer by his side. The sufferer was silent, and Dimas looked at him. He saw something heavenly, something unlike a criminal, about him, such perhaps as his mother had seen some three-and-thirty years before.

It was the child in the water of whose bath his leprosy had been healed. Poor Dimas! thou hast a worse leprosy now, that will need blood instead of water! Faith was swift in its works. Perhaps his heart was like his mother's, and faith a half natural growth in it. He takes in the scene of the crucifixion, the taunts, the outrages, the blasphemies, the silence, the prayer for their pardon, the wishful look cast upon himself by the dying Jesus. It is enough. Then and there he must profess his faith; for the mother's prayers are rising from beneath, and he is being enveloped in a very cloud of mercy. Lord! remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom! See how quickly he had outrun even some of the Apostles. He was fastened to the cross to die, and he knew it was no earthly kingdom in which he could be remembered. This day shalt thou be with me. in paradise! Paradise for thy cave's hospitality, poor young robber! And Jesus died, and the spear opened his heart, and the red stream sprang over the limbs of the dying robber, like a fresh fountain, and though his mother from the cave was not there, his new mother was beneath the cross, and she sent him after her firstborn into paradise, the first of that countless family of sons who through that dear blood should enter into glory.

COMPOSITION.

Describe the cave into which Jesus, Mary and Joseph enter. The rough walls, the instruments of war and of strife scattered about. A little child is in a corner. Give the supposed questions address

by the robber's wife to the Holy Family. The answers given by Mary and Joseph. Mary's request for water. The washing. The robber's wife uses the same water. Her joy at the sudden change in her little boy's skin. He is healed. Go on thus, and conclude by showing that our dear Lord, who has promised reward even for a cup of cold water given in his name, doubly rewards Dimas, whose mother had kindly furnished a basin of water to wash the Infant God.

THE

METHOD-ACCURACY — PUNCTUALITY.

HE habit of method is essential to all who have much work to do, if they would perform it easily and with economy of time. Fuller says to those who would remember what they read: "Marshal thy notions into a handsome method. One will carry twice more weight trussed and packed up in bundles than when it lies. untowardly flapping and hanging about his shoulders."

Cecil, who was a prodigious worker, has a similar saying. "Method," he says, "is like packing things in a box: a good packer will get in half as much again as a bad one." The biographer of Noah Webster tells us that "method was the presiding principle of his life;' and it is evident that without it he never could have got through the herculean task of compiling his great dictionary.

Commissioners of bankruptcy tell us that the books of nine bankrupts out of ten are found to be in a muddle --kept without plan or method. Let every young man, therefore, see that his work is systematized, arranged according to a carefully studied method, which takes up