always the first thing he did in the morning; no one could imagine why, for not a half a dozen times in his life had he discovered anything remarkable. There was always the same meadow, the same creek, the same rail track winding along beyond, and in the distance the little stone church. Hattie said she could see it all quite as well in bed with her eyes shut, as to get up and stand shivering on one foot looking at it.

But on this particular morning Charley was able to make an announcement that put an end to all napping on the part of the little girls.

"Goodness me, ain't the river raised, though! Look on the banks, too! 'Six months on an ice-floe!' What a chance for a fellow!"

Hattie bundled out of bed and rushed to the window, and little Sue followed straining her eyes in vain to discover, up stream or down, any signs of the wonderful party of voyagers she had so often heard her brother tell about.

Charley had been much interested in Captain Tyson's account of that journey on which the explorers' most dreaded enemy had furnished them a safe conveyance, without engine, mast or rudder, for so many months and miles; and he had often longed for a chance to know by experience the sensation of floating on an ice-raft. Here, he thought, was the opportunity. But he would be prudent and say nothing about it for the present, at least. Mamma was "dreadful 'fraid; " he complained to himself. She never was a boy, and somehow he couldn't convince her that boys could be trusted to take care of themselves. "I'll go out and look around," he thought. "The river looks pretty lively from here. If it doesn't run very swift, and I think she won't object, I'll ask her; but if I think she will, why, I'll go it on the sly."

Charley was dressed and out to reconnoiter in no time, and the little girls were not much behind him; but they were shortly recalled by their mamma, whom they found in street dress and with bonnet and cloak at hand.

breakfast. I trust they will keep out of danger to-day,” added Mrs. Rae to her husband. "There's no skating now, so I shall not worry about Charley."

Charley's face was so red about this time that his mother noticed it and thought he was feverish; and when he asked to be excused she began to be anxious, and looked at his tongue and his throat, and half doubted whether she had better go.

But there really seemed no cause for alarm, and again expressing her relief that the skating was over, Mrs. Rae put on her hat and cloak. As for the creek, it never once entered her mind to consider that as an agent for danger or mischief any more than she would one of the little black turtles that had their home somewhere between its banks.

Now Norah," said she to the good-natured girl, "try and keep an eye on Sue till Mr. Rae comes back. She can play out-doors; I don't see anything that she can get into, and I shall be home to dinner."

The little ones were kissed and the wagon drove off. Norah sat down to her breakfast and in a chat with Mike thought no more of the children, who, after a few minutes, ran into the meadow where they could see Charley and Will Cummins, the boy next door, pushing small ice-cakes off into the river.

Charley seemed to be coaxing Will into something to which he objected, but as his sisters came up he stopped; and all Hattie heard, though her ears were wide open as usual, was, "Keep dark!"

"What is it?" asked she; "what are you going to do?"

"Nothing," said Charley; "just you look up there on St. Helena and see what a pile she's caught."

St. Helena was a tiny island. Mrs. Rae was an object teacher and the children had taken a good many geography lessons on the banks of the creek. The shores looked as if they had been cut out by "a big jiggering iron," Hattie said; and nearly every irregularity was dignified as cape or bay, isthmus or harbor.

It did not matter in the least that Baffin's Bay was in close neighborhood to Florida,

or that West Point with its small brick fort, which had fortunately escaped destruction, was just opposite Cape Horn. Even little Sue could define all the "natural divisions of land," as the geography says.

Charley had hoped to get rid of the girls after a time; but, as is generally the case, they wouldn't be got rid of. As the morning passed by Sue became hungry and went in to Norah for a doughnut, but Hattie suspected that some project was on foot, and remained on the field. The sun shone very warm, and Charley could see that the ice was melting; if he waited to tire Hattie out it might be too late. So as a stroke of policy he took her into partnership, thereby cutting off the possibility of her running to tell. "Let's have an ice-floe, Hattie." "Real, do you mean, to get on?" "Yes, of course."

"Oh, I'd be afraid."

position just in the edge of the water on the sloping bank, where it was thought the girls had better get on.

"What do you want of those things? asked Charley, as Hattie came forward to embark with a door-mat and an immense old muff of her grandmother's. The old muff had seen considerable of the world since the day when grandmother went to the city with a purse full of Mexican dollars to buy it, and rode home again, forty miles in a sleigh, half hidden behind it. But the muff and the money and the style of traveling had all gone out of fashion long since, and now it did duty as a foot-warmer when the girls went sleighing, and served as a drum-major's hat when Charley's home guard paraded. On this occasion it was the only thing toward an Arctic outfit that Hattie in her haste could find. The door-mat she spread upon the ice for a cushion and she

"Yes, but it was bigger than any of these." "So is the ocean bigger than the river; it wasn't any bigger for the ocean."

"How far would we go?"

"Oh, we could stop most anywhere; I'd take that pole there and I could push in to land any time."

you coming?" she asked as Charley made no move to step on.

"Who'd push you off? Will and I will float you and then I'll get on at 'Cape Cod' there before you get out into the stream. Now hold on to Sue in case she gets scart if it tips a little."

"We'll have to take Sue," said Hattie, and Charley saw the need of that immediately. Sue always had the last bit of news she had heard or the last sight she had seen right on the end of her tongue, and no matter what the consequence was, it always would slip right off on the first occasion. That fact decided Hattie that she herself had better go to the house for Arethusa, Sue's baby, whom she insisted should be added to the party.

It proved quite a difficult matter to find a suitable cake of ice in a place where it could be launched. But at last the boys selected one on the banks of the "Bay of Biscay" as the best fitted to their purpose; and after much prying and pushing it was put in

self and her little sister on their seat, forgot her furs, and grandma's muff unnoticed slipped into the water and was not seen again till it was picked out of the brush below, some days afterward.

But Charley tipped more decidedly than the ice-floe; for as it suddenly gave way and slid into deeper water, he lost his footing and followed it as far as his length would go; and by the time he was on his feet again it had rounded "Cape Cod" and caught by the current was rapidly slipping down the creek.

It was not Sue alone who was scared now. She, poor little body, sobbed and clung to Hattie, who though white as a sheet at finding her strange craft without a pilot, now spinning round as some whirlpool caught it,

and again rushing with speed on its way, still had presence of mind to hold on to Sue and sit quietly.

Charley did the screaming as he ran along the bank. Whom to call he did not know; his father he had not seen since he drove away with his mother after breakfast. So he kept along shore as near the girls as possible, while Will hurried for help.

Just at that moment, in full confidence that the children "wouldn't get into anything," Mr. Rae was comfortably talking town news in the post-office, as he waited for the returning train. And just at that moment the train whistled and came in sight, and Mrs. Rae, looking toward the house for the usual salute of handkerchiefs and hats, had her eye caught half way by something on the river, she did not know what. She did know that she had tied those little red and blue hoods on two little brown heads that were very dear to her, and that they were in great danger; further than that, after one piercing scream, she knew nothing. Mr. Rae, as he stood on the depot platform, was shocked to have his wife handed out to him as helpless as the brown paper bundles that the sympathizing passengers hurried after her; till some one of them, whose attention had been drawn to the adventurers on the creek, was able partly to explain the cause to him.

Meantime the ice-floe rushed toward the bridge. If only some one might be crossing! It was the one hope poor Hattie had, and she was sick with terror as they slid underneath and no call of rescue reached them; only Charley's hoarse cry, "Help! help!"

But no help came, and had it not been for the "Gulf of Mexico" I am afraid the trip would have been a tragedy. But the gulf, which was just at the sudden bend of the river, held out the two capes at its en

trance like two arms, and the ice-floe glided straight into its embrace, and the little girls were safe. There was no danger of their floating out again, and they might have landed successfully, but in their haste they forgot all caution, and both got a thorough ducking.

It was a sorry party that walked dripping into Norah's clean kitchen through one door as Mrs. Rae was helped into it through another.

For a moment there was a tableau. Mrs. Rae was speechless through surprise and joy; the children, with terror at their mother's pallid face; while Norah, who was preparing dinner, stood motionless with amazement, holding suspended over a kettle what looked like the bolster of a doll's bed stuffed to its utmost. Charley never saw a “roly poly" pudding afterwards that he did not recall the scene, and how Norah plunged the pudding back into the pot, and picked up Sue and undressed and comforted her.

The next day they were all as bright as ever except Arethusa. Her loss was not noticed for some time, but though she was found and every effort made to bring her to herself, it was of no use. Sue said that she never would have known her; so her mamma hung her up on the wall, and said that her usefulness was not yet past; every time they looked at her she could preach them a sermon.

Charley ventured to inquire as to the text, and his father suggested "Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him." Whereupon he was sorry that he had inquired, and trembled in his shoes for some days; but his mother thought that the fright had taught him a lesson, and the rod remained on its parent tree uncut. And this is the story of Charley's Ice-Floe. Emily Adams.

FAIRLY to estimate the present position of the Protestant Episcopal Church and answer the questions which are inevitably asked by thoughtful people as to its future, it is nec

essary to give a brief history of the difficulties which it has met with since its start in America.

The earliest Anglican services were held

in the New World during the winter of 1607-8, at the mouth of the Kennebec, by the Rev. Richard Seymour, the chaplain of the colony which Popham vainly attempted to found at that place. At a later period handfuls of Anglicans were gathered into congregations in the chief towns along the Atlantic sea-board-Philadelphia, New York, Newport, Boston, Marblehead and Portsmouth and were supplied with clergymen who were, for the most part, maintained by the "Venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts." The parishes were under the spiritual oversight of the Bishop of London, and the people were mostly tories in politics and religion. There was no bishop, and when fit pastors were selected from the congregation they were always sent to London for ordination.

Practically, the ecclesiastical polity was hardly different from that of the Puritans, who, at least in New England, constituted "the standing order." The English Church was not aggressive in those days, and John Wesley's was the principal voice for religion which was heard in England by the common people. The colonial Church was hardly felt in the New World, except as the organ of aristocratic religion. Its legacy was this very hauteur which the Puritans cordially hated, and the undue ambition of the laity as directors in the management of spiritual affairs.

In all these pre-revolutionary years, constant efforts were made to secure the consecration of bishops for America. Dr. Beardsley's "History of the Church in Connecticut,” and his "Life and Correspondence of Dr. Samuel Johnson," tell the story of those eventful and tragic years. It was the time during which the colonies were assuming a determined attitude toward the mother country. It was whispered in the ears of the King and of the Prime Minister that, if prelates were sent to America, it would prejudice the Crown in the eyes of the Puritans and their compatriots, and whatever the English bishops might have desired to do was made subordinate to the policy of the state. It was one of those things which seemed possible but could not be done, and this single fact has done more than anything

else to put the Protestant Episcopal Church in an anomalous position in this country. It was Episcopal in name but not in fact when it was putting forth its first roots in our soil and imparting its first impressions of conscious life to our ancestors. It had an acephalous beginning, and was in a position to be seriously misunderstood from the start, and to be withheld from proper and efficient organization for a century. It was Congregational in fact and Episcopal in name, and the two things, however excellent in themselves, do not tend together to make an efficient and rightly organized Episcopal Church. This has been the hidden and remote cause of very much which every one has regretted in this religious body; and when the Epis copate came it was grafted into what has until lately been felt to be a system which had not quite full control of its proper working elements. It was at the heels when it should have been at the head of the body.

It was November 14, 1784, that Dr. Samuel Seabury was consecrated as the Bishop of Connecticut, in the Episcopal Chapel in Aberdeen, by the non-juring bishops of Scotland who were not under the political control of the English Crown. Dr. William White and Dr. Samuel Provoost were not consecrated by the Anglican bishops until February 4, 1787, and it was not until July, 1789, that the first convention of the Episcopal Church met in Philadelphia with a proper organization. The American congregations had been mostly broken up by the Revolution, and even when it began, according to Bishop White's "Memoirs," "there were not more than about eighty parochial clergymen of that [Anglican] Church to the northward and eastward of Maryland;" and out of Boston, Newport, New York and Philadelphia, there were no congregations "held to be of ability to support clergymen of themselves. In Maryland and in Virginia the Episcopal Church was more numerous and had legal establishments for its support. * ** In the more southern colonies the Episcopalians were fewer in proportion than in the two last mentioned, but more than in the northern."

The Revolution sent most of the New England congregations, with their clergy,

to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and at the Philadelphia Convention in 1789, only seven States were represented by seventeen clergymen and sixteen laymen. The Church was almost destroyed. The outlook was hopeless. In New England the political feeling that it was anti-republican and aristocratic, was added to the traditional objections to prelacy. Elsewhere the Methodists had led the way as pioneers in work which has commended itself to all Christian people; the Presbyterians had gained a substantial foothold; and everywhere the Episcopal Church, as the representative of a government which had attempted to crush out American liberty, met with a certain amount of prejudice and opposition. At the time when other religious bodies were striking down into the roots of the national life, this was compelled to nurse its slender interests as an isolated section of society and to consider rather how it could exist than how it could grow. To this fact can be traced much which we feel to be narrow and sectarian and formal in the Episcopal Church, and much which has stood heretofore in the way of its success. It always defended its evangelical truth and apostolic order; it did not fail, point by point, to contend for its principles when they were called in question; but it was so overwhelmingly in the minority that even its followers of reputation, from George Washington onward, including many of the men who have done the country most honor as statesmen, could bring men no further than to concede its respectability. It was too weak and too much surrounded by popular prejudices, to be a popular church. It is hardly pleasant to recall these facts, but the knowledge of them is essential to a fair statement of the Episcopal outlook. They show that, apart from defective organization, the environments were such as to prevent the proper development of parochial or diocesan life. No Church could advance against obstacles which only time could remove. The Episcopal Church dwelt like Ishmael in the desert, apart and alone. It expected nothing from others and gave nothing to them. Its converts were few and rare. It despised "the sects," and became intensely sectarian

itself. Then it patterned, as was natural, closely after the English Church. What interested the Anglican interested the American Churchman. The Methodists adapted their system to the new conditions of the country in which they lived, but Churchmen were so occupied with the struggles in the Mother Church and so fearful lest their peculiarities might offend the American people, that they largely forgot to present in a manly way, to the general public, the distinctive and really valuable points in their system. They apologized for being what they were, when they ought to have thanked God that he had committed to them certain gifts which were of priceless value to American Christianity.

There are those yet living who witnessed this inglorious era of American Episcopacy. The Right Rev. Dr. Smith, the venerable Presiding Bishop, now in his eighty-fifth year, remembers distinctly when the Anglican Episcopate in the United States, sitting as the House of Bishops, used to have ample room around a common dining-table for their deliberations. He was consecrated in 1832, and now the House of Bishops is so large, comprising sixty-one bishops, that all the usages of a public deliberative body have to be observed in their proceedings, and bishops themselves are so common that they have to be men before they are fathers in the Church, if they are to command public attention. It was not till 1835 that the Episcopal Church began to ignore the old lines of self-protection, and assume the distinct attitude of a missionary organization; and even then, against the advice of the late Bishop Doane, it forgot that the Church itself is the great missionary society, and erected an imperium in imperio like the American Board, to take care of its missionary interests. And this monstrosity was tolerated until the General Convention of 1877, with general consent, put it aside for simpler machinery which throws all missionary interests directly into the hands of this chief legislative body of the Church.

When bodies are as closely identified as the English and the American churches of the Anglican communion, there is always danger that the younger will be the solemn