kill you, and you have saved my life. Now, if I live, and if you wish it, I will serve you as your most faithful slave, and will bid my sons do the same. Forgive me!"

The king was very glad to have made peace with his enemy so easily, and to have gained him for a friend, and he not only forgave him, but said he would send his servants and his own physician to attend him, and promised to restore his property.

Having taken leave of the wounded man, the king went out into the porch and looked around for the hermit. Before going away

he wished once more to

beg an answer to the questions he had put. The hermit was outside, on his knees, sowing seeds in the beds that had been dug the day before.

The king approached him, and said: "For the last time, I pray you to answer my questions, wise man."

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'You have already been answered!" said the hermit, still crouching on his thin legs, and looking up at the king, who stood before him.

How answered? What do you mean?" asked the king.

"Do you not see?" replied the hermit. "If you had not pitied my weakness yesterday, and had not dug these beds for me, but had gone your way, that man would have attacked you, and you would have repented of not having stayed with me. So the most important time was when you were digging the beds; and I was the most important man; and to do me good was your most important business. Afterwards, when that man ran to us, the most important time was when you were attending to him, for if you had not bound up his wounds he would have died without having made peace with you. So he was the most important man, and what you did for him was your most important business. Remember then there is only one time that is important - Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with any one else and the most important affair is to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!" LEO TOLSTOI. Abridged.

CONTENT

My neighbor hath a little field,
Small store of wine its presses yield,
And truly but a slender hoard

Its harvest brings for barn or board.
Yet tho' a hundred fields are mine,
Fertile with olive, corn, and wine;
Tho' Autumn piles my garners high,
Still for that little field I sigh.
For ah! methinks no otherwhere
Is any field so good and fair.
Small tho' it be, 'tis better far
Than all my fruitful vineyards are,
Amid whose plenty sad I pine

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Ah, would the little field were mine!" Large knowledge void of peace and rest, And wealth with pining care possest. These by my fertile lands are meant. That little field is called Content.

ROBERTSON TROWBRIDGE.

THE BOYHOOD OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ON the twelfth day of February, 1809, a homely little baby was born into the small

est and humblest and meanest of homes. It was a miserable little cabin that you would hardly call a hut, placed on a stony hillside, in what is now the central section of the great state of Kentucky; but, miserable as it was, it was the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln.

His father, Thomas Lincoln, did not like to work; so he simply cleared and farmed enough to give his family "a little meal and a little milk,” and that had to satisfy them. It takes pluck to keep a farm up to the mark, and this Thomas Lincoln never had.

Lincoln's mother, however, was very hardworking. She worked herself to death for her husband and children; but, while doing this, she laid in her son the foundations of truth, and honor, and goodness, and the ambition to do something and be something in the world, that helped him all through life. Lincoln never forgot her. His earliest recollection of her was of the days when he and his sister Sarah sat at their mother's feet, while she, as well as she was able, told them stories and taught them to spell and read.

The boyhood of Lincoln had been hard and comfortless. It had given him none of the advantages and none of the childish pleasures that make the memory of home dear to so many men and women. There was but little fun and frolic about it; there were no games to play and no boys and girls to play with; the nearest school was eight miles away and the boy's father thought going to school a waste of time. But his mother declared that her boy and girl should go to school, and so, for a few weeks, once in a while, the brother and sister would trudge off eight miles to the log schoolhouse, with nothing to eat but corn bread, and little to learn except spelling and arithmetic. Even this schooling was short, and in all his life, Abraham Lincoln never went to school more than a year, counting all the days together.

So he was a lonely little fellow in his childhood. Though his father hated work, he was perfectly willing to have his wife and son and daughter work; and he put many hard tasks on the small and scrawny eightyear-old. Owing to the father's shiftless