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LITTLE SALLY.

Miss Ethel, to whom Sally confided her plans, lent them a candlestick and supplied them with candles, as well as giving them a lesson-book; and night after night the two children crouched close together on the stairs, with Sally's mother's shawl wrapped round them, and pored over the mysteries of the alphabet and words of one syllable.

Zeph would have been heartily welcomed to the fireside by Gran'fer and Martha, but his mother had dared him ever to cross the threshold, and he would not disobey her. Poor Gran'fer grew more feeble every day. 'I sha'n't want to go to the work'us, Marthy,' he said one evening. 'I'll be goin' out o' the world soon. You'll give the poor dog a crust for the old man's sake? Toby's a good old dog, ain't he?'

He seemed not to expect a reply to his questions, and soon went on: 'I feels it different since the little lass found out about Jesus. It seems so true, Marthy, as He's here. I believes it all, every word as she says. I can't tell you right how 'tis, Marthy, but He seems to speak quiet in my ear like, when I'm all alone wi' Toby. Sometimes I've put out my hand to touch Him, but I never can feel Him. He cares for the old blind man, don't you think so?'

Martha looked at Gran'fer's face; it was so calm and peaceful that she felt there was truth in his words, and she answered: 'I 'most thinks He do care.'

'Ah!' said the old man, with a soft sigh, 'He do care. An' there's a Rest too, Sally said so; and He said so last night when I was a-bed and kind o' half sleepin' and half listenin'. He said He'd take me and give me my eyesight there.'

Martha's careworn face was wet with tears. Her voice was choked, and she could not speak.

After a while Sally came in from her hour's study, and no sooner did Gran'fer hear her step than he called her to him.

'Come and sit down here,' he said, feebly. Sit down close by Toby. Gran'fer won't be here long.'

'Won't be here long!' The words had a new meaning for Sally that evening. She

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looked straight up into his sightless eyes; then her own dark ones scanned his lined forehead, his peacefully-closed lips, his snow-white hair. Gran'fer, who had been with them ever since she could remember, who had called her his own little lass, and had always been so gentle and patientgoing away out of the world!

Sally's heart gave one wild throb, and in an instant she flung her arms around the old man's neck, and kissed him on forehead, cheek and lips.

'I loves you, I loves you!' she cried with passionate earnestness; 'you are my own Gran'fer. I can't let you go away!'

And Gran'fer, though his sightless eyes soon filled with tears, and though he clasped his withered hands as tightly as he, in his feebleness, could clasp them round Sally's waist, never lost the peaceful expression which for the last fortnight had beautified his face, but answered in a calm voice: 'I'm only goin' to the blind man's Rest, Sally; and you knows you and Marthy 'll come soon.'

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A TALK ABOUT ELECTRICITY.

The words fell like balm on Sally's troubled heart, and when Gran'fer in a few minutes asked her to tell him over again what Miss Ethel had said that day about Jesus, she folded her brown hands and began, thoughtfully, to repeat that saddest, sweetest, and dearest of stories :

'He was good and kind, Gran'fer, but the wicked men couldn't abide Him. They tried ever such a time to cetch Him; and at last, when He knowed He'd been here long enough, He let 'em get hold of Him. He had to die for all the naughty things as we've done against the great God, and He let 'em kill Him in that cruel way. They beat Him with a thing worse than a whip till His back bled, and then they made a great cross, and He took it up a high hill. They wanted to hang Him up on it where everybody could see Him. And they nailed Him to it, Gran'fer, with great, sharp nails as they hammered through His hands and feet, and a crown made o' thorns stuck like great pins into His forehead and

head, and hurt Him ever so much; and He bore it all for love of us. He could have got down off the cross then and went right away up to His pretty home if He'd liked; but then if He'd done that we should be shut out of the Rest, and so He hung still, and the blood trickled from His hands and feet and all down His face, and nobody knows how much it hurt Him to hang there; but He bore it all for love of us.'

Martha had been listening to the simple tale of our Saviour's love, and now her heart was melted too. When Gran'fer said, 'Kneel down and thank Him, Sally,' the heart-weary woman knelt, and hid her face in her hands, while Sally said aloud :

'O, Jesus, we don't know how to thank You right, but we do love You ever so much, and we're so glad as You didn't have to bide on the cross allus. We knows You have got a pretty home, and that You allus listens to us when we talks to You, O! we loves You, Jesus. Gran'fer and mother and Zephie and me all loves You. Amen.

ELECTRICITY.

JONATHAN.

A TALK ABOUT BY UNCLE HEN we were at the Crystal Palace, early in the year, we visited the Electric Exhibition. As we looked around at the many beautiful uses to which electricity is put, we could not help thinking what an important little incident that was which happened about two thousand four hundred years ago. Six hundred years before our Saviour was born, there lived at Miletus, in Asia Minor, an old man whose name was Thales, and who was known to be very wise. This old philosopher was one day handling and rubbing a piece of amber, and on placing it near some light 'hings, he was very much surprised to see these light things jump towards the amber. Now, although he was a wonderfully clever man, he did not try to find out the reason of this. He only wondered why it was so, and at last thought that amber when rubbed received some sort of life. And there he

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left the subject. Two thousand two hundred years rolled away, and we find that in 1600 A.D. there lived at Colchester a man named Gilbert, famous also for his wisdom. This man, reading what old Thales had written about amber in one of his books, like a wise man, determined to find out if other things would act like amber. And it was not long before Gilbert had made a list of things that would become 'electrical' by rubbing; and from the Greek word electron, which means amber, he gave the name electricity to this new power.

This Gilbert, you see, loved to dive into difficulties, and to make mysteries plain; and there have been very many men who have had the same talent since then, and to whom we owe all those inventions and discoveries which have made such a great difference in the world. There was one who, in 1672, made the first machine for producing electricity. This was a very simple globe of sulphur turned by a handle and pressed,

GLIMPSES AT EVERY-DAY WONDERS.

as it was turned, with a cloth held by the hand to make it electrical. These were simple beginnings of a long chain of experiments, each one of more importance, and showing greater benefits, than the one before it. As the clever men, who took up the work where the other philosophers had left it, got more knowledge, so they made better and more powerful machines, and at last found out that the electricity they produced with their machines could be carried along wires in connection with the machine.

This fact at length led some one to think that the current of electricity along the wires would give at one end similar signs to those made at the other. Then dials, something like the face of a clock, but having letters instead of figures, and a hand like a compass needle, were fitted to the ends of the wires; and on trial it was found that whatever movement was made with one needle the electric current made the other needle at the other end of the wire perform. Thus the great telegraph system originated. And now, like the fine threads of the beautiful spider's web, the active wires of the telegraph spread out above our houses, alongside our railways, across the country, and last, but not least, under rolling waves of the sea.

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sketch in the Picture, had a hole pecked right through by these birds.

The ends of two wires attached to a powerful battery are called poles. When these poles are brought together and then separated a short distance, the current of electricity jumps across the space, and fills the space with intense light. Now this light is so very hot that it will melt the hardest metals, and even the diamond. So something harder than metal is made, called carbon, and placed in holders connected with the wires, and then this carbon forms the poles. The light is found to arise chiefly from the white-hot tips of the carbon rods, and from an arch of flame which spreads from one to the other, and through which little pieces of white-hot carbon pass over from one point to the other. light can now be used to light our streets with, or our rooms, or the miner may carry it with safety into the dangerous mines, or the diver down into the sea. It also is used in some of our lighthouses.

This

Glimpses at Every day Wonders.

BY SARSON.

III. THE HAND.

Mr. Garbutt came home to tea one even

Some of these machines do not require any Wing the children had a wonderful tale to tell

one to be constantly watching them and writing the message, for when a message comes by them they will print it in capital letters, or in long and short strokes, or in wriggled lines upon paper. Each of these lines have distinct meanings.

By an instrument invented a few years ago, such as the man in the Picture is using, named the telephone, a person may speak or sing at one end and be heard at the other, though the distance be a long

way.

Have you ever noticed the humming noise in a pole that has a telegraph wire at the top? This noise attracts the woodpecker, who thinks it is caused by insects inside the wood, and the bear, who mistakes it for the hum of the bees, of whose honey he is so fond. The piece of wood with the birds on, of which our artist gives a

him. A little Savoyard, with a barrel-organ and

a monkey, had come before the window in the course of the afternoon, and truly the monkey had behaved in a remarkable fashion. It was dressed in a little red frock with a collar and bow. Bribed by a biscuit, it had run up the front door-steps, jumped on the window-sill, and eaten its biscuit in view of the children; nurse said, 'just like a Christian.'

Charlie said that nurse must have meant like a human being.'

Well, and it was like a very funny, ugly little girl,' said Ethel: don't you think it is very strange God should have made any animal so much like us, papa ??

Us!' exclaimed Charlie, with a laugh that quite disconcerted his little sister. 666 "Very funny, ugly little girls." I'll never think you conceited again, Ethel.'

'Now, Charlie, Charlie,' said his mamma; 'you shouldn't take Ethel up so often.'

Though the monkey is like a caricature of man,' said Mr. Garbutt, 'there are points of difference which separate it widely from what Ethel would call the ugliest and funniest of us. Perhaps Charlie would point them out.'

Charlie thought that it was very easy to show the difference between a man and a monkey. But when [Continued on p. 122.

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