them; we are watchful that our children should not swallow poison, and filthiness, and unwholesome nourishment; we take care that they should be well mannered, and civil, and of fair demeanor; and we ourselves desire to be, or at least to be accounted, wise, and would infinitely scorn to be called fools; and we are so great lovers of health, that we will buy it at any rate of money or observance; and then for honor, it is that which the children of men pursue with passion, it is one of the noblest rewards of virtue, and the proper ornament of the wise and valiant; and yet all these things are not valued or considered, when a merry meeting, or a looser feast, calls upon the man to act a scene of folly, and madness, and healthlessness, and dishonor.

We do to God what we severely punish in our servants; we correct our children for their meddling with dangers, which themselves prefer before immortality; and though no man thinks himself fit to be despised, yet he is willing to make himself a beast, a sot, and a ridiculous monkey, with the follies and vapors of wine; and when he is high in drink or fancy, proud as a Grecian orator in the midst of his popular noises, at the same time he shall talk such dirty language, such mean low things, as may well become a changeling and a fool, for whom the stocks are prepared by the laws, and the just scorn of men.

Every drunkard clothes his head with a mighty scorn; and makes himself lower at the time than the meanest of his servants; the boys can laugh at him when he is led like a cripple, directed like a blind man, and speaks like an infant imperfect noises, lisping with a full and spongy tongue, and empty head, and a vain and foolish heart; so cheaply doth he part with his honor for drink or loads of meat; for which honor he is ready to die, rather than bear it to be disparaged by another; when himself destroys it as bubbles that perish with the breath of children.

Do not the laws of all wise nations mark the drunkard for

a fool, with the meanest and most scornful punishment? And is there anything in the world so foolish as a man that is drunk? But, what an intolerable sorrow hath seized upon great portions of mankind, that this folly and madness should possess the greatest spirits, and the wittiest men, the best company, the most sensible of the word honor, and the most jealous of the shadow, and the most careless of the thing! Is it not a horrid thing, that a wise, or a crafty, a learned, or a noble person, should dishonor himself as a fool, destroy his body as a murderer, lessen his estate as a prodigal, disgrace every good cause that he can pretend to by his relation, and become an appellative of scorn, a scene of laughter or derision, and all, for the reward of forgetfulness and madness? For there are, in immoderate drinking, no other pleas

ures.

Why do valiant men and brave personages fight and die rather than break the laws of men, or start from their duty to their prince, and will suffer themselves to be cut in pieces rather than deserve the name of a traitor, or perjured? And yet these very men, to avoid the hated name of glutton or drunkard, and to preserve their temperance, shall not deny themselves one luscious morsel, or pour a cup of wine on the ground, when they are invited to drink by the laws of the circle or wilder company. - Methinks it were that, if to give life to uphold a cause be not too much, they should not think it too much to be hungry and suffer thirst for the reputation of that cause; and therefore much rather they would think it but duty to be temperate for its honor, and eat and drink in civil and fair measures, that themselves might not lose the reward of so much suffering, and of so good a relation, nor that, which they value most, be destroyed by

but reason,

LESSON CXXVII.

The Orphan Boy.-NATIONAL INTELLIGENCEK.

"He faded, yet so calm and meek,

So gently wan, so sweetly weak."

THE bustle of the fight was over; the prisoners had been secured, and the decks washed down, the watch piped, and the schooner had once more relapsed into midnight quiet and repose. I sought my hammock, and soon fell asleep. But my slumbers were disturbed by wild dreams, which, like the visions of a fever, agitated and unnerved me; the late strife, the hardships of my early life, and a thousand other things mingled together as figures in a phantasmagoria. Suddenly a hand was laid on my shoulder, and starting up I beheld the surgeon's mate.

"Little Dick, sir, is dying," he said.

At once I sprang from my hammock. Little Dick was a sort of protegé of mine. He was a pale, delicate child, said to be an orphan, and used to gentle natures; and from the first hour I joined the schooner, my heart yearned towards him, for I too had once been friendless and alone in the world. He had often talked to me in confidence, of his mother, whose memory he regarded with holy reverence, while to the other boys of the ship he had little to say, for they were rude and he delicate and sensitive. Often when they jeered him for his melancholy, he would go apart by himself and weep. He never complained of his lot, though his companions imposed on him continually.

coarse

I took a strange interest in him, and had lightened his task as much as possible. During the late fight, I had owed life to him. ***

my

"And I have been lying idle here!" I exclaimed with remorse. "Lead me to him!"

"He is delirious, but in the intervals of lunacy he asks for you, sir," and as the man spoke we stood by the bed-side of the dying boy.

The sufferer did not lie in his usual hammock, for it was hung in the very midst of the crew, and the close air around it was too stifling; but he had been carried under the open hatchway, and laid there in a little open space of about four feet square. From the sound of the ripples I judged the schooner was in motion, while the clear, calm blue sky, seen through the opening over-head, and dotted with myriads of stars, betokened that the fog had broken away. How calm it smiled down on the wan face of the dying boy! Occasionally a light current of wind - O, how deliciously cool in that pent-up hold - eddied down the hatchway, and lifted the dark chestnut locks of the sufferer, as, with his head reposing in the lap of an old veteran, he lay in an unquiet slumber. His shirt-collar was unbuttoned, and his childish bosom was open and exposed. He breathed quick and heavily. The wound, of which he was dying, had been intensely painful, but within the last half-hour had somewhat lulled, though even now his thin fingers tightly grasped the bed-clothes, as if he suffered the greatest agony.

A battle-stained and gray-haired seaman stood beside him, holding a dull lantern in his hand, and gazing sorrowfully down upon the sufferer. The surgeon knelt with his finger on the boy's pulse. As I approached, they all looked up. The veteran who held him shook his head, and would have spoken, but the tears gathered too chokingly in his eyes.

The surgeon said

"He is going fast, poor little fellow do you see this?" As he spoke, he lifted up a rich gold locket, which had lain upon the boy's breast. "He has seen better days."

I could not answer, for my heart was full. Here was the being to whom, but a few hours before, I had owed my life - a poor, slight, unprotected child-lying before me, with

death already written on his brow and yet I had never known his danger, and never sought him out after the conflict. How bitterly my heart reproached me in that hour! They noticed my agitation, and his old friend- the seaman that held his head said sadly,

"Poor little Dick, you'll never see the shore you have wished for so long. But there'll be more than one when log's out " he spoke with emotion "to mourn over you."

Suddenly the little fellow opened his eyes, and looked vacantly around. "Has he come yet?" he asked, in a low 'Why won't he come?"

voice. 66

"I am here,” said I, taking the little fellow's hand "don't you know me, Dick?"

He smiled faintly in my face. He then said, "You have been kind to me, sir — kinder than most peo ple are to a poor orphan boy. I have no way to show my gratitude, unless you will take the Bible you will find in my trunk. It's a small offering, I know, but it's all I have." I burst into tears: he resumed,

"You saved

Doctor, I am dying, an't I?" said the little fellow, "for my sight grows dim. God bless you, Mr. Danforth." "Can I do nothing for you, Dick?" said I. my lifeI would coin my blood to buy yours." "I have nothing to ask- I don't want to live only, if it's possible, let me be buried by mother-you will find the name of the place, and all about it, in my trunk."

"Anything-everything, my poor lad," I answered chok

ingly.

The little fellow smiled faintly it was like an angel's smile but he did not answer. His eyes were fixed on the stars flickering in that patch of the blue sky overhead. His mind wandered.

"It's a long, long ways up there, but there are bright angels among them. Mother used to say that I would meet her there. How near they come! and I see sweet faces smii