THE PENNY POST BOX.-FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY.

The Penny Post Box.

CHRIST'S CARE.

PRESS not your griefs down deep in your heart, for, like pitiless thorns, they will fester there, and their pain be intensified. But "cast alli your care upon Him, for He careth for you." He will infuse sweet peace into your agitated heart, and extract the bitter sting from your sorrows. With the healing balm of His smile, the comfort of His sympathy, you shall find consolation. We are so constituted that we cannot endure sorrow alone. If we have no religion in which to shelter our stricken souls, we go out into the great world for comfort. But alas! the world has ever proved itself inefficient for the truly sorrowful. It has infinite charms for the light-hearted, but not one for the despondent. The throbs of its heart are too restless for the weary, and its songs are too gay. The world is as a wilderness to the sor rowful-barren of sympathy. It laughs derisively at the souls which cry, Pity us! and says mockingly, Away with tears; let smiles dispel them. Its quickly-shifting scenes suggest the terrible evanescence of its pleasures. Its pulsations are attuned to the gay. Christ is the unfailing friend. If we rely wholly on Him, and lay our human weaknesses on His strength, He will lovingly uphold us even unto the very gates of death. But when we strive to bear our cares alone, how weighty they are, how they increase and ever pursue us; we cannot escape them. We appeal to human beings for comfort; they may yield us sympathy to the utmost of their ability, but self is often paramount. Their mood may constrain them to be joyous, and hence they fail often to comprehend the bitterness of our grief. Christ, on the contrary, abnegated self for our sakes when He died for us. How complete His love! then how perfect His capacity for sympathy!" Then straightway, "Cast all your care upon Him, for He careth for you."

Facts, Hints, Gems, and Poetry.

Facts.

EMIGRATION.

During the year ending June, 1869, nearly four hundred thousand emigrants went to America.

Of these more than half landed at New York, at the rate of about seven hundred a day.

The nationality of these emigrants is rapidly changing.

Ireland; now Germany and the Scan A few years ago the bulk were from dinavian countries furnish a fourth of the whole.

England sent as many as Ireland, within four thousand.

FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY.

It is estimated that each emigrant brings on an average about £10. | wealth. Altogether this makes a large sum.

All things are easy that are done Torn by so many doubts and fears, willingly.

Learning is an ornament in pros-To toil below for His dear sake perity, a refuge in adversity, and the best provision in old age.

Folly sees the defects of others, and forgets its own.

POETIC SELECTIONS.-THE CHILDREN'S CORNER.

A HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW.

THIS world is lovely, fair, and bright,
The sunlight sweeps our brow,
But it will be as beautiful

A hundred years from now.
The birds will sing as sweetly then
Their spring-tide roundelays,
The sunshine dance upon the hills,
As in the olden days.

The haunts we loved in childhood's years
Will bloom as sweetly still;
But other forms, unknown to us,
Our places then will fill;

The streams will glide as gently on,
With music sweet and low,
Upon whose banks at eventide
We roamed so long ago.

The same bright sun will still pursue
His trackless course on high,
And stars as bright and beautiful
Will still gleam in the sky;
With lightsome step the spring will come,
With cool refreshing showers,
With laughing brooks, with singing birds,
With sunshine and with flowers.

Although the earth will be as gay,

The birds sing on each bough,
They will not sing their songs for us
One hundred years from now!

The flowers will then unfold their leaves,
But will not bloom for us,

And though it seems a distant day,
It surely will be thus !

All living things upon the earth
Must wither, droop, and die,
And we shall soon have passed away,
Like cloud-tints from the sky;
Faith points us with confiding glance
To realms where partings cease,
Where streams of love are flowing from
The crystal fount of peace.

Then let us strive to win our minds
From all the dreams of strife,
And toil to write our names within
The glorious book of life;
And let us strive to win a crown
To place upon our brow,
That it may "all be well" with us
One hundred years from now.

The Children's Corner.

THE PERSEVERING BOY.

"SIR," said a boy, addressing a man, "do you want a boy to work for ?" you

66 No," anwered the man, "I've no such want."

The boy looked disappointed, at least the man thought so, and he asked, "Don't you succeed in getting a place ?"

"A woman

"I have asked at a good many places," said the boy. told me you had been after a boy, but it is not so, I find." "Don't be discouraged," said the man, in a friendly tone. "O no, sir," said the boy, cheerfully, "because this is a very big world, and I feel certain that God has something for me to do in it." "Just so, just so," said a gentleman who overheard the talk. "Come with me, my boy; I am in want of somebody like you."

He was a doctor; and the doctor thought any boy so anxious to find his work would be likely to do it faithfully when he found it; so he took the boy into his employment, and found him all that he desired.

Yes! God has something for everybody to do in this world. It's a very big world, and there's room enough for all. As long as our young readers live, too, there will be enough to do in overcoming the evil there is in the world, and therefore room enough for work in making the world better. Whoever has "a mind to work" can hardly lack for a place to work.

ENDURING INTEREST OF EGYPT.

WITH desire had I desired to behold this world-renowned region, possessing supreme claims on the mind, mingling with the first tiny shreds of knowledge, and related to all the knowledge that the mind can receive. What visions had I seen of it in infancy! How had I figured to myself the hole in the sand where Moses hid the Egyptian whom he had slain! How had I conjured up the scene when the sons of Jacob, looking one upon another, confessed that they were verily guilty concerning their brother! How had 1 read and wondered over Belzoni's travels, and the glimpses there given of the grand antiquities locked up in the sand and the deposit of the Nile, and waiting for the search of the enterprising! And as I pondered on these things, there came up memories dormant for years and years-the form and furniture of a room, yea, the very pattern of a carpet showed themselves, and the echoes of voices long ago hushed in death, were heard once more distilling gentle lessons as when life was young, and I knew not how hard a world I had to face. It is impossible but that Egypt must command wider regards than any region on the earth. Countries there are, it it is true, from whence have come arts, and philosophy, and the records of mighty thoughts and deeds, but these are objects of interest to only the educated. Egypt possesses the same attractions for the learned, and to this is added that every child which has been ever so slightly instructed in the lore of the religions of the civilised world, or which has acquired the first smatterings of profane knowledge, cannot fail to have a place in its mind for venerable Egypt. Hers is a soil to be trodden with measured footstep and bated breath, as by men who walk over the ashes of their kind. Much as I yearned toward her, I believed that I never should look on her. My way of life, though checkered enough by accident and travel, has led me hitherto to parts of the earth where my affections were not. At last a wish is realised; I note a bright spot in a wearying life. Weird country, House of Bondage, Land of Egypt, I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee!

To me, my friend, nothing that man has written seems so fit to stir emotion as some of the Scriptural stories connected with this land from which I am writing. Often and often have I wept over them, and now that I am seared and worn, they can touch the

ENDURING INTEREST OF EGYPT.

springs of feeling as no other legends can. In Joseph making himself known to his brethren there is a terrible delight—a shaking of the nerves, a hardly endurable satisfaction, such as no poetry, or drama, or tale beside can arouse. And again, the swoon of Jacob, when they said to him, "Thy son Joseph is yet alive, and he is governor over all the land of Egypt," what a transporting picture do we not form from it! how one revives with him, and breathes again after the shock, and thinks it as much one's own utterance as the patriarch's, "I will go down and see him before I die," for the speaker must be one with all who read his words! And sweetest, perhaps, of all, are the words of aged Israel, spoken by him not as a prince of God, or as a prophet, but in simple thankfulness and unmeditated speech : 'I did not think to see thy face, and, behold, God hath showed me thy seed;" epitomising the whole charmed story, calling up the coat of many colours soaked in blood, the cruel bereavement, the restoration of Joseph from death, whence his father received him in a figure— Joseph's splendid destiny--and the blessed re-union.

66

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I landed before noon at one end of the town, and found myself on a strand of deep loose sand, crowded with Mussulmans and cattle, and showing a few temporary houses, with many sheds and tents. There is now something like a native population to be seen. At Port Saïd there were so many strangers of all nations, that the town seemed to belong no more to the Egyptians than it did to the Germans or the English. Now, however, the predominance of the turban and the fez showed clearly who were at home and who were not. Before I was off the beach I saw a sight which proved how different from those of Europe are the modes that prevail here. One of the faithful who was moving some wood incurred the wrath of his employer, a fat Mohammedan, who let into him with a pole a yard and a half long, and about the thickness of a man's arm, belabouring him unmercifully, falling into the most violent rage, and venting his wrath in words as well as blows. What with the dress and the exaggerated action, the incident was so like what one sees in a pantomime, that I could not refrain from laughing, though it was certainly no joke to the poor fellah.

A

very few steps in from the seabeach you come upon the fresh