and regarded her movements with a dreamy satisfaction. Kind lady! was she really taking all this trouble about a worthless fellow whom she had not seen since he was a troublesome little boy.

"Certainly, you have been very good to me," I said, at last; "I must have been a great bother to you; and this room is so cheerful and sunny-oh! I certainly owe you a great deal," and I fell asleep.

But this frame of happy thankfulness did not last. In a few days, a longing for active exertion, for amusing books, for strong meats, (for invalids always think a good deal of their eating, I find) took possession of me. My kind hostess and the doctor in vain assured me that perfect rest and extreme ease were required for my recovery. I laughed at what I considered their absurd scruples.

"Now you must obey our orders," said my relative; "but I'll tell you what I'll do-you shall have my patchwork sofa in against the wall to look at, and you can amuse yourself with that; you shall have it in this minute;" and true to her word, the kind lady, assisted by her neat servant, wheeled into the room a large, old-fashioned sofa, covered with silk patchwork, upon which I imagined myself reclining, so as to have a view of the garden and paddock.

That day I had a relapse, and when I recovered consciousness, to my surprise the bed-curtains had been all removed for the sake of coolness, the flowerstand and nearly all the furniture taken from the room, and I had only the sofa to look at.

I pleased myself in examining its hues of blue, and scarlet, and purple, and green, and gold; I traced its little star-like pattern with admiration from cushion to cushion. How bright! how dazzling to my weakened eyesight. I counted the colours, wondering whether green or scarlet predominated; but I came at last to a star which had been set in awry. It was such a little star, that, but for its bright colour of scarlet, I

might have been long discovering it. All my pleasure in the patchwork sofa was gone; what good was all its beauty to me with that one defect? Sometimes, in waking, I tried to cheat myself into thinking it was not there, or to ignore the corner where it was put in altogether, but alas! there it was-bright-brighteroh! burning brighter every moment-oh! why was it put in awry? I used to dream that it suddenly shot from its place and danced above my head, or took some dreadful form and chased me round the room.

At last I determined to speak to my aunt, and, beckoning her to my bed-side, "Did you work that cover for the sofa ?" I said.

"Yes; every stitch myself," she answered, turning to gaze, not displeased, at the result of her handiwork. "Then," I said, bluntly, "you've made a great mistake."

She acknowledged, when I pointed it out, that that star was a little awry, but scarcely noticeable unless one looked out for it.

"But I have nothing to look at but that patchwork," I said.

"Very true, my dear boy; and I'm so glad I thought of the sofa,-it must amuse you so much," and getting away from the subject nearest my heart, she pointed out that such a silk was once in her grandmother's petticoat, and that that taffeta was part of my mother's wedding hat-and then the doctor came.

But will the reader be surprised to hear that the sight of this blemish, which I could look at, absolutely retarded my recovery; and yet I was so far conscious of weakness as to be ashamed to own what I felt about

it.

One day I exclaimed, in a fever of irritation, “Oh! my dear, kind friend, I want you to do a great favour for me-I know you won't refuse me;-will you take that star away? I can't bear the sight of it any longer,

and it's no use covering it up ever so much, because I shall know it's there. It's too dreadful."

My aunt laughed, and said she would see what she could do, and she gave me a composing draught; and sure enough, the next time I looked for my enemy, he was gone.

"There!" exclaimed the good lady triumphantly, "it's put in straight, and a deal of trouble I've had with it, let me tell you.'

"Ah! you are too good," was my grateful answer; "dear, kind, good, old-I mean middle-aged lady! I shall be quite comfortable now;" and so, in truth, I was for a little while; but strange inconsistency of disease, now that the patchwork presented no defect, I ceased to look at it. And now I traced fancied reseinblances to my different friends in the paper on the walls. It wearied me and made me wretched. Why had my aunt chosen that ugly paper? and oh! why, as I lay propped with pillows on the patchwork sofa, opposite the window-why did the sun flicker through the laburnum boughs across my face?

My aunt was careful to supply all my wants. I had the most nourishing and appetizing food. Every morning, too, the neat little maid before mentioned used to bring me a bouquet of the loveliest flowers for my table, accompanied by the words, in a cheerful tone of voice, "Here is your flowers, Sir, and I hope I see you better this morning." But my good friend and relative saw that something was amiss, though she might well wonder what it was; and I could not tell her, for I knew she could not paper the room over again, and used to answer her affectionate inquiries by saying, "It's nothing, ma'am; you can do nothing for me."

"But I don't like, Philip, to see you so dejected," she said, one day. "What makes you so downcast ?" I answered, with an hysterical laugh, "Well! the fact is, I'm so tired of seeing Wilson's profile."

"Wilson's profile!" and the good lady immediately looked first out of the window, and then up the chimney. "Yes, ma'am ; Wilson's profile here on the paper; and I made her put her finger on the spot which contained the fancied resemblance.

"Poor boy! he's wandering!-why it's the stalk of a purple geranium, nothing more or less, and PARTICULARLY natural."

"Never mind about it's being the stalk; it's Wilson's profile to the life, only so hideously caricatured. Oh! Wilson was SUCH a tedious fellow! You'd have known, if you'd been to school with him. I would give anything to see the paper without Wilson's profile.'

My aunt smiled, replying in her quiet, quaint manner, "Indeed, my boy, if I could I'd change it for you, but it's not patchwork like the sofa, and I'm thinking if I could have the room papered fresh to-morrow, you'd find something else not to your mind, or want Wilson's profile back again."

Well! the reader may, perhaps, scarcely care to know that I got well again, that I returned my aunt's unwearied kindness with tolerable gratitude, snapped my fingers at Wilson's profile, became as merry as ever, and forgot the patchwork sofa.

But, in after years, when I found all my clever plotting for success, and all my fine schemes for pleasure and happiness, alloyed or embittered by some one anxiety; when I found within myself that unhappy aptitude with which we are all born, to dwell upon one sorrow or one hope gone astray, and forget our many mercies, then I thought of Haman, who said, in counting his glories, and honours, and wealth, All this availeth me nothing, so long as Mordecai sitteth in the gate;" and I remembered the patchwork sofa.

"Your story has only half its moral," I hear some ne say. "Is it not well that, from that cloud in the

summer sky, that thorn in the flower, that rugged path which makes us forget the beauty of the meadows, should be pointed out a land, where is nothing but order, and beauty, and sunshine, and brightness for ever ?"

J. A. N.

CHRISTIAN ACTIVITY.

BY ANNA MENNELL.

"WIST ye not that I must be about my Father's business ?" Such was our Saviour's response to the remonstrating inquiry of his anxious and sorrowful mother; and it implied that the great object of his life was the accomplishment of God's will,-the prosecution and the completion of that work which the Father had given Him to do. Or, as He Himself has elsewhere expressed it, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish his work."

How few Christians there are who tread in their Master's steps! How few of his professed followers who make the promotion of God's glory, and the advancement of his kingdom, their serious and constant business! They all intend to do good in the world; but in many cases this purpose seems to be a vague desire to do good at some indefinite period, in some uncertain way, rather than a determined resolve to do good after some settled plan, and to do it at once, and continuously. They do not set about it in the same spirit in which they set about their daily occupations. It is evidently not their business.

And yet it ought to be. For God's chief design in lengthening their lives upon earth, is that they may labour for Him and win souls to Christ. Enrolled among his servants, He gives them talents wherewith to trade for Him, that at his coming He may receive