up to sharp bargains and unscrupulous gains. Keep a sharp look out, my boy, for number one,' he would say, and Ben has obeyed, at the expense of nearly all of the old man's hard earned estate. He never had any conscience, John, in little matters; " and the old lady, as she dwelt on the last sentence, gave her spectacles a nervous jerk, and fixed on John a penetrating glance, which brought back in a moment the whole of the conversation of the preceding evening. Mr. Jacobs started from a drowsy revery at the earnestness of the old lady's manner; and at the same moment the smouldering embers sent out a flickering flame, as if rallying to partake of the animation of the occasion.

"Why, mother," sobbed John, his wounded feelings finding relief in tears, "you look at me as if you thought that I should be like Ben Day."

"Well, my son," replied his mother, adjusting her spectacles in their place, and peering over the top of them with a re-assured self-possession, "may you never be like him, though he be rich as Solomon ;" and adding, with deep solemnity, "rather may your father and I lay you away in the grave." To which Mr. Jacobs uttered an emphatic

response.

After the first impulse of feeling was passed, John began to gather confidence to defend his position in the affair of the apples, for he knew to that his mother was aiming. He had, moreover, felt a little vexed to think she should make so much ado concerning so small a matter. As the

conversation was in full course on this topic, he ventured to express this conviction in rather a complaining way. At this intimation, the old lady's feelings were again on fire. The spectacles came down on the Bible with a force which would have endangered any of modern construction. Her countenance glowed with expressive eloquence. This was the very point on which the whole consequence of the act centred, in her estimation.

"The apples, my son, are of almost no value; the conduct of Mr. Mason was unfair, but,” and she drew close up to John and dropped her voice into a subdued and tender strain, “you would obtain a right end in a questionable way. If you may take any part of your pay without Mr. Mason's knowledge, you set yourself up as the only judge of a rightful compensation. In a debt there are two par

One party cannot settle it without the knowledge of the other. If you alone may judge of what is your due, what security has another that you will not be selfish, and take more than he, or justice, would allow? You have acted on a wrong principle, my son, and I am grieved;" and the old lady in her turn melted into tears. 'My son can have no other inheritance but a just sense of right, and may God forbid he should not have that."

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The mother's tears added cogency to her reasoning, and John's opposition to her position ceased. Indeed, from the beginning of the transaction, his well cultivated moral sense was not entirely satisfied; yet it would not have been

difficult to have passed it by, with the assistance of a little popular logic, and thereby to have prepared the way to have quieted scruples concerning really important transactions of a doubtful morality. He felt his accustomed consciousness of self-approval, when he assured his mother that he would, on the morrow, return the apples, look Mr. Mason in the face, and rehearse the whole story in his ears. Mr. Jacobs, who had been all the time a silent, though an attentive listener, broke in upon the conversation by singing a favorite hymn.

Time rolled on. John Jacobs became a man; and when the good and the gifted of the land assemble at the anniversary of the great moral and religious associations of the day, on the platform, among the honored, John Jacobs may be seen. You cannot fail to notice his modest deportment, and the profound respect paid to him. His name is the rich treasure of the church. He is often heard to refer to the incident above described, as one of no trifling influence in forming his character. "I owe all to a right direction in such little things."

The Mason family still struggle to maintain an equivocal influence from a rapidly diminishing wealth. The homage which character exacts, even from an unscrupulous world, is never rendered them.

O ye aspiring young men, and solicitous parents, there is a wealth in a properly educated conscience, and an honor in doing right.

IDEALISM.

BY REV. WILLIAM W. RUNYON.

IDEALISM! the Ideal! words at which many stop, and more stumble, words which, for some minds, have no significance, and for others, a meaning the most vague and undefinable, words, still, which are found in all lexicons, languages, and literature. Though the subject would furnish material for a volume, it may be resolved into several departments, to a single one of which I purpose to confine myself.

I speak not of that Idealism which has peopled forest and flood with countless deities, erected a haunted castle on the lone and craggy cliff, portrayed the gallant knight and his lady love, and illuminated the misty past with legends of the marvellous and magical; nor of that Idealism which draws its sustenance from the bosom of nature, - which echoes the low murmurs of streams, sports on the wandering wind, spreads a soft fantasy on the rock, and invests its every object with a supernatural glory and spiritual sheen. I speak not so much of the Idealism which distinguishes the Poetic from the Practical, as of that which distinguishes the Perennial from the Perishable; - an Idealism, that has

found our earth too low for its resting-place, our sky too

narrow for its pinions.

"Mind hath its earth

And heaven. The many petty common thoughts

On which we daily tread, as it were, make one,

Above which few look. The other is

That high and welkin-like infinity,

The brighter, upper half of the mind's world,

Thick with great sun-like and constellate thoughts."

Towards that high and welkin-like infinity" the aspiring and adventurous mind often ascends, upborne by the wing of strong desire, and gazing ever upwards with an eye of wonder. Have we never had far-reaching thoughts of the Future, the Invisible, and the Infinite, when the mind wanders in a sublime, poetic revery beyond the boundaries of the known and seen, beset with gorgeous day-dreams, and lured by the voices of spirits, kindred but not mortal? Have we not an intense consciousness that mysteries environ us, and that splendors "sky us overhead?" The soul has a ken and a field peculiarly its own, and the horizon which bounds its vision is not that which rests its azure circle on the surrounding hill-tops. It hath

"A higher, ampler heaven than that wherein

The nations sun themselves."

Beyond the bounds of what we know, beneath the crust on which we tread, above the mount which we can climb, be