THE FIRST DROP OF BITTERNESS.

Come, little one, open your mouth! I know it is bitter to drink; But if you'll stop squirming and squalling, You'll have it all down in a wink. The poor little baby is sick, And this is to cure the bad pain; So swallow the medicine, darling, And soon you can frolic again. How glad should we be, who are older, And have bitter burdens to bear, To find out some wonderful doctor With cures for each sorrow and care!

At the Bottom of a Mine.—Years ago some Welsh miners, in exploring an old pit that had been long closed, found the body of a young man dressed in a fashion long out of date. The peculiar action of the air of the mine had been such as to preserve the body so perfectly that it appeared asleep rather than dead. The miners were puzzled at the circumstance; no one in the district had been missed within their remembrance; and at last it was resolved to bring the oldest inhabitant—an old lady, long past her eightieth year, who had lived single in the village the whole of her life. On being brought into the presence of the body, a strange scene occurred: the old lady fell on the corpse, kissed and addressed it by every term of loving endearment, couched in the quaint language of a by-gone generation. "He was her only love; she had waited for him during her long life; she knew that he had not forsaken her."

The old woman and the young man had been betrothed sixty years before. The lover had disappeared mysteriously, and she had kept faithful during that long interval. Time had stood still with the dead man, but had left its mark on the living woman. The miners who were present were a rough set, but very gently, and with tearful eyes, they removed the old lady to her house, and the same night her faithful spirit rejoined that of her long-lost lover.