A ROLL OF HONOR.

BY G. T. LANIGAN.

Our young readers are already familiar with the stories of Kate Shelley, Edith Baxter, and the young hero of the Wardley coal mine, which have been told within a short time in Young People. Here are some other names that may be added to this noble list.

Every year, on the occasion of the national fêtes, the Belgian government makes a public distribution of rewards to persons who have displayed remarkable courage in a good cause. At the last festival at Brussels the Home Minister pinned a medal on the breast of a little boy of nine, whom he rightly called "a young hero." Genin, while playing in a field near the Sambre, had seen a little girl fall into the river, and jumping in after her, saved her, with much difficulty, and then found that it was his little sister that he had rescued. She had been playing on the river's edge against their parents' strict command, and to save her from punishment he took the blame of her disobedience on himself, and received a severe beating like a little Spartan. His sister, however, could not bear to see him suffer, and told the truth; and the story being confirmed by the evidence of an eye-witness, little Genin was sent for to Brussels, and decorated amid the cheers of a hundred thousand people.

Charles Mahony was a boy of twelve, who was playing on the banks of the Aire, in May last, with his two brothers, aged five and two, when they fell into the stream, swollen with the spring floods. Charles plunged in and brought the younger child to shore, and then swam for the elder one, who was drowning in the middle of the torrent, but the current was too powerful and the water too cold, and though he reached him, it was only to sink with him.

At Ashton-under-Lyne, Edward Wilcox, a peasant boy of fourteen, heard one night not long ago cries of distress from a canal near the house where he lived, and running out found a woman drowning, while two men were looking on, terrified and incapable of aiding her. Jumping into the water, he seized her as she was sinking, and brought her ashore and placed her in the warm bed he had just left, until he could run off for assistance. He thus earned the medal given him by the Humane Society.

During the holiday season two American girls have shown how useful an accomplishment swimming is. One was Fannie Coman, of Harlem, a slim blue-eyed girl of fourteen, who, when a little girl fell from the wharf into the river where both current and tide were strong, called to those on shore to come to her help, and diving into the stream, brought the child up and placed her in a boat moored off the wharf, and then swam off to recover her slipper. The second was Emma Hamilton, a girl of fifteen, living at Northport, Long Island, who made a gallant though fruitless effort to save her cousin when he was seized with a cramp while bathing, and at last recovered his body.

Two other heroes, the youngest of all, remain to be mentioned. One was a five-year-old boy at Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, named Carey, who, when a playmate fell into the water, held him up by the hair till assistance reached them. The other was the elder of two very young brothers who broke through the ice while skating at Cincinnati, and were clinging desperately to the slippery floes while the rescuers were toiling to reach them. "Be sure you take Willie out first!" were the only words the elder brother said; but before assistance came the little fellows sank together in the icy water.

These are the stories of brave boys and girls, the youngest five, the eldest only fifteen, born some in Europe and some in America, some city bred and delicately reared, others the children of farmers and rude laborers. Upon each devolved, without an instant's warning, the most sacred and awful of responsibilities—the saving of the lives of others at the risk of one's own life. In not one case did childhood falter, and in every instance the bravest thing was done in the wisest way.

Some of the children, doubtless, had read and admired the histories of patriots and brave soldiers, and had wondered whether such heroes lived nowadays, or such heroic deeds could ever again be done. And when the need came the hero was found, and the hero was the child that had read and wondered.