Four cars were hailed before one would let us on. The drivers would slacken up, but, seeing the woman's condition, would whip up their horses and drive on. Finally, when the next driver slackened, we lifted our frail burden to the platform before he could prevent us.

Arriving at the Mission, we helped her up the steps and rang the bell; she turned to me and said, "You will be proud of me some day." I smiled then, as I thought the chances of being proud of her were slim, but how many times since, when vast audiences have been moved to tears by the pathos of her story, or spellbound by her eloquence, have I indeed been proud of her. She was admitted to the house, giving the assumed name of Nellie Conroy. For nine years she had lived in Baxter Street slums, becoming a victim to all the vices that attend a dissipated life, until at last she became an utter wreck. Everything was done for her at the Mission, and in time permanent employment was found.

Some time after, word reached the Mission that Nellie had left her place and gone back to her old haunts in Baxter Street. A card with the address of "The Florence" was left at one of her resorts, and the whole matter was forgotten, until late one night the doorbell of the Mission rooms softly rang, and the poor wretched object admitted proved to be Nellie. At the meeting the next night she was the first to come forward. When asked to pray, she lifted her pale face to heaven, and quoted, with tearful pathos, that beautiful hymn:

"The mistakes of my life have been many

The sins of my heart have been more;
And I scarce can see for weeping,

But I'll knock at the open door."

Then followed a touching prayer, a humble confession of sin, an earnest pleading for pardon, a quiet acceptance of Christ by faith, a tearful thanksgiving for knowledge of sins forgiven.

Her life from that time until her death-nearly two years later -was that of a faithful Christian. She gave satisfaction to her employers; she was blessed of God in her testimony at the Mission, and soon she was sought after by churches, temperance societies, and missions to tell what great things the Lord had done for her. She spoke to a large assemblage of nearly three thousand people in the Cooper Union, New York, holding the audience spellbound with her pathetic story. She possessed a wonderful gift of language and great natural wit, that, combined with her thrilling story, made her a most interesting and entertaining speaker. She was uneducated, but she had a remarkable memory; she soon became familiar with the Bible, and many were won to Christ through her testimony. Her pale face would become flushed with a hectic glow as she spoke of the wonderful things God had done for her.

Glory be to His great name!" she would say; "it was no common blood that washed Nellie Conroy from her sins, and no

It

common power that reached down and took her from the slums of Baxter Street after nine years of sin and dissipation. was nothing but the precious blood of Jesus that saved me. Where are my companions who started down life's stream with me, young, fresh and happy? We started out to gather the roses of life, but found only thorns. Many of them to-day sleep in nameless and dishonoured graves in the Potter's Field, and their souls-oh! where are they?-while I am spared redeemed!"

Her life was indeed a changed one; from idleness, filth, drunkenness, and sin, she was transformed into a neat, industrious, sober, godly woman. But sin had sown its seed and she must reap the harvest; she grew weaker until at last she went to the hospital to linger for months in great suffering and pain, borne with Christian resignation. Her constant testimony was

"The love He has kindled within me

Makes service or suffering sweet."

One day a visitor said, "Nellie, you are nearing the river." "Yes," she said, "I have already stepped in, but God's word says, When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.' The promise is true; I am dry shod."

At the last she could scarcely speak; she knew her end was near, and when the 14th chapter of St. John's gospel was read to her she said, "My mansion is there, the Comforter is here; the promise is fulfilled. Sing at my funeral, "I am going home to die no more."

Summoned to her bedside, the nurse bent down to hear her faintly whisper, "Jesus, precious Jesus." These were her last words; her face lit up as she seemed to catch a glimpse of the better land, and with the name of Jesus on her lips the spirit of the once poor, despised Magdalene took its flight to the bright mansions of whose possessions she had been so sure.

At her funeral many Christian workers and friends gathered to do honour to her remains. Many converts from the slums who had been won to Christ by her testimony were among the mourners, and not a few came to look on that pale face who still lived in sin and shame, but who sincerely loved one who had so often entreated them to turn and live.

On the coffin-plate was engraved :

The cities and towns of almost every State find representatives in this throng of wanderers, and each one means a heartbreak for someone at home. The work of the Florence Mission is typical. It is simply a variation in the form of this work that

goes on at the sister Mission on Greene Street, where much the same methods are used. Without the freedom attached to both, successful work would be impossible in this special field. There are many Homes and reformatories where a certain amount of force enters in, but none do just the work of these two. They labour for women, but in the evening meetings at the Florence Mission men are admitted, and the rules of the institution are much the same as those governing the Water Street Mission. Like that, also, one hears every form of testimony, pathetic, solemn, or grotesque as it may happen, but all with the same spirit of earnestness. Let an Irish brother, whose voice still lingers in my memory, and who had tried all depths of sin, have the last word from the Florence Night Mission.

A word on this whiskey, me friends. I heerd a man say whiskey was right enough in its place, which place is hell, says I. It brought me down to hell's dure, an' I well know what it's loike. For twinty-four years I was a tramp; a dirty spalpeen of a tramp. The brother forninst me there said God found him in his hotel. 'Twasn't in nary a hotel nor lodgin'-house, nor yet a flat, the Lord found me in, but in the gutther, for I'd never a roof to me head. I came in here cold, hungry, an' wet, an' stood by the sthove to dhry meself, an' I heerd yees all tellin' an' tellin', an' I begun to pray meself thin. I prayed God to help me, an' He did. I was talkin' to a naygur outside, an' he said to me, says he, 'I was an Irishman like yerself in the ould counthry, but I got black whin I come to Americy.' Ye can laugh all ye loike, but I tell yees me heart was as black as that nagyur whin I come in here, but it's white now in the blood o' the Lamb. There's hope for every wan o' yees if there was a ghost o' chance for me, an' you'd betther belave it."

AFTER THE STORM.

ALL night, in the pauses of sleep, I heard
The moan of the snow-wind and the sea
Like the wail of thy sorrowing children, O God!
Who cry unto Thee.

But in beauty and silence the morning broke;
O'erflowing creation the glad light streamed :
And earth stood shining and white as the souls
Of the blessed redeemed.

O glorious marvel! in darkness wrought!
With smiles of promise the blue sky bent,
As if to whisper to all who mourned,

Love's hidden intent.

SPINDLES AND OARS.

BY ANNIE E. HOLDSWORTH.

CHAPTER VII.-HOW ROBBIE BECAME A POET.

MANY a time I've heard it said that the poet is born, not made; but when I mind of Robbie Christie I am fain to wrestle with the saying.

To be sure, Geordie Mackay said that Robbie was a poet on the day-a laddie not yet breeched-he telled his mither that he heard the lark sing The sky, the sky, the sky,' as it mounted up from the field on the brae.

But surely gin he had been born a poet he would have been making bits of rhymes like Geordie, and printing them in the Skyrle Echo for the other poets to make light of.

No, no; it was Nannie's love that made Robbie a poet. Had he been born one, he would have showed it in his face and no fleiged all the bairns with his uncanny looks, and his shoulder rising above his lug. Though that last was no his blame, but owing to a fall when he was a wean.

He was a lad I aye liked, and I couldna thole to see his white face, and the look in his eyes that were aye hungry and praying for what he hadna gotten.

And it was little he had; for, after his mither died, he lived with ne'er a creature to love, and no woman to fend for him, though half his days were a long battle with the pain the doctors couldna cure.

But, however, he never seemed to weary, although he was dowie-like; but, when he couldna work, he would sit the long day through watching the sunbeams creep about the trees, or flash on the waves by the shore.

And always on his face would be a strange light, and he would seem to listen to a voice that none else could hear, and see sights that were hid from the folk about him.

And Geordie said it was because he was a poet; though I aye telled him had he been a poet, he wouldna have been silent, wanting the words to cleed his thoughts; for what is a poet but a man who can make a rhyme that the papers will print?

I had never any patience with Geordie's idea that the poet is one who kens the invisible meaning of visible things. And often he angered me, saying the poet sees the meadows of space a-blossom with stars, and finds a solar system in every cluster of gowans on the brae-side; with such-like upside-down talk.

But though I couldna be fashed with Geordie's wild sayings, it pleased me greatly when he began to notice Robbie; and one day the thing began that made him a poet.

He and Geordie had been having a turn on the cliffs, and they stood cracking outside the door of Widdy Mackay's house in the Abbey Nook. All on the sudden the sneck started, and the door swung backward, showing the kitchen.

It was the gloaming, when the lights are dim inside and out, and Robbie had never had a sight of a bonnier picture than the open door showed him then.

The fire was bright in the range, and the flames danced on the walls and on the shining lids hanging over the mantel. The bricks had been newly raddled; and on the wool-rug before the fire a cat sat purring loud enough to quieten the kettle on the hob. The brass fender was like gold, and ilka thing in the room looked as gin it was fresh from the hands of the maker. In the corner, near the window, was a chair bed, on which Mrs. Mackay was propped, her patient hands idle on her lap. Puir body, she hadna moved a finger for many a year. There was a white cloth on the table, and some blue cups and saucers, and a plate of bannocks that Nannie had fired that forenoon.

And the lassie herself stood on the far side of her mither; and all about her the flames danced, showing her steady eyes and her soft hair.

And, seeing all this, a great hunger rose in Robbie's heart for the home life he hadna kenned. But ere the longing had time to make itself into a thought, Geordie had got a hold of his arm and had led him ben the hoose.

Hearing the falling of their feet, the lassie came forward, and welcomed him kindly, and took his bonnet, and bade him sit in the big chair in the ingle and warm himself while she infused the tea.

She was but a poor creature herself-with delicate health, and waiting on her mother-and it was, maybe, this that made her take to Robbie when most lassies flouted him.

Since his mither's death he had kenned nothing of a woman's soft ways; and her kindness was such a delight and a wonder to him, that he didna mind of being bashful, but sat watching her with a colour on his face and his eyes shining.

He had his tea with them, and then Nannie askit him gin he had a fondness for music. And when he answered her that the only music he had ever hearkened to, beside the singing in the kirk, was the wind sighing through the corn-stalks, and the sound of voices in the sea's moan, she gazed at him pitiful like.

"You will tak weel wi' Geordie's piano," said she, "and I hope you will no object to my fiddle."

There was a quaint-like old piano in the corner, and Geordie opened it, and presently they began to play, the lassie's fiddle following her brother's music like a voice. Robbie had never hearkened to siccan playing before, and the cry of the violin went to his heart as gin it sought to tear some secret thing from it. He kenned there was something there that would fain have answered to the cry, but he couldna find speech for it; and he sat with his eyes burning, feeling that his heart must burst gin it couldna find utterance.

He strove and wrestled with the feeling in the same way he had struggled before when he had tried to tell Geordie the secrets he heard in the woods, and the mysteries he learnt from the waves on the shore.