Missing all his emblems gay,
   Scarce lie marked those Violets dim,
Saying, as he turned away,
   That the scroll was not for him.

But Love spoke, "Nay, Valentine,
   Never let her leave dejected;
She has been a friend of mine
   Far too long to be rejected!
Look at us, and we will show,
   Like as sister does to brother;
Some have never skill to know
   One of us two from the other;
Looking on us both with kindness,
   And, as it has seemed to me,
Not without a touch of blindness
   Of the kind that will not see.
Or this may have chanced, because
   I have oft assumed her raiment,
Never (light to me are laws)
   Asking leave or making payment.
Yes! I oft have worn her looks,
   Mimicked, too, her voice and speech,
Stolen her very lesson books,
   All my alphabet to teach.
E'en her very house has never
   Been her own, for close it lay
On the road I went, and ever
   There I stopped to rest half-way.
In the sheltered gardens round it
   I have practised many a song,
(Somehow, pleasant as I found it,
   I have never stayed there long! )
And because that many hold her
   Dear, that almost shun MY name,
It has often made me bolder
   Such a cousinship to claim!
Oft her simple heart deceiving,
   Seldom giving her her due,
Now I fain would make retrieving,
   Making FRIENDSHIP, friends with you!"

THE LITTLE SISTERS.

ALMSGIVING takes the place of our
workhouse system, in the economy of a large
part of Europe. The giving of alms to the
helpless is, moreover, in Catholic countries,
a religious office. The voluntary surrender
of gifts, each according to his ability, as a
means of grace, is more prominently insisted
on than among Protestants; consequently
systematic taxation for the poor is not
resorted to. Nor is there so great a necessity
for it as in this country; for few nations have
so many paupers to provide for as we
English are accustomed to regard as a
natural element in our society; and thus
it happens, that when, about ten years
ago, there was in France no asylum but
the hospital, for aged and ailing poor, the
want of institutions for the infirm but
healthy, was not so severe as to attract the
public eye.

But there was at that time a poor servant-
woman, a native of the village of La Croix,
in Brittany—Jeanne Sugon was her name—
who was moved by the gentleness of her
heart, and the fervour of her religion, to
pity a certain infirm and destitute neighbour,
to take her to her side as a companion, and
to devote herself to her support. Other
infirm people earned, by their helplessness, a
claim on her attention. She went about
begging, when she could not work, that she
might preserve life as long as Nature would
grant it to her infirm charges. Her example
spread a desire for the performance of similar
good offices. Two pious women, her neighbours,
united with Jeanne in her pious office.
These women cherished, as they were able,
aged and infirm paupers; nursed them in a
little house, and begged for them in the
vicinity. The three women, who had so
devoted themselves, attracted notice, and were
presently received into the order of Sisters of
Charity, in which they took for themselves
the name of "Little Sisters of the Poor"—
PETITES SÅ’URS DES PAUVRES.

The first house of the Little Sisters of the
Poor was opened at St. Servan, in Brittany.
A healthy flower scatters seed around. We
saw that forcibly illustrated, in the progress,
from an origin equally humble, of the Rauhe
Haus, near Hamburg: we see it now again,
in the efforts of the Little Sisters which
flourished and fructified with prompt usefulness.
On the tenth anniversary of the
establishment at St. Servan, ten similar houses
had been founded in ten different French
towns.

The Petites SÅ“urs live with their charges
in the most frugal way, upon the scraps and
waste meat which they can collect from the
surrounding houses. The voluntary contributions
by which they support their institution,
are truly the crumbs falling from the rich
man's table. The nurse fares no better than
the objects of her care. She lives upon equal
terms with Lazarus, and acts towards him in
the spirit of a younger sister.

The establishment at Dinan, over which
Jeanne Sugon herself presides, being under
repair, and not quite fit for the reception of
visitors, we will go over the Sisters' house
at Paris, which is conducted on exactly the
same plan.

We are ushered into a small parlour,
scantily furnished, with some Scripture
prints upon the walls. A Sister enters to
us with such a bright look of cheerfulness as
faces wear when hearts beneath them feel
that they are beating to some purpose in the
world. She accedes gladly to our desire, and
at once leads us into another room of larger
size, in which twenty or thirty old women
are at this moment finishing their dinner; it
being Friday, rice stands on the table in the
place of meat. The Sister moves and speaks
with the gentleness of a mother among
creatures who are in, or are near to, the state of
second childhood. You see an old dame
fumbling eagerly over her snuff-box lid. The
poor creatures are not denied luxuries; for,
whatever they can earn by their spinning
is their own money, and they buy with it