IN THE LIGHT
OF THE HOME WINDOWS.
"O MAMMA, General Miller has returned from England, and there is to be a torchlight procession and a celebration and a 'lumination and fireworks.
Can we go and see them?" asked -Minnie Ruggles, rushing with her two brothers and her one sister in from school one lovely September afternoon.
"O mamma!" clamored all the children, "do say yes. All the scholars are going, and there is to be great fun. You will take us, won't you, mamma, dear?"
"It will be a fine sight, as well as a very pretty compliment to General Miller, and you shall see it, of course; but I hardly think it will be necessary for us to go down town," replied mamma. "The procession will pass here, we will illuminate our house, and you can hear the music and see the fireworks from the Park."
The children were not quite satisfied with this arrangement. Some of their young friends were going down upon the main street, where there was to be a platform erected on Parade Square near the band stand; and they had been sure their mother would take them down there, so as to be near the music.
They knew there would be no use in teasing, after she had made up her mind; and they went about assisting mamma and John, putting candles in the windows and Chinese lanterns in the shrubbery in the front yard, with rather dissatisfied expressions on their fair young faces.
It was a splendid procession; and as it filed by the Ruggles' house, headed by the famous Colt's
Band from Hartford, the men and boys keeping perfect time with the music, the children on the piazza with their mother were almost wild with delight, and were very eager and persistent in their requests that they might be allowed to join the quite nondescript party of young and old that followed in the rear.
"By no means," said their mother. "But you may go out now to the Park, and remember what I tell you. Keep where the light from our windows will shine upon you."
The children obeyed, but they did not at all like mamma's restrictions.
"Mother means to do what is right always, and thinks she knows what's best for us at all times," said Harry, the eldest of the children. "But it is absurd for her to suppose she can always keep her boys within the light of the home windows. But how beautifully the band plays!"
Suddenly, however, the music ceased in a painful discord and jangle in the middle of the spirited march, and loud shouts and cries of affright came from the direction of Parade Square. Something
dreadful had happened.
It was not long before the news came to the children that the grand stand had fallen with a terrible
crash. It was crowded, to begin with; and when the long procession reached the square, the rabble
that had followed it broke from its rear, and climbed up and crowded on the outside. That forced those already sitting on the outer seats to press nearer the center, until the slender props underneath gave way, and the hastily built stand went down with a great crash. Many of the men, women, and children were injured, some seriously SO.
"How lucky for us that we kept in the light of the home windows!" said Harry, running to his mother and throwing his arms about her neck.
"We were very much dissatisfied that you refused to let us follow the procession; but we can see now that, had we gone to the square, most likely we should have been among the injured ones."
"Remember this," said mamma, "and let it remind you that you have a home and a Father in heaven, and that while you obey him and keep in the light of his -love and approbation, you will always be safe from present and future harm."
—Mrs. Annie A. Preston.
CHRIST is a flower, but he fadeth not; he is a river, but he is never dry; he is a sun, but he knoweth no eclipse; he is all in all, but he is something more than all.
Spurgeon.