Two Little Shoes

There tliey stood close together on the libraiy mautie-shelf. I had just come into the house from my eveuing lecture. Every chamber was sileut, the three little" chiclsens had gone to roost - two red faced sauey boya lyingat uuutterable angles on their broad bed, and the wee pet of the household tueked snugly awav in her eradle upstairs in the nurgery. What business had those two littlo shoea on the white marble mautle-shelf ? It was a grotesquo association - a brouze sïatue on one side suruiouuting the marble olock, a prett) vase on the other side, one of the cartoons of Ilaphael hanging on the wi.ll overhead, and the inevitable two liltle shoes in the midst. The string huDg earelessly over the siáe, the heels were a littlo runover. and the toes provokingly turned up, and there they nestled up to one another, as if they wuuld aÖectionately share each other's fate, should some wanton iconoclast of the honsehold, some Martha with avenging besora mayliap, pronounee agaitist tuero, a sentenco of banishnient. I lifted theui up teuderly, turned theni round, cast love glarces at their wrinkkd " i:ppers," and their shiny bottoms, feit the blond rushiüg through my beart ventricles with unwonted perturbatiüiis, íVit gome invisible pumps forcing drops from secret spring heads up into my eyes, and then did something to the üttlu slioes; whethcr it was to kiss them or something else, I have vowed with somebody neverto divulgo. Through the merest accident, doubtless, the little shoes wero left there in oompauioDship with the library sonvenirs. But, now 1 come to think of it, there is hardly a keepsake in the whole house like unto them. The cartoon of Rapbael is simply insipid beside them, and tho photograph album, with its gal lery of úneles and aunts, interspersed with the faces of good ministers and Palmer's marbles dane on paper, is Dot a circumstiince in comparison Oh, dear ! I mused ; how soon the rough waves of time wash out the sweet memories of our chitdren's babyhood. - I havo seriously considerea whether 1 would not buy a blank book, (gilt-edged and cmboFsed, of course,) and consécrate it to a record üf tbe littlo ways and words of cliiidhood, from early infancy upward, in blissed gradiition to the point j whero the baby merges into the buy or girl. What an almanao of climates aud temperatures that! Well, after musing tbus awbile, the shoes and I went up stairs together, and I laid tbein down on the bureau, ready for two litile Irotters early in the morning. But cveti in ihe night watches the visión would not fornako me, and ever and anon, as the clock tolled the hours, I droamily thoiight of the little slioes aud of tho little feet that belonged to tbem. it is a rugged thorny path, little feet, hat yo havo adventured npon, and yet L would not tuke the rocks and the bram bksaway uttcrly. I would t-tielter thee, little tileepur, that the roughness of the pilgrimngfi como tiot too oon for tiiy tender heart. And yot by mul by life's sterner discipline shail come, and thou shalt be imsandlod and füot-sore. Thus travels the soul in tho foot-printg of Christ towartls it uomo aud its crowu.