Saturday Night

the weary yeare of strife, By lorrow fcrowned, by oare oppressed, We reach the Saturday ot Ufe, The eve ol our lang daj of rest. There are no curfew bells to toll the knell of parting day, in this unromantic age of the world, but when the town clock strikes th hour of 6 on a Saturday evening, I think it musí sound like a curfew to the soul or tne working world, to the men who throw down hammer and piek and all the wearisome implements of toil and turn their faces homeward, free, free, f or a long b weet morrow of rest - not the in ertia of repose, but the care-f ree bless edness of the woods and fields and evei the city streets. Look at the faces of the crowds who are surging through the streets up to midnight of a Saturday night. the happy, world-free faces looking ut curiously for amusement -families united that have been atea an tne wee oj me neueii'j' ujdaily labor daily bread - children clinging o the toil-worn hands of parents, who are strangers to thetn at all other times, too weary on other nights t enter into their playa or take them out for that happy wulk which always ends the week. There is a legend told of Boston f athers that they ware ao absorbed in business that they did not see enough of their own families to recognize them on sight, so the patiënt mtiTAn flniTinílíl tita TA1 ívf VlPílTlS lClY Saturday night's supper, to which the children remained up, and the father thus made their acqnaintance. Saturday night may briag its cares, too, but they are hardly discernible from joys. In homes where the clean clothes for the morrow are laid out, the mother has a few more steps to take, but there is a consecration in her labor of lov that repays her in f uil measure, pressed down and running over. This is the psalm of praise! To-morrow will give a benizon on her work, for she has ministered to the needs of least, and in the shadow of grimmed arches and stained glass she can sing: "Sleep, sleep to-day, tormenting eares Of earth and f olly t orn. Ia the old Puritan days the Sabbath began on Saturday night with the going down of the sim. The mother put her work basket aside, the good man unharnessed the cattle from the plow, the peace of the coming day settled upon them with the evening shadows ; but I doubt Dot they discussed politics and crops, and the scant, rare newa from the Old World, and read the one weekly paper, worldly deeds that were not admissible on the Sundays of that penod, when a rain of manna would not hare excited the wonder a telegraph wire would have caused. "Mind, be good o' Sunday" was a law, and it waa not a mere eye-service, either ; it waa not a Puritan mother who told her little boy if he wacted to play marbles on Sunday, he must go into the backyard. "But isn't it Sunday in the back yard, too'r" asked the little fellow. But this is Saturday: it is the prelude to that day of which George Herbert wrote; "The Sondaj' of man's llfe Threaded toeether on Tlme'g itringr, Make bracelete to adorn the wlfe Of the eternal glorious Ring." Something of the day's peace and rest is forecast in the dropping off of heavy burdens, the loosening of bands of toil, the f alling back a little ia the march of üfe; some have gone home since last Saturday night; we have heard for them the turning of "That slow door, That opening, letting in, let out no more." The Saturday night of Ufe has dawned iato the sunrise of that land where Sabbaths have no end, where the inunknnfa aVtoll nn mnrA sav. "T am ed!" Are they now satisfled who have laid by the small and sordid cares of this life, which occupied so much of their time, to sit down forever with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in theKiDgdom of the Father? "If I ehould ale to-night, Ere the riw ol another un, With so many tilinga tmfinished And so rnany just beguo, I wonder if 1 oould eaj: "0 Father, thy will be done." "Oh," sigh the tiredmenof business, "it is Saturday night; turn the keys on invoices and ledgers;" "Ohl" cry the weary clerks, "to-morrow is Sunday! I can rest!" "Cail the children in," says the mother ; "they must all be washed to-night." Ahlone is missing; the Shepherd is carrying that lamb in His bosom; he is safe in the fold aboye! It was wiae in the Puritans to begin their Sunday at the preceding sunset- it ought to be wieked to enter into any sordid or speculative work while we are crossing that royal aren of peace which like the rainbow connects two horizons, the world f toil, and the