Oh, how can you speak harshly to such a one? how can you drive the blood from her lip, and bring the tear to her eye? how can you look sneeringly at the little sum she places in your hand, so hardly, _virtuously_, _bravely_ earned? She has seen you!--see her, as she turns away, clasping so tightly that little hand in hers, that the pained child would tearfully ask the reason, were it not prematurely sorrow-trained. Oh, _you_ have never (reversing the order of nature) leaned with a breaking heart, upon a little child, for the comfort and sympathy that you found nowhere else in the wide world beside. _You_ never wound your arms about her in the silent night, drenching brow, cheek and lip with your tears, as you prayed God, in your wild despair, dearly as you loved her, to take her to himself; for, living, she, too, must drink of the cup that might not pass away from your sorrow-steeped lips. It is because I have felt all this that I venture to bespeak your more courteous treatment for these unfortunates who can only weep for themselves. A MUCH-NEEDED KIND OF MINISTER’S WIFE; OR, A HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPE FOR SOME PARISH. I once had a narrow escape from being a minster’s wife. No wonder you laugh. Imagine a vestry-meeting called to decide upon the width of _my_ bonnet-strings, or the proper altitude of the bow on that bonnet’s side. Imagine my being called to an account for asking Mrs. A. to tea, without including the rest of the alphabet. Imagine my parishioners expecting me to attend a meeting of the Dorcas Society in the morning, the Tract Society in the afternoon, and the Foreign Mission Society in the evening, five days in the week--and make parish calls on the sixth--besides keeping the buttons on my husband’s shirts, and taking care of my “nine children, and one at the breast.” Imagine a self-constituted committee of female Paul Prys running their arms up to the elbows in my pickle-jar--rummaging my cupboards--cross-questioning my maid-of-all-work, and catechizing my grocer as to the price I paid for tea. Imagine my ministerial progeny prohibited chess and checkers by the united voice of the parish. Christopher!