The mother, who, during one of the longest and hardest of winters had exerted herself daily and nightly far beyond her strength to provide for the wants of her children, who had in reality no other support but her, drooped when the “life-inspiring” spring came round again. The health which was so shattered by the struggles and heart-sorrows of the winter, was not restored again when the sunlight streamed so richly through her cheerless home. With the blossoming trees, and the violets, her hope did not strongly revive. The voices of the returning birds did not bring to her the lightness and happiness of spirit she had known in other days—for every day the brand of drunkenness was graven deeper and deeper on the forehead of the lover of her youth. Long, long after all her natural strength had failed, the mother’s love, and the wife’s devotion sustained, supported her. Long after her voice was faltering with weakness, did she supplicate that husband to rouse him to his former manliness, to exert himself once more. Long after her hands were trembling with disease, did she continue to ply the needle, whose labor was to bring them their daily food. And heavy debts hung over them. Then the creditors, who saw no probability of these being ever satisfied, determined to liquidate them by selling off the little farm and residence of Mr. Hogg. And so they were sold. With the miserable remnant of their household goods which was left them, they removed to a smaller and less comfortable home. Then, as if evil days had not dawned on them already, one morning found the toiling mother laid on the bed of sickness and of death. To leave those helpless children _thus!_ oh, it had been hard to part with those little ones, when around each one her heart-strings clung, even had their future been very bright, but to leave them when darkness and dreariness of life was before them, when a path so beset with sorrow and trial was all that she could see in store for them! bitter, bitter it was, indeed! Pass we over the sacredness of that hour, when the dying mother breathing the few faint parting words in the ear of her eldest child, left them to struggle on in their hard road alone. Words fail me to tell her anguish, who, in the last moments of her life, was racked by the thought of _all_ that _they_ might be called on to endure. No living voice _should_ essay to speak of all that was in her heart, when she clasped the youngest, a bright-eyed boy, to her bosom, while his gay voice broke forth in laughter, and he flung his arms about her neck, and hid his face, all radiant with smiles, in her bosom. I am powerless when I attempt to tell you of the girl who stood shuddering with agony beside that bed, while the shadows of the coming night were fast filling the little room, when, after a long, and to her terrible silence, with trembling hands she lifted the boy from his mother’s arms, and felt as her fingers loosened the parent’s grasp, that the thin hands were icy