Shall I attempt to describe the grief of the child, deprived of all she loved? The rough, but kindly sailors were much moved by it, and strove, in their uncouth way, to comfort her. After the first few days of passionate lamentation, the motherless girl became more quiet in her sorrow, and then the demonstrations of sympathy ceased: but any one who gazed upon her wasted form, her white cheek, and languid steps, might have guessed the tears she shed upon her pillow at night. At last the vessel arrived in Boston, and Margaret's heart beat quick each time she saw a good-looking gentleman step on board, for every instant she thought her unknown uncle would arrive. She tried to fancy how he looked, and although she had heard that he and her father were very unlike, still her imagination brought up before her a face like that within her highly-prized medallion. So passed the day, in anxious waiting and nervous tremors, but her uncle came not; and as the night drew near, a sense of perfect loneliness and desertion came over her, and she leaned her head upon her hands, and tears, wrung from the heart, trickled through them. All around her was bustle; every one had an object, all had a home, and a place in the world, and some to love them--all but she; she felt completely the orphan. Some think that children do not suffer mentally as their elders do--what a mistake! Their emotions are more transitory, but frequently more violent while they last. Many an angry child, if he had the physical strength, would commit deeds from which reason and conscience deter the man--and keen and bitter, although fleeting, are the sorrows they experience. As the little creature, so tenderly reared and now so utterly desolate, sat upon the deck, with no earthly being to look up to for love and sympathy, surely a pitying angel must have wafted into her heart her mother's dying words, "When thy father and thy mother forsake thee, then the Lord shall take thee up." It stole into her soul like oil upon the troubled waters: it seemed as if a voice had said to the tempest within her, "Peace, be still." She felt that there still was one who cared for her--one who could neither die nor change; and the prayer of faith ascended from those young lips to "_Our father_ who art in heaven." Soothing, blessed influence of religion! felt by young as well as old--how, in trouble, could we dispense with it? would not our hearts sink under their load? would not our spirits be crushed within us?