About four o’clock a message came, “May the chimney-sweeper’s boy sleep here?--he cries, and says it is so wet and dark.” After a minute’s thought, we replied, “Yes, if he is willing to be locked up in the stable till morning.” With this he was well content; and after a clean bed of straw was made, he seemed delighted with his new quarters. After the key had been turned a few minutes, an old servant coming by heard a voice--a steady, pleading voice; and on listening, she heard the child distinctly repeating collect after collect, and various church prayers. She went round, and looking in, saw our poor boy, kneeling by his bed of straw, with his hands clasped, and praying very earnestly. She said, “The tears came in my eyes as I watched the little fellow, and to see him rise from his knees, and so happily lay himself down to sleep.” In the morning, they watched the child, when he repeated just the same before he left the stable. Upon coming out, the servants asked him, “Who taught you to say your prayers as you do?” “Mother,” he replied. “Then your mother’s a good scholar?” “No, she can’t read a word--none in our house can read.” “How then did she learn all these prayers?” “Mother goes to church every Sunday, and says them after the parson, and so she learns them; and every night we all kneel round her that are old enough to speak, before she puts us to bed, and she says them first, bit by bit, and we all say them after her; and sometimes she learns a new one, and then she teaches us that. She tells us always to say our prayers when we are away from her, and so I do.” * * * * * A SHOWER OF ASHES.--A late number of Silliman’s Journal contains the following memorandum, handed in by Rev. Peter Parker, M. D., who was a passenger in the ship Niantic, from Canton for New York: