side, with its thousands of buildings and shaded streets, and on the other the harbor, with its shipping and wharves, and lovely islands, while the ocean stretched away as far as the eye could reach." "I never saw the ocean," interrupted Tom. "Well, I will tell you what it resembles. You have looked for miles and miles over the prairie--I mean a _rolling_ prairie, that in gentle swells of land extends till the sky shuts down upon it?" "O, yes," answered Tom. "Well, imagine that prairie turned to water, so deep that you could not touch bottom with the longest line you ever saw,--the ocean would look so; only remember that it is always in motion--ebbing, and flowing, and roaring, and dashing against the land and the rocks, its waves sometimes running very high, topped off with a white foam." "O," said Tom, earnestly, "if I could only once see it!" The minister studied Tom's expressive face a moment, and then said,-- "Perhaps you may, some day. But I was going to tell you how I got hurt. I had exploded all the powder, and was about tired of the pistol,--for you know such things don't satisfy a great while, after all,--when I came across some boys who were making volcanoes. Volcanoes, you know, are burning mountains. They took some powder, wet it, worked it with their fingers into miniature hills, then put one end of a strip of match-paper in the top of each, and lighted the other end of the paper; this would burn slowly down into the top of the powder-hill; that would take fire and send up showers of sparks for quite a while, as it gradually consumed. This amusement fascinated me. So, buying a quarter of a pound of powder, I made a hill like those I had seen, and lighted the match-paper as I saw them light theirs; but when it had burnt all away, the hill did not burn. Thinking, therefore, I had put too much water in mine, I stooped down and poured on from the paper some dry powder. In an instant it ignited from a smouldering spark, exploding also the contents of the paper which I held in my hand. My face was dreadfully burned, and became as black as a negro's." "So did mine," said Tom; "but it is coming off nicely now." "So I see," returned the minister, laughing; "and I dare say you worried almost as much about the _black_ as you did about the _burn_." "Tom feared it would never come off," said the mother. "Ah, that's just the way I felt. But I have found out since that there's something worse than a black face." "What's that?" asked Tom. "A black heart!" replied the minister. "A black heart!" repeated Tom, in doubt of his meaning. "Yes, my lad. What I mean is a heart blackened by sin. Ah, if folks worried more about _that_, and less about their looks, how much more sensible it would be!" Then, after a pause, he said,--