We ride on graceful dragon-flies, With gauzy wings of light; And glow-worms lie in readiness To shine for us at night. We go to children in their sleep, And with our fairy art We spin sweet dreams of fairyland To rest each tired heart! So gaily, gaily run the days, And so we dance and sing, And so the happy flowers bloom And merrily they ring! A. M. W. [Illustration] A POOR NEEDLEWOMAN. A DREAM OF FAIR SERVICE.—CHAPTER IV. BY C. A. MACIRONE. A prison in a little seaport town in England—a jail where criminals of every type, sex, and class herded together. The fresh sea air outside those locked and barred doors inspired health and brightness to the busy population, but within, instead of the rush of the waves, the happy sounds of passing people and children, the rattle of coach and cart, and the cries of hawkers—within, there were sounds indeed, but the vile language of criminals, oaths and curses, whose time was given to gaming, fighting, and quarrelling—unemployed, uncontrolled, without schoolmaster or clergyman, or any attempt at reformation—without any divine worship; it was a place where every wickedness was roused and fostered, and there was neither hope nor help for those inmates who were not entirely lost. “The place itself was fit for such inhabitants—cells underground quite dark and unventilated, suffocatingly hot in summer, and unfit for the confinement of any human being, the whole place unhealthy and filthy; the prisoners were infected with vermin and skin disease.”[1] Into this pandemonium in August, 1819, a woman was sent, committed for a most unnatural crime. It was a mother who had forgotten her sucking child! She had no compassion on her helpless infant, but had cruelly beaten and ill-used it. The inhabitants of the bright little town took cheerfully the accounts of the trial of this woman, and went about their usual avocations as quietly and busily as usual. But one poor woman, a dressmaker, not peculiarly gifted with any power or influence beyond an intense love and sympathy, plain, poor, and unknown—the horror of the thought of this lost woman, of what she was, what she would suffer, what yet it might be possible to do for her, possessed her whole soul with a mighty impulse to try what even she would do in her Master’s strength and with His blessing.