"You know! Then I can guess, aunt, it is some of your charitable works. You are going to make a juvenile Lady Bountiful of El, eh?" Ella, who had colored to the roots of her hair at the _expose_ of her very unfashionable Christmas preparations, now took heart, and bestowed a very gentle and salutary little cuff on the saucy head that still wore the purple cap, and then hastened to gather up her various purchases. "Laugh away," said she, gayly; "and a good many others will laugh, too, over these things. I got them to make people laugh--people that are not in the habit of laughing!" "Well, well, I see into it," said Will; "and I tell you I think right well of the idea, too. There are worlds of money wasted, at this time of the year, in getting things that nobody wants, and nobody cares for after they are got; and I am glad, for my part, that you are going to get up a variety in this line; in fact, I should like to give you one of these stray leaves to help on," said he, dropping a ten dollar note into her paper. "I like to encourage girls to think of something besides breastpins and sugar candy." But our story spins on too long. If any body wants to see the results of Ella's first attempts at _good fairyism_, they can call at the doors of two or three old buildings on Christmas morning, and they shall hear all about it. EARTHLY CARE A HEAVENLY DISCIPLINE. "Why should these cares my heart divide, If Thou, indeed, hast set me free? Why am I thus, if Thou hast died-- If Thou hast died to ransom me?" Nothing is more frequently felt and spoken of, as a hinderance to the inward life of devotion, than the "cares of life;" and even upon the showing of our Lord himself, the cares of the world are the _thorns_ that choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. And yet, if this is a necessary and inevitable result of worldly care, why does the providence of God so order things that it forms so large and unavoidable a part of every human experience? Why is the physical system of man arranged with such daily, oft-recurring wants? Why does his nature, in its full development, tend to that state of society in which wants multiply, and the business of supply becomes more complicated, and requiring constantly more thought and attention, and bringing the outward and seen into a state of constant friction and pressure on the inner and spiritual?