To the boys especially I recommend the study of the life and character of Dr. Vincent. A gentleman remarked in my hearing the other day, “probably no man living is exerting a wider influence over the hearts and minds of the young people than Dr. Vincent!” And I thought, what a responsibility! and how thankful the fathers and mothers should be that he is just the man he is; that his influence is ever on the side of truth and right; that his aim is to uplift, and that Christ is ever the centre of his thought. To see and hear Dr. Vincent is to understand something of the secret of his power. The sympathy which manifests itself in every look and tone, the enthusiasm with which he enters into his work, and which tides him over the hard places, and the personal magnetism—which makes you, whether you will or not; these qualities, sanctified and consecrated, make the man a power for good. /* FAYE HUNTINGTON. */ [Illustration: TWO HANDSOME DOGS.] /* _Volume 14, Number 4._ Copyright, 1886, by D. LOTHROP & CO. _November 27, 1886._ */ THE PANSY. [Illustration: OUR NEW FALL OVERCOATS.] THE LITTLE RED SHOP. BY MARGARET SIDNEY. CHAPTER I. [Illustration: T]HE old house on Cherryfield high road, back of the row of stiff poplars, with its queer little gnarled apple-trees at the back, looked for all the world just as it did one hundred years ago. It had no more paint on it now than when the children’s grandfather took home his young bride who thought it the most beautiful place in all the world to begin housekeeping in. Then it was a dingy yellow, with faded green blinds; and now the same forlorn attempt at coloring greeted all passers-by. To be sure it had been painted many times in the interim, but always the same hue was chosen, so that to the oldest inhabitant it was the best known landmark for miles around. The “Brimmer Place” was known too, for something else than its antiquity; it was the cheeriest, home-iest old house that ever stood on any road, overflowing with good-will to everybody, especially to sick people and to little children. If anybody were in trouble and could reach her, Mrs. Brimmer always found just the right word of cheer to speak, while she tried to help in many other ways—and what she didn’t do, why, there were Jack, and Cornelius, and Rosalie, to say nothing of Primrose, the baby—four little comforters who made everybody just happy to look at them. And yet every one who lived in the big, hundred-year-old house was poor. “It’s most dreadful to be poor,” said Rosalie one morning, in a burst of confidence to the boys, out in the woodshed. Cornelius stopped hacking at an old log to flash her a convincing “no” out of his black eyes. “And it’s so very unagreeable,” continued Rosalie, smoothing down her apron while she seated herself on one end of the bench.