It is to be hoped this affecting, not to say romantic, episode in the history of “conversions,” will not be so lightly read that its chief beauties will be missed. It presents a picture full of the loveliest “bits” that to be thoroughly enjoyed should be lingered over. First of all, let us take the drunkard, too “far gone” for locomotion, leaning “against a tree.” Leaning against a tree, with an idiotic leer on his flushed and tipsy face, and maybe trying to recall to his bemuddled memory the burden of the drinking-song that he recently heard and participated in in the parlour of the village alehouse. “What shall we do with him?” “O, I’ll tell you: let us sing him a temperance song.” There you have a prime bit of the picture complete. The sot with his back to the tree, the swaying green boughs of which have tilted his battered hat over his left eye, and the band of little girls gathered in a semicircle about him, and rousing him to consciousness by the first thrilling note of “Away, away with the bowl!” The words sound as though they would go best with a hunting-tune, a sort of “Heigh-ho, tantivy!” and one can imagine the intoxicated one first of all mistaking it for that roistering melody, and gently snapping his thumbs at it, he being for the present somewhat hampered as regards his vocal abilities. One can imagine him chuckling tipsily and snapping his thumbs—feebler and still more feeble as he discovers his error. It is _not_ a hunting-song; it is a temperance ditty of the first, the purest water! His heart is touched. His now disengaged thumbs seek the corners of his eyes, and the scalding tears steal shimmering down his red-hot nose! “Sing—sing it again!” he gasps. But no; the artless chanters have gained a step, and they mean to retain it. “Not till you sign the pledge,” say they. However, he begs so hard that they concede to the extent of a verse and a half. Still he is obdurate; but he gradually yields, till, driven into a corner, he falters, “But you have no table.” Then comes the crowning triumph of the picture—the incident of the hat. “You can write upon your hat—we will hold it for you.” And the deed was done! The same volume reveals another story of so similar a kind that it would almost seem that the children of the first story had confided their miraculous experience to the children of the second story.