Mrs. Lester was happy to recognize in one of the young men most active in providing for the wants of the children, one whom she had known in her former beloved home in the East. Of his mother, who had been a near neighbor, she retained a most kindly remembrance; and as she had been suddenly and recently called to her home in the heavens, Mrs. Lester was glad to learn that her son, left with his brother almost alone in the world, was active in this western town in the Sabbath school and in the temperance cause, maintaining a consistent religious character. A great field for usefulness is opened in the West to Christian young men. So many young men, in seeding their fortunes in these new and thriving towns, throw off the restraining influence of their pious homes; absent themselves from the house of God, and are thus easily led aside by a thousand encircling temptations. Exercises in geography, arithmetic, and declamation followed the feast, some of which the band applauded in a very graceful manner. A number of children gathered around the musicians, and one little boy, in a bright red frock, stood leaning against his father, close by the great drum, his eyes fixed on its great circumference, and his eyelids winking every time it was struck. After the exercises one of the ministers made a very good speech, in which he told the children that if they wanted to rise above being mere drudges at the dictation of others, they must study, they must work, they must learn to think. What they did, they must do with their might; when they played, they must play in earnest; and when they studied, they must study in earnest; and that to be industrious and to be in earnest, was the only way to be anything, or to do anything in the world. He made the children laugh when he told them that in some parts of New Hampshire the fields were so stony, that it was jocosely said that the farmers sharpened their sheep’s noses that they might eat the grass growing between the stones. This was a wonderful story for western children, who never saw stones on their broad fertile prairies. As the band played its farewell, the company left the ground greatly pleased with the day’s entertainment. CHAPTER XIV. THE CAMP-MEETING. The holy sounds float up the dell To fill my ravish’d ear, And now the glorious anthems swell Of worshipers sincere; Of hearts bow’d in the dust that shed Faith’s penitential tear. MOTHERWELL.