what easier. He learned just how to pick Erskine up with the least effort. He learned to lay him down in raised places from which he could pick him up from a lower level, and thus save his own back. He learned that short steps and many of them tired him less than long ones, and that with Erskine on his back he could make some short cuts that he could not make with the long and bulky canoe. Nor was he to go through the first "impossible" day without some encouragement, for on his sixth trip with the canoe, he stopped at the end of a still pool, and excitedly wading into it, found it to be more than two feet deep! He went joyfully back for the helpless man, and forgot his aching shoulders when he laid Erskine gently into the canoe and stepped in himself. The pool was only a quarter of a mile long, but as Hadly said aloud:

"It does an hour's work in about twenty minutes, and saves my neck." To complete the day's good fortune, Hadly shot a large trout in a shallow pool.

It was hard for Hadly to get up the next morning; it was harder still to see Erskine's labored breathing, feverish cheek, glazed and unknowing eyes. It was hardest of all to carry the first load on his aching, protesting shoulders, and to start off into the wilderness.

For the first few days Hadly found it a continual fight, not only with nature, but with himself. Often he would fall asleep over his own meals. He never knew whether Erskine needed attention at night now, for he slept like a log.

As the slow days passed, he came to forget Erskine as a patient, and to look upon him only as so much weight to be carried, so much sickness to be attended to. By the end of the week he was so expert at lifting the injured man, slinging him

across his back and starting off, that he found himself able to make longer stretches at a time than at first.

Every pool that he came to he welcomed with a shout. Every impassable rock bed, where a rapid should have been, he tackled with grim determination. At one such place he had to stop for twenty-four hours, and with a small ax and logs, build a runway. He laid Erskine on his blanket, which he had stretched on two poles, and let him slide down to the bottom, with his injured head wrapped in the sweater. At another such place he had to cut a path through dense underbrush.

He had worn blisters on both shoulders with the canoe gunwale by the third day, and suffered tortures until he thought of using strips cut from the blanket as pads.

His face was lined; he grew thin, and had great circles under his eyes. He lived on two meals a day - fish that he shot, and an occasional bird. Every bit of flesh went first for broth for Erskine. At the end of seven days, Hadly calculated that he had come twenty miles.

"You have come halfway!" he said to himself. "If you can do one half, you can do the other."

But the next morning Hadly could not get up. It was an hour after he had waked before he could sit up, and it was noon before he could eat any breakfast. Then, with despair in his heart, the boy waited for two days, hoping to get strength for the last half of the journey.

On the second day, Hadly was awakened from a nap in a startling manner. Erskine crawled over to him, and fell weakly against him. When Hadly took his wasted figure in his arms, he could see that he was conscious.

"Where are we, boy-what happened?" Erskine said; but

before Hadly could answer, Erskine's eyes closed again, and to all Hadly's anxious calls his ears were deaf. Twice more that day Erskine opened his eyes, and spoke, only to relapse into unconsciousness; yet Hadly was encouraged by those signs of returning life.

"If he can wake enough to speak sensibly once, he will wake again," he thought. "Luckily, light feeding is what any doctor would order and he is getting it!"

But Hadly was past worrying very much about Erskine and his condition. It was a case of travel or die. So the journey was begun again. Hadly never could remember its finish. The pools were more frequent than before, his shoulders were more painful than before, Erskine was lighter than before. When the last pool did not end, when the canoe, light with little dunnage, scraped over shallow place after shallow place as Hadly forced it, in order to get every inch of possible travel by water, when it floated mile after mile down the little stream and out into the river, Hadly fell asleep. He was awakened half a dozen times by touching the bank; then he would push off again, and again drop to sleep.

Then at the end of a long night, during which he intermittently slept and paddled, he saw smoke curling skyward from the shore ahead.

"Bonfire campers!" he muttered.

It was the village of St. Pierre, and there were men on the river bank who saw the canoe coming. When Hadly reached the village landing, he pointed to the injured man, and then pitched heavily forward.

He and Erskine were well cared for by those to whom exhaustion and injury were no new thing, and to whom worn voyageurs were common sights.

When Hadly awoke, he realized that he was in bed, between sheets.

"Erskine! Erskine!" he called, feebly.

"Here, partner, beside you!"

Turning his head, Hadly saw his friend, thin and wasted, on a cot beside him; his slender hand was outstretched.

They were four weeks at St. Pierre before the doctor would let Erskine move; then they made their way home again by easy stages.

Erskine still thinks it was "impossible" for Hadly to have done what he knows full well that he actually did do.

- C. H. CLAUDY.

THE DISCIPLINE OF DIFFICULTIES

AN acorn is not an oak tree when it is sprouted. It must go through long summers and fierce winters; it has to endure all that frost, and snow, and thunder, and storm, and side-striking winds can bring, before it is a full-grown oak. These are rough teachers; but rugged schoolmasters make rugged pupils. So a man is not a man when he is created; he is only begun. His manhood must come with years. A man who goes through life prosperous, and comes to his grave without a wrinkle, is not half a man.

In time of war, whom does the general select for some hazardous enterprise? He looks over the men, and chooses the soldier who he knows will not flinch at danger, but will go bravely through whatever is allotted to him. He calls him that he may receive his orders; the officer, blushing with pleasure to be

thus chosen, hastens away to execute them. Difficulties are God's errands; and, when we are sent upon them, we should esteem it a proof of God's confidence, and prize it accordingly. The traveler who goes round the world prepares himself to pass through all latitudes and to meet all changes. So a man must be prepared to take life as it comes, - to mount the hill when the hill swells, and to go down the hill when the hill lowers; to walk the plain when it stretches before him, and to ford the river when it rolls over the plain.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

A LETTER TO HIS NEPHEW

ELMWOOD, June 11, 1849.

MY DEAR CHARLIE, I have had so much to do in the way of writing during the past week that I have not had time sooner to answer your letter, which came to me in due course of mail, and for which I am much obliged to you.

I am very glad to hear that you are enjoying yourself so much, and also that the poor musquash dug faster than you did. I was not so long ago a boy as not to remember what sincere satisfaction there is in a good ducking, and how the spirit of maritime adventure is ministered to by a raft which will not float. I congratulate you on both experiences.

And now let me assume the privilege of my uncleship to give you a little advice. Let me counsel you to make use of all your visits to the country as opportunities for an education which is of great importance, which town-bred boys are com