nephews, she had, when she retired from service, saved seventy-five pounds. This she determined to increase to a hundred; and, by going out for some years as sick nurse, she succeeded in doing so; and, having placed it in a banker's hands, the interest paid the rent of her small but neat habitation.

Peggy was an attentive reader of the Bible, and, in her latter years a devout Christian. Perhaps the grace she most eminently exhibited was contentment. After a severe illness, she thus wrote: "God send me to feel His mercy as I ought, so low and weak as I have. been brought! I am well taken care of, have a very good doctor, and want for nothing but more grace to be thankful; but may God of His goodness forgive all my lukewarmness!"

Disinterestedness was another of her excellent qualities; of which she gave a striking proof by keeping to herself the loss she sustained by the failure of the banker in whose hands she had placed her savings, lest her friends, if they heard of it, should make it up to her. Nor was it till two years afterwards, when the dividend of the banker's debts was paid, that she disclosed the circumstance; and then only to induce a friend to take the sum thus paid over to her for one of her children, to whom Peggy said she had always intended to leave it.

During the winter of 1831 her strength began to fail, and after a gradual and painless decline, she died January 16th, 1832, aged seventy-four. Her last hours were frequently cheered by the visits of some kind young ladies who talked to her, prayed with her, and saw that she wanted for nothing. She knew almost the whole of the Psalms by heart, and occupied many a lonely hour sweetly by repeating some of them. So much was she beloved and respected by those who knew her, that an eminent merchant of Hull, with whose parents she had lived five years previous to her

first leaving that town, attended her funeral and put on mourning. She was interred in the new burialground of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Hull, with a suitable inscription placed over her grave.

Scarcely had I finished writing the last sentence, when I opened on the following singular account of an eccentric dairymaid, published in the Gentleman's Magazine. Her name was Ellen Carpenter: for the greater part of her life she was dairymaid at Compton House, near Eastbourne, the seat of the Earl of Burlington. Although long unfit for work, she refused to give up her post, and always claimed as one of her perquisites of it the flannel and coarse towelling used in the dairy, which, it was afterwards discovered, she made up into under-clothing; while for stockings she wore any old pieces she could pick up. These and other penurious habits, in a member of so liberal a household as the Earl of Burlington's, caused the old lady to be looked on as a miser; but she carefully concealed her hoards from all her fellow-servants, except so far as to entrust a bank-book to the man who milked the cows. day last week (August, 1857), Ellen Carpenter was was found dead in the dairy. The body was taken to a small cottage in which her mother had lived, and which Ellen had continued to rent though she did not occupy it; and there, in the bedroom, on search being made, two bags were found; one containing about three hundred pounds, and the other four hundred pounds in gold; and, in other parts of the same cottage, large sums in the same coin were discovered: also papers showing that Ellen had sixty pounds in the funds and a sum of money in Lewes bank-in all amounting to one thousand five hundred and seventy-eight pounds!

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Besides this, a bank-book in the hands of the milkman already mentioned, and which he refuses to give up, shows that Ellen had placed a considerable sum in the Bank of England. No will has yet been found. The

cottage in which this large sum of money was concealed stands full half a mile from Compton House, where Ellen lived; and she must have kept it on solely for the purpose of secreting her hoards in it. In all probability they were a continuation of her mother's savings (who died some seven or eight years ago); and it is not a little remarkable that such an amount of gold should have remained safe in an unoccupied and almost ruinous cottage for so long a period.

It may be added that, though Ellen's clothing was made up of rags (she had some old kid gloves on her feet!) the dairy of which she had the charge was the picture of cleanliness, and, indeed, has always been famed and visited as a model of what a dairy ought to be. The news of the discovery of this wealth has caused no little sensation amongst the relatives of the old lady at Seaford and Eastbourne, who now make their appearance in the shape of seventeenth cousins!

Well-I would sooner have been Margaret Hill than this miserly old dairymaid, who, to my mind, even if she came honestly by all her sovereigns, died wickedly rich. What a contrast between the disinterestedness of the one and the selfishness of the other! Margaret, thankful for a little pension, which was not, however, sufficient for all her needs, retired into private life as soon as she had made up the sum requisite for the rent of her little cottage. Ellen refused to give up her post, though quite incapable of work, for the sake of a few house-flannels and straining-cloths ! Margaret gave away her little surplus in her lifetime. Ellen did not tell any one how to benefit by her hoards, even after her death. Margaret concealed the loss she had sustained by her banker's failure, lest her kind friends should offer to help her. Ellen took everything she could get, and only entrusted the milkman with the secret of her bank-book, because she could not go to the bank herself. Margaret laid up her riches where

moth and rust cannot corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. It is much to be feared Ellen laid out very little in that investment; and well will it be for her if she be not hereafter found "miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked."

Happy are those, who, having money, know how to use it, whether on themselves or others. Ellen did neither; she was not kind to her own old limbs, which might have been warmly and decently clad with the produce of one of those sovereigns she tied up in old rags. If she had even put out the contents of her two sacks to interest, and spent that interest in deeds of charity and kindness, and on her own necessities, it would have been something, and she never a penny the poorer; but misers generally hoard, they don't invest.

An old cook of my grandmother's saved a pint-basin full of guineas, which, at a time that gold was very scarce, she thought a good deal of, and never could be tempted to invest. Of course, her wealth occasioned much talk among her fellow-servants, to whom she occasionally exhibited this wonderful basin; but she did not know how much it held, and never could be persuaded to count it, saying it was unlucky A gentleman, whom she favoured with a sight of it, made a rough guess of its value, and told her that, if she liked, he would take it of her at his estimate, and allow her an annuity of so much for the rest of her days-enough to make old Fanny comfortable for life. But no! Fanny would not hear of it; she thought she should, somehow, be the loser, and preferred taking out a guinea when she wanted, and showing the basin about. So the end was, that, before Fanny died, the basin got quite emptywhether through her own improvidence or the roguery of others I am not prepared to say.

JOHN JONES,

THE POETICAL FOOTMAN.

Ir is certainly a good thing to have an ear for music, for though the braying of a donkey or the setting of a saw may be more disagreeable to us than would otherwise be the case, on the whole we receive far more pleasure than pain from God's good gift, and it is one that may be innocently as well as agreeably indulged, at proper times and in proper places.

I know a clergyman of a country parish, a valued friend of mine, who will perhaps read this little book: he used to have the church clerk come in the evening, once a week, with his music-book and flageolet or flute, to play hymn tunes in the kitchen to all who liked to practise with him; and many a fine old tune, with sweet and solemn words, have I heard sung there on Wednesday evenings

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Sounds, by distance made more sweet."

In some houses I have known the Evening Hymn led by one of the ladies on the piano, and joined in by all the family. Where the establishment is numerous and some of the voices good, the effect of domestic psalmody is very fine, and it seems to spread a peaceful, hallowed influence all around. I shall not soon forget hearing the bishop of Jerusalem thus lead a large family party, including sixteen or seventeen servants, in singing

"All hail, the power of Jesus' name!".

We are told that music will be one of the pleasures of heaven, which we are not told of painting or poetry;