little friend. I do not know how I recognized him. It was by an
intuition of the soul, for not a feature that his countenance bore in
his healthful days, was visible.

I took his trembling little hand in mine, and shaking my head to clear
the moisture from my eyes, said I, attempting to smile--"How are you?"

"Quite well," said the dying infant, and he, too, smiled.

I knew that it was an angel that lighted up that smile--that it was the
immortal spirit, rising in sublime resignation above the vanity of
health and earthly beauty, that beamed in his blighted face.

"I cannot walk now," said Johnny, in a soft, low voice, that his panting
chest could scarcely articulate.

I could not speak--and, continued the boy, with a little sigh, and in
tremulous tones--"My mother is dead."--But thy Father, from whom the
purest and holiest things and thoughts have their being--the Source of
all light and life and beauty and goodness, lives to thee Johnny, said I
in my heart. Poor little blighted city flower, thought I, as I looked at
him through my tears--immortal flower of humanity--purer and lovelier
now in thy pain and resignation than when thy cheeks were rosy, and thy
laugh was like a song-bird's music; thou shall soon be transplanted to a
land where no sorrows, sighs, and pains are known; thy little feeble
frame will moulder away beneath the daisy and the weeping snow-drop, but
thy purified soul shall bloom in everlasting glory, in the bosom of God.

Oh! you who are strong and full of life, speak gently to the fragile,
drooping, blighted flowers of cities, and do not scorn them. They once