and how much happier I should otherwise have been, I am confident that
they will never commit a similar offence so long as they remember the
story of _the boy who stole the nails_.




THE CHILDLESS MOTHER.

BY MRS. M.H. ADAMS.


There are many childless mothers in our land. In some homes there never
lived a little child to make them happy; but in others the spirits of
the little ones have departed. They dwell in another home--the "dear
heavenly home." Their mothers, those childless mothers, weep day and
night in their loneliness and sadness. This sketch is of a mother who
had buried all her little babes--four precious children--all her little
family. The mother's name was Ellen Moore.

For many months after the birth of her first child, Ellen was free from
sorrow as a bird in the morning. She never thought affliction might come
to her blessed home. It was not surprising, for she had never known what
bereavement and bitter disappointment were. She was educated to be a
child of sunshine. She had always lived amid smiles and tenderness, and
when the fearful cloud of sorrow broke, in an unexpected moment, upon
her head, she seemed bowed down, never to rise again in health and
beauty.

It was a sad day in our neighborhood when Ellen's first little babe