Pray!--said the Little Gentleman.

The divinity-student prayed, in low, tender tones, that God would look
on his servant lying helpless at the feet of his mercy; that he would
remember his long years of bondage in the flesh; that he would deal
gently with the bruised reed. Thou hast visited the sins of the fathers
upon this their child. Oh, turn away from him the penalties of his own
transgressions! Thou hast laid upon him, from infancy, the cross which
thy stronger children are called upon to take up; and now that he is
fainting under it, be Thou his stay, and do Thou succor him that is
tempted! Let his manifold infirmities come between him and Thy
judgment; in wrath remember mercy! If his eyes are not opened to all
thy truth, let thy compassion lighten the darkness that rests upon him,
even as it came through the word of thy Son to blind Bartimeus, who sat
by the wayside, begging!

Many more petitions he uttered, but all in the same subdued tone of
tenderness. In the presence of helpless suffering, and in the
fast-darkening shadow of the Destroyer, he forgot all but his Christian
humanity, and cared more about consoling his fellow-man than making a
proselyte of him.

This was the last prayer to which the Little Gentleman ever listened.
Some change was rapidly coming over him during this last hour of which
I have been, speaking. The excitement of pleading his cause before his
self-elected spiritual adviser,--the emotion which overcame him, when
the young girl obeyed the sudden impulse of her feelings and pressed
her lips to his cheek,--the thoughts that mastered him while the
divinity-student poured out his soul for him in prayer, might well