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THE CHILDREN'S GARLAND.

EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING.

[graphic]

LEASE, Mr. Mate, has that cloud a silver lining?

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The question was asked by little Kate Vale, the daughter of an immigrant, who, with her mother, was following her father who had gone before to New York. Katie was a quiet, gentle little child, who gave trouble to no one. She had borne the suffering of sea-sickness at the beginning of the voyage so patiently, and now took the rough sea-fare so thankfully, that she had made a fast friend of Tom Bolton, the mate. Bolton had a warm, kindly heart, and one of the children whom he had left in England was just the age of Katie; this inclined him all the more to show her kindKatie often had a piece of Bolton's sea-biscuit; he told her tales which he called "long yarns;" and sometimes in rough weather he would wrap his thick jacket around her, to keep the chill from her thinly-clad form. Katie was not at all afraid of Bolton, or Mr. Mate," as she called him; and she took hold of his hard brown hand as she asked the question, "Has that cloud a silver lining?"

ness.

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Bolton glanced up at a very black lowering cloud, which seemed to blot the sun quite out of that part of the sky.

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Why do you ask me, Kate?" said the sailor.

Because mother often says that every cloud has a silver lining, and · that one looks as if it had none."

"None that we can see," he

Tom Bolton gave a short laugh. replied; "for the cloud is right between us and the sun. If we could look at the upper part, where the bright beams fall, we should see yon black cloud like a great mass of silvery mother-o'-pearl, just like those that you yesterday called shining mountains of snow."

Katie turned round, and raising her eyes, watched for some minutes the gloomy cloud. It was slowly moving towards the west, and as it did so, the sun behind it began to edge all its dark outline with brightness.

"See! see!" exclaimed Katie; "it is turning out the edge of its silver lining! If I were up there in the sky, I suppose that all would look beautiful then. But I don't know why mother should take comfort from talking of the clouds and their linings."

The mother, Mrs. Vale, who was standing near, leaning against the bulwarks, heard the last words of her child, and made reply: "Because we have many clouds of sorrow here to darken our lives, and our hearts would often fail us, but for the thought, 'There is a bright side to every trial sent to the humble believer.'" And Mrs. Vale repeated the beautiful lines,

"Yon clouds, a mass of sable shade,

To mortals gazing from below,
By angels from above surveyed
With universal brightness glow."

Katie did not quite understand the verse, but she knew how patiently and meekly her mother had borne sudden poverty, the sale of

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