Niblo's Garden was a blaze of glory. The great ball-room, the finest in New York in its day, or rather its night, for it required the mighty chandeliers with their thousands of crystal pendants to be ablaze to set forth the splendor of the place. The polished floor was thronged with youth and beauty and age and honor. The ladies were all smiles and tartan ribbons. Golden-haired maidens

with Scotch caps and eagles' feathers and tartan plaids fastened with glittering brooches whirled in concentric circles with stalwart lads in kilts and hose and buckled shoes. Dainty dowagers smiled approvingly, some with heads as white as the snow that rests on the turrets of the castle of Gleniffer, but with hearts young as ever and feet itching to be at it as of yore. Gentlemen in swallow-tails were in abundance, accompanied by ladies bright-eyed, bare

bosomed and bewitchingly beautiful. Silks rustled on silks, velvets rubbed on velvets. The flash of silver and the

glitter of gold were everywhere. Then came a roll of drums and the music ceased.

dance of the Scots in America, and Mrs. Gordon and her cousin Tam MacGregor took their proper places at the head of the dance. The lady was radiant, as all accomplished dancers are. She was dressed in complete Gordon tartan with silver and granite attachments. She was in the prime of womanhood, with the gleam of youth still burning in her eyes and the red glow of health in her cheeks. Her head was like Juno's, set off with a silver tiara. She was muscular and statuesque, but light of foot and graceful as a gazelle. Mr. MacGregor, or Lang Tam, as he was familiarly called, was, of course, in full fiery MacGregor tartan.

Now it was Patronella, the favorite

He looked terrible as an army with banners. The flaming red MacGregor tartan was bedizened with badges and rosettes. Silver-mounted horns and dirks and pistols and forks and knives were set in glittering array here and there on his body and limbs. These intermixed with belts and chains and tassels gave a most bewildering aspect to his panoplied front. At his back were mighty folds and waves of as much more tartan as might clothe several other MacGregors as large as himself. In spite of all these accoutrements, his head was in the air and his eagle feathers reaching for the chandeliers.

The swallow-tails and bald heads thronged in a great cluster to watch the movements of the leading couple while the floor filled rapidly with a double row of dancers eagerly waiting for the signal. Among the cluster of interested spectators was Mr. Gordon, who looked on good-naturedly at his radiant spouse and the gallant Tam. James Gordon was no dancer. His feet were broad and benevolent, and covered so much ground that they were not at all adapted for cutting pigeon-wings and beating double trebles. He preferred to look on. He had the fine sense to encourage his. spouse in the graceful accomplishment.

"Now Marget," said Jeems, endearingly, "let them see how to do it now."

But Robertson was tuning up-Robertson who had led the Highlanders to help quell the Rebellion, Robertson who knew every Scottish melody ancient or modern. A majestic wave of the fiddlebow and the warbled hurricane was carrying the Scots back to the fatherland again. Mrs. Gordon was sailing on a sea of glory. Lang Tam's feet were winged, while his arms swung in mighty circles around his head. The throng swayed backward, for a touch from the mighty Tam was like the shock of a galvanic battery. Even his face, usually pleasant enough, was something to be dreaded. His jaws were covered with a red stubble of several weeks' growth, doubtless allowed to grow for the occasion to match the tartan. Down the middle they careered like two river steamers racing, halted a moment, then retraced their shining path in triumph. Others joined in clustering constellations like

the milky way coming into glory after Castor and Pollux had lit their celestial fires and kindled the way.

But where was Jeems? Away at the back of the shining palace, beneath the gilded grand stand, where Robertson was in his majesty, leading his master musicians, there was a certain door opening only to a certain knock, and there was Jeems and two pipers smacking their lips and commenting admiringly on something they had tasted from among the bottles copper-colored and translucent, some clear and transparent, some amber-hued and disturbed with spherical globules of atmosphere rising through the liquid equatorial regions and clustering in bubbling coruscations at the upper polar extremity. But Jeems had no time to mark these phenomena, which seemed of such absorbing interest to the pipers. He had to go. Lady Margaret would be looking for him.

"Do you know what a doctor told me vesterday?" said Sandy of the raven locks.

"No," said Willie of the bushy whiskers.

"Well, he told me that blowing the bagpipes causes an irritation of the pharynx that superinduced an inflammation of the maxillary process that affected the salivary glands to such an extent that a false thirst was created, and the best thing to do was to take a mouthful of whisky and let it stay there a while and then spit it out, and the result would be that the throat would be strengthened and the thirst would not come upon ye at all."

"What did you say to him?" queried Willie.

"I told him I preferred to swallow the whisky and allow the natural evaporation to reach the organs affected."

"You are right," said Willie, "and do you know, that the doctors who condemn whisky are the first to recommend it when anything is the matter with you? Last week I had a touch of lumbago, and do you know what I am going to tell you?"

But the mysterious knock was at the door and the discussion on the effects of whisky on bagpipers was cut short. It was Jeems Gordon and Lang Tam, and "Where was ye?" and "come away

now," and "here's the Governor and the Mayor and twenty with them from Albany, and we are going to march them with the pipes, and what will it be?" "Johnnie Cope,'" said he of the whis

kers.

"Or The Campbells Are Coming,' said Sandy.

"It's all one to them," said Lang Tam. "Come along."

The Governor was a fine, dignified, military gentleman, who had seen service in Southern campaigns. With him was a cluster of young officers in blue and gold, and the Mayor and attendant Aldermen and other State and city officials. The pipers blew a martial blast and the procession started.

James Gordon and the Governor were in front and amid great enthusiasm they filed into the main hall and paraded around to where Mrs. Gordon and Lang Tam were stationed, near the bandmaster's platform.

The courtly Governor saluted and the young officers bowed to Mrs. Gordon.

On the steps leading up to the grand stand where Robertson had stationed his musicians, two children were standing. The oldest, a boy of ten years, the younger a girl of seven or eight, were looking on in dumb wonderment at the magnificent spectacle.

"Governor," said Mrs. Gordon, "this is the Twa Bairns. It's to raise some money to help to bring them up that the ball has been gotten up for. That's the tune we're dancing to, Governor. Baith their faither and mither are dead, and they have nae friens in this country. But when we got you to promise to come to the ball, Governor, we had to print anither thoosand tickets. You've done the Twa Bairns a good turn, Governor."

The eyes of the old soldier moistened as he looked at the wondering orphans. A brave man trembles in the presence of helplessness.

"What's your name, my little lady?" he said.

"Lily Bell," said the lassie. "And yours, my little man?" "Willie Bell," said the laddie. "That's two pretty names," said the Governor. "Now, you must be good children and do what this good lady tells

you, and you, my little lad, must take care of your sister till she is old enough to take care of herself, and you will always be a good brother to your sister, my little lad, will you?"

"Yes, sir," said the boy.

"When you get a little older maybe I'll be able to help you; you will remember?" said the warm-hearted soldier.

They nodded their heads.

"And now, have you a pocket?" and the Governor put a piece of shining gold into the little lad's hand and another in the hand of the little lady.

"What do you say now?" said Mrs. Gordon.

"Thank you, sir," said the Twa Bairns.

Then the gilded officers clustered around and the little lad had to take off his velvet Scottish cap and the gold and silver pieces and the green bank notes were put into it, and the dignitaries and dancers clustered thicker and thicker and the contributions were piled in the little cap till it overflowed, and Lady Margaret smiled and stood like a guardian angel, welcoming the multitude and calling them blessed, and Jeems Gordon and Lang Tam led the Governor and his staff away to where a certain knock opened a certain door, and when they came out into the ballroom again the chandeliers seemed. to glow with a double splendor in the eyes of Jeems Gordon, for the "Peat reek" was beginning to work, as it had appeared in the dazzling decanter, and the mysterious segregation of aerated globules were rising from Jeem's equatorial regions to his upper polar extremity.

But Robertson was at it again. It was "Money Musk," and Mrs. Gordon and Lang Tam were a joy to look at as they led off in a strathspey and reel, and the Governor and his glittering satellites gazed in delighted wonderment, and joyous amazement sat upon the faces of the Twa Bairns.

(To be continued.)

Prayer should be just what one feels, just what one thinks, just what one needs; and it should stop the moment it ceases to be the real expression of the need, the thought, and the feeling.—H. II'. Beecher.

For the descendants of the noble men who fell victims to the bigotry of Alva and Laud, who were hunted to death by Lauderdale and Claverhouse, and who died in the streets of Paris or in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh, are all to be found in the Presbyterian Church of America.

De

The earliest Presbyterian emigration consisted of French Huguenots, who under Admiral Coligny, and led by Ribault, settled in 1562 in the Carolinas. They were massacred by the Spaniards. Monts planted another Huguenot settlement in Nova Scotia. In 1665 the Huguenots settled in New York. About 1620 English Puritanism began to colonize New England. The Westminster Assembly (1643-48) had developed two types of Church polity-Presbyterianism and Congregationalism. The Plymouth colony was more of the latter type, while the Massachusetts Bay was distinctly of the former. The Presbyterian type spread rapidly. Before 1670 it had mingled freely with the other systems in Virginia and Maryland, and previous to that date nine churches were established in New York alone.

Rev. Francis McKemie, an Irish Presbyterian minister, preached his first sermon in Philadelphia in 1692. He set about the planting of churches. He became famous as a writer, and when the first Presbytery meeting was held in 1706, at Freehold, in New Jersey, McKemie was chosen moderator. were eight ministers, and a number of elders at this meeting, all of Scottish or Irish extraction, except one. The meetings were conducted with much precision.

In 1729, the Synod, as the union of the Presbyteries was called, continued to make rapid progress till the war of the Revolution. One hundred and thirtytwo ministers divided into twelve Presbyteries were actively engaged at the close of the colonial period. When the conflict came the Presbyterians threw themselves heart and soul into the struggle for the land of their adoption. As a consequence they suffered much. It

is needless to say that they exerted a great influence in the construction of the Constitution of the United States. There are many points of similarity between

Presbyterian Church government and the government of the country.

On the 21st of May, 1789, the first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America met in Philadelphia. Dr. John Witherspoon preached the opening sermon. The learned Doctor had been a delegate to the Continental Congress from 1776 until 1782, and was among the foremost in moulding the Constitution of the United States. Witherspoon was a lineal descendant of John Knox, and was born in the south of Scotland in 1722. He was President of Princeton College, New Jersey, for nearly 30 years, and died there in 1794.

During the early years of the nineteenth century the Presbyterian Church in America prospered in a most marked degree. Revivals of religion sprang up all around, and thousands were added to the Church. Home and Foreign Missions were alike attended to, and theological seminaries were established in many places.

The Civil War, in separating the people of the North from those of the South, also brought a separation of churches. The Southern section of the Presbyterian Church, when it organized the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America, comprised eleven synods, fortyseven prebyteries, seven hundred ministers, one thousand churches, and seventy-five thousand communicants.

The war had the effect of uniting the Northern churches more closely together, and there was a growing desire manifested for organic unity. An effort was made in 1867 to combine all the Presbyterian bodies in the North and form one strong church, but the attempt was unsuccessful. In 1869, however, the Old and New School Churches united, and a memorial fund of $7,883,983 was raised and the Church entered with renewed energy upon a new career of usefulness.

The American Presbyterian churches. have been always characterized by a great zeal for missions. When all the churches holding the Presbyterian system met in Belfast in 1884, they reported two hundred and thirty ordained missionaries, besides over four hundred