Although Quarter-day is the almost
universal standard of business, it has become
a comparative fiction, by courtesy. What
landlord will call for his rent precisely on the
day it is due? What schoolmaster sends in
his bill, or expects to be paid, much before
the end of the vacation? Quarter-day has
its "days of grace;" but, although so far a
nominal, it is a necessary and valuable
standard. Everybody ought to know what
their credit and that of their neighbour's is
worth, and to take or give the days of grace
proportionately.

It is sometimes to be wished that all
transactions were capable of reduction to this
one standard—just as a decimal currency
would save so many of the financial botherations
of the account-book, counting-house,
and exchange-office; but so long as speculation
exists it is impossible. Bills will be given,
and will become due, at all sorts of eccentric
times of all sorts of months. Ships' cargoes
are too much at the mercy of wind and wave,
to think of Quarter-day; and so we must
have two sets of calculations—one, as regards
the regular demands which the four divisions
of the year bring with them; the other, as
concerns the intermediate transactions. No
small portion of confusion, even in the
simplest matters of private life, arises from
this compound system of financial
chronology.

Again, there are many people upon whom
Quarter-day presses with greater inconvenience
and severity than others. One class
of these, namely, Government pensioners, can
always manage well enough; for, although
their incomes are paid sometime after they
are nominally due, they are certain, and
creditors only wish all their customers were
pensioners.

Would that the genius of Quarter-day
could inspire the will, and furnish the means
to enable us all to meet its visits with open
faces and purses!

May Quarter-day ever come to us with a
smile, and go away satisfied!

THE LADY AND THE CHILD.

THERE lived a lady, beautiful and dear,
     Amongst us once, yet utterly apart;
For Grief's rude hand had closed her spirit's ear,
     And love and hope those ventures of the heart
Had settled in a blank and soundless sea
The wrecks, the buried wrecks, of memory.

For she had seen beneath a breezeless main
     Her husband sink and she was scarce eighteen;
And lightly on the sunny life had lain
     The shadow of the distant grave, till then:
So its approach, thus swift and unaware,
The unaccustom'd spirit could not bear.

Years brought no change; the hovering of that death,
     Ere it could fall, had turn'd the dark hair grey.
And when at last it match'd the brow beneath,
     The inner shadow had not pass'd away.
Earth had one touch to rouse the slumb'ring brain,
And that but woke the consciousness of pain.

For, ever by all calm and sunlit seas,
     She shudder'd as with his death-agony,
And closed her ears, as though the shoreward breeze
    Still had not lost the echo of his cry.
But else her life lay buried, and each year
Brought a fresh stone to raise the sepulchre.

She never smiled or wept: a marble face
    Hath often been to more expression wrought:
And in the restless eyes we could but trace
    A wishful, weary looking-out for thought
That never came, and Love sat grieving by—
For even Love could find no remedy.

At last a child upon that lady cast
     The finer vision of its clear blue eye,
And thought (few years from God, it had not pass'd
     Beyond the wisdom of simplicity)
It might be good for her to see those flowers
She used to gather in her childhood's hours.

It was a sight for tears—that blessed child
     Kneeling beside the aged woman's chair,
With daisy, violet, and primrose, piled
     'Mid fresh green leaves, in wild luxuriance there;
While the bright face upon the dimpled arm,
Watch'd earnestly the working of the charm:

And watch'd not long—for the poor wand'ring eye
     Glanced from the wild growth to the human flower.
Perhaps they stirr'd some secret sympathy;
     Perhaps it was the Great Physician's hour;
For, delicately touch'd, the still heart slept
Into the light of heaven—and she wept:

And bent her head to catch their mingling breath,
     That to her like a soften'd whisper spoke
Of many a meadow walk and dewy wreath,
     Of ready gardens 'neath the forest oak.
And then, though most unlike itself the while,
We knew returning Childhood by its smile.

And ever after, from that gracious day,
     Her wither'd life put forth its early green;
The unlifted cloud, rose-tinted, o'er it lay,
     And 'twixt her and the past a lovely screen.
All memories blithe and innocent came back,
And blossom'd o'er the soiled and rugged track,

Till e'en the faded cheek began to wear
     Of childhood's blush the pictured memory,
And morn and eve she went to say the prayer
    That she had lisp'd beside her mother's knee.
Her life became a pastime, and each day
Closed with the sleep of infants after play.

And God, who taught the tiny hand to draw
    From His disorder'd harp that pleasant tone,
Proclaim'd that in the gentle child she saw
    An old pet playmate long erst dead and gone:
Playmates so sadly match'd, 'twas strange to view—
More strange the love that sprung between the two.

But aye she placed wild flowers in her bosom,
    Turning from roses in their gorgeous prime,
And had no lack between the pale spring blossom.
    And the red berries of the Christmas time;
For, as the child her testimony bore,
These never grew so plenteously before.