In 1355, lived at Sienna, in Italy, a nobleman, Giovanni (John) Colombino, who was quite the opposite of Elzear. He was extremely irritable, and took no pains to master his temper. Coming home one day at his dinner hour, and finding that the meal was not ready, he flew into a furious passion, and began to upset and break the furniture in the dining-room. His wife, a holy woman, endeavored to pacify him, and, while urging the servants to hurry forward their preparations, she argued sweetly with her husband on the unseemliness of such displays of anger, and begged him to read a book, while she would go to aid the cook. He flung the book away from him, and stalked back and forth in his rage, while the lady hastened to the kitchen.

Presently, however, he began to cool down and to feel heartily ashamed of his weakness. So, picking up the book, he began to read it. It was a Book of Martyrs, and in the mirror of their conduct he beheld the horrible deformity of his own life. From that hour there was total change in Giovanni Colombino; he became the wonder of Sienna, died in the belief of the Word of God, and added one more name to the long roll of Christian heroes, who owed, under God, their greatness and heroism to the irresistible influence of a saintly woman.

What a Godly Daughter and Sister Did

In the year 186-, a family, composed of father and mother, with three children, came from afar to live in a quiet suburb of one of our great Eastern cities. The father, Mr. S-, had been the heir to a considerable fortune, which he had first impaired by mismanagement, and then completely lost by involving it all in unwise ventures. He had been induced to come to the East by the offer of employment as bookkeeper or accountant in a large shipping firm. He took possession of his modest little suburban house under peculiarly distressing circumstances. His wife, a woman of uncommon beauty and goodness, was in the last stage of consumption, and the fatal termination of the malady was hastened by the fatigues of a long journey, the bitter cold of an unusually severe autumn, and the material discomforts of her new home. The cottage which the family had rented was old, damp, had been for some years untenanted, and was but scantily furnished and insufficiently warmed.

"I trust you, Nora," -gasped the dying mother, as she held the hand of the kneeling girl in one of her own, and with the other touched the bent golden head half in blessing and half caressingly, "and I know God will help you."

When the pastor, with moist eyes, summoned courage to say to the remaining parent and his offspring, that all was over, and that one more soul had gone to her rest and reward, Nora, startled by an exclamation from her father, turned round to see her sister apparently lifeless in his arms. "O my darling, my darling!" she said as she raised the rigid from and covered its face with her tears and kisses, "you must not leave me now! "

The pastor, with a few earnest words of sympathy in the father's ear, hastened away, when the fainting girl revived, promising to return soon and obtain for these afflicted ones all the aid they needed in their bereavement.

A few weeks deepened immeasurable the gloom which had fallen on that now motherless household. Mr. S-, naturally irritable, had become intolerably peevish in consequence of his many disappointments. His temper had sorely tried his sick wife; and after her death it proved a source of continual suffering to her children. The boy, William, was seldom at home, and so escaped these domestic discomforts; but poor Nora and her little suffering Fanny were made to feel their bitterness daily and almost hourly.

For, to add to the pinching poverty they were enduring, their father lost his place of accountant. His haughty manner, which misfortune had not softened, his censorious and prying dispositions, which a certain scrupulosity had only made more troublesome and intolerable to others, gave offense to every subordinate in the office. He also took it on himself to lecture his employers on certain transactions with the customhouse which excited his suspicion. Just as December was beginning to tax to the utmost Nora's resources in housekeeping, her father was dismissed.

This was terrible news for the poor child of fifteen, who knew not where to look for the means of keeping a roof above them in a season rendered exceptionally severe by intense cold and the great dearth of all things. She was a stranger, too, in the city and their immediate neighborhood, and to no human being had she breathed a word of the utter destitution which had fallen on them.

With the tidings of her father's dismissal a new enemy to her peace appeared. She had, strange as it may seem, never known by any experience of hers what drunkenness was, had never seen an intoxicated person. What was her horror and dismay to behold her dear parent in that condition! hitherto she only had eyes for his virtues; in the light of her innocence his imperfections had been overlooked or viewed only as the shadows inseparable from the bright sides of his character.

It was a fearful revelation to the care-burdened girl. But her womanly instinct and true nobleness of nature impelled her, even when this first manifestation of infirmity was renewed again and again, only to treat him whom she loved and reverenced so singularly, with the tenderness, the respect, the delicacy due to a sick and helpless father. She hid him away from every eye, even from those of her young sister, who was encouraged to believe that the change she could not but remark was due to grief and exhaustion. Nora spent hours of the night in prayer, when all was still in her cottage, conversing with God as she was permitted to plead for her dear ones at the feet of Jesus, face to face with the Divine Majesty.?

From that Presence she always arose overflowing with comfort, with peace and light and strength. The morning ever found her armed with increased courage for the struggle before her. It had been the invariable custom of her parents to perform together their night and morning devotions. Nora, by a happy inspiration, took her mother's place by his side from the beginning of his bereavement, and to his unspeakable satisfaction. Even when half stupefied by drink, he would be persuaded to kneel with her and lift his soul to God: the morning never failed to find him humiliated, conscience-stricken, and self-accusing, but irritable and despondent. She never uttered one word of reproach or so much as hinted, in their conversation, at the growing habit which filled her with undefinable terror and foreboding.

One night he returned late, she knew not whence, and unable as he was to say his night-prayers, had lain down half-undressed on his bed, his angelic daughter watching wearily near the half-opened door of his chamber. On awaking, he was struck to the heart with sorrow, and when his pale and hollow-eyed child made her appearance, he cast himself on her neck in a mutiny of tears. She kissed his cheek, soothed him, lavished on him words of love and comfort such as God puts on the lips of the pure and bravehearted. At length "O Nora," he cried, "this must be no more!" and kneeling by her side they both prayed in silence. God heard their united prayers. That trial was thenceforth spared to Nora.

Another blessing, a few days afterward, rewarded her filial piety. She wrote to her father's late employers, soliciting an interview, and received a favorable answer. Recommending, as was her wont in every serious undertaking, the success of her visit to the Father of the orphan and afflicted, she presented herself at the office, surprised and charmed the chief partner with her humble beauty, her artless simplicity, the rare culture in one so young displayed during the interview, and especially by the eloquence with which she pleaded and won her father's case. Mr. S~ was given an occupation more suitable to his years and antecedents, and the daughter was delicately told of his former unpopularity and its causes.

These, with all a woman's tact, Nora set about correcting; and, wonderful to relate, in good time she succeeded in effecting a great change in her father's temper, his bearing toward his associates in business hours, and his disposition to faultfinding. The humiliation which the old gentleman felt at his late weakness made him able to bear this gentle encouragement. And so Nora was left free to devote herself to her sick sister, and to a long and earnest correspondence with her brother, whose duties compelled him to long absences, and whose health as well as conduct began to cause her watchful heart no little alarm.

Fanny's constitutional debility had suffered much from the long journey the family had recently made to their new abode, as well as from her mother's death, and the loss of many luxuries and comforts the child had till then been accustomed to. Soon after the physician pronounced her case one of chronic spine disease, but the sweet sufferer was not allowed to know of it. She seemed, however, to brighten, revive, and gain strength under the warm sunlight of her sister's love, and the tender nursing of that gentle and cunning hand. But just then Mr. S- caught cold, and the illness soon assumed the form of violent pleurisy, leaving but little hopes of recovery, as the New Year dawned on them.

When the physician was summoned hurriedly one late December evening, his impression on entering the cottage was, as he afterward declared, one of reverential awe; for something heavenly seemed to pervade the atmosphere which filled it. The door was opened by Fanny, looking, in her simple dress of black, and with her dazzling complexion, like an angel. The whole house was decorated with a refined taste, and he was struck by the exquisite neatness of the sick-chamber. The patient was in a deep slumber when he entered, Nora was kneeling by his side, her hand held in her parent's with so tight a grasp that she could not or dared not withdraw it without interrupting the repose which powerful herbs had procured him.

As she turned her head to greet the man, he was struck with the rapt look of gratitude for his coming. The poor slumberer soon awoke, and his spirit was prepared for the reception of the divine whom he would soon be with. Nora moved about the sick-room; and her sister knelt at the foot of the bed, silently pouring forth her tears and prayers. She knew what was coming, and trusted in the Comforter for strength to sustain her.

Both on quitting and entering the cottage the physician had remarked that there was only fire in the sick-room; his previous inquiries about the circumstances of the family had elicited form the neighbors information enough to make him feel certain that Nora had to contend with great distress. From herself he could obtain no answer to his timid and indirect questions. But it so happened that Mr. S-'s employer, hearing of his serious illness, called, with his eldest son, on the physician, and begged the latter to accompany them to the cottage. It was a timely visit, a glance satisfied the merchant of the urgent want of relief. The cottage was his property; he resolved at once on making it most comfortable; and besides begged Nora to draw at once her father's full year's salary, which was trebled without her knowledge.

William hastened to his father's sickbed traveling night and day from the upper Mississippi, where he and his patron were superintending the building of a bridge. Whether he had inherited his mother's constitutional weakness, or his frame was not proof against the fatigue of so long a journey, and the discomforts and privations from which his very slender purse could not purchase an exemption, he reached the house of death only to be prostrated with fever. The father died a few hours after his son's arrival, and the good physician was called in to minister to the latter before his parent had been borne to the cemetery and laid beside his wife.

Nora, with a woman's fortitude, bore up against this new trial, and God, who has stored up in woman's heart such treasures of love and enduring devotion, enabled this tender girl, exhausted as she was by the grief and labors of all these weary months, to be for her brother all she had been for both her parents.