THE WIFE OF THE REV. JAMES FRASER, OF ALNESS.

THE REV. JAMES FRASER, of Alness, was a Christian minister of more than ordinary piety and unction. He was much esteemed, and exercised an influence for good far beyond his parish. He had, however, a thorn in the flesh in the person of his wife, who was a cold, unheeding, worldly woman. Never did her godly husband sit down to a comfortable meal in his own house, and often would he have fainted from sheer want of needful sustenance but for the considerate kindness of some of his parishioners. She was too insensate to try to hide her treatment of him, and well was it for him on one account, that she was. His friends thus knew of his ill-treatment, and were moved to do what they could for his comfort. A godly acquaintance arranged with him to leave a supply of food in a certain place, beside his usual walk, of which he might avail himself when starved at home. Even light and fire in his study were denied to him on the long, cold, and wintry nights; and as his study was his only place of refuge from the cruel scourge of his wife’s tongue and temper, there, shivering, and in the dark, he used to spend his winter evenings at home. Compelled to walk in order to keep himself warm, and accustomed to do so when preparing for the pulpit, he always kept his hands before him as feelers in the dark, to warn him of his approaching the wall at either side of the room. In this way, he actually wore a hole through the plaster at each end of his accustomed beat, on which some eyes have looked that glistened with light from other fire than that of love, at the remembrance of his cruel wife. But the godly husband had learned to thank the Lord for the discipline of this trial. Being at a Presbytery dinner alone, some one of the gentlemen proposed as a toast, the health of their wives, and, turning to Mr. Fraser, said,—“You, of course, will cordially join in drinking to this toast.” “So I will, and so I ought,” Mr. Fraser said, “for mine has been a better wife to me than any one of yours has been to you.” “How so?” they all exclaimed. “She has sent me,” was his reply, “seven times a-day to my knees in my closet, when I would not otherwise have gone, and this is more than any of you can say of yours.” The company was silent.  Religious Anecdotes Of Scotland.