ELISHA S. FITCH.



co-operation will as certainly andI as continuously receive the special bless-
sing and approval of Ileaven.
  The enterprise under consideration to-day is but a necessary result ot the
increased widowhood and orphanage transferred to the care of the Masonic
fraternity, and of the country generally, by the merciless ravages of war.
This terrible calamity, which I-as swept over the land with the besom of
destruction, has multiplied indefinitely these objects of our care and com-
miseration-their natural protectors have fallen in the shock of battle, or
perhaps more slowly but surely wasted away under the rigors of army pris
ons or the prstilential vapors of crowded hospitals, and these, their surviv-
ors, have been left, in manv instances, alone in the world, to buffet as best
they may with the bleak storms of adversity which now overshadow with
their gloomy plall their dreary pathway through life.
             "Their home a dismal ruin lies,
               WVhere mirth late tuned her lyre of joy,
             And tears of anguish fill your eyes,
               Poor orphan Eit ir  nd howieless boy."
  The desolating tide of civil war has left them as social wrecks drifted
upon a sterile strand, gazing fondly but hopelessly into the gloomy depths
which have buried all their earthly hopes forever. And now from this
scene of social isolation, with uplifted hands and streaming eyes, they
are appealing to us for a shelter and a hoome, and invoking the mercy of
the widow's God, and the protection of the Father of the fatherless in be-
half of our philanthropic labors. And think you such earnest pleadings,
urged with the sublime eloquence of despair, will prove unavailing in the
courts of Heaven and before the "Judge of all the Earth-the King Eter-
nal, Immortal and Invisiblh-!"  It cannot be. Their plea will prevail-
nay these petitions are already being answered.  In the prcvidence ot God
we are here to-day in response to their tupolications; and inethinks the di-
vine spirit of charity itself has been evoked from its native skies and is
now hovering over this consecrated spot to hallow the services of the hour.
We have an abiding faith that Ile who spake those words of compassionate
tenderness and love, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid
them not," and wlho, in response to the witiow's wail, halted the bier in the
city of Nain and reanimated the sleeping dust of the "widow's son," will
assuredly sustain and bless our "Widows' and Orphans' Home."  So mote
it be.