voLrarE II.
“Now iiliidotli, tliese three, Faith, Hope,
ChiU-ity; hut the greatest of these is Charity.”
If we knew the cai'cs and crosses
Crowding round our neighbor’s way,
If wo knew tlie little losses,
Sorely grievous day by day,
■'Yould wc then so often chide him
For liis lac'.k of thrift and gain ?
Leaving on his heart a shadow—
Leaving on our lives a stain.
Ifwc knew the clouds above us
Ilehl but gentle blessing there,
AVould we turn away, all trembling
In our blind and weak desp; !•?
Would wc shrink fr(U)i little shadows
Flitting o’er the dewy grass,
If we Ijnew that bii'ds of Eden
Were in incrc.y hying past f
If we Icnew the silent st»*ry,
Quivering thro’ the heart of pain,
Would wc drive it with our coldness,
Back to haunts of guilt agaia ?
Life hath many a tangled crossing,
Joy hath many a hreak of woe ;
But the cheeks, tear-washed, are whitest,
And kept in life and flowers by snow.
Lot us reach into our bosoms
For the key to other lives,
And with love toward erring nature,
Chir.sh good tliat still survives,
So that when our disrobed spirits
Soar to realms of light above,
We may say, “Dear father, love us,
E’en as we have shown our love.”
EXPI.Oi>EI> EmCOKS.
The ancients had curious no
tions about many natural objects.
They seem to have believed man}’
things just because tliey were so
intpi'obiible or even absurd. One
of their cherished belief’s was, that
(if tiie self-sacrificing character of
the female pelican. It was sup
posed that this bird tvas in the
habit of tearing open her breast
and feeding her young witli her
own blood. It was, t'lerefore, a
favorite emblem among tlie early
Christians, of Christ and His
church.
Tlie idea was, of course, a false
one It may have arisen from
the fact that the })elican fills her
pouch w ith fish, and to feed her
voung, di.sgorges these by press
ing the pouch on her breast.
Sometimes her feathers might
tlius become bloodtp and thus, at
least, give some color to the no
tion.
Sometimes this wondrous ma
ternal devotion was ascribed to
the vultures, which were also an
ciently sujiposed, without any
reason, to be all females.
One of the oddest old beliefs
was that of the vegetable lamb,
of Siberia. It was thought that
this plant bore an exact resem
blance to a lamb, was preyed upon
by wolves, and bled to death when
bitten by them.
Jmsieu describes the plant as
$olypodmm horoineU. Its stalk is
about a foot long and inclines
horizontally. It is supported on
four or five roots, which raise it a
little above the earth. It is cov
ered with long, silken down, of a
golden yellow color, and this
bears some resemblance to the
fleece of a Scythian lamb. The
rest, like mint sauce to roast lamb,
was added, to make the story
more complete.
A very common belief formerly,
was :hat in Java grew a tree so
poisonous that a person a])proach-
nig it, or entering its shadow was
doomed to death. It was called
the Upas, and is still used as an
emblem of whatever exerts a
b'ighting, deadlv inHiience. Ko
such tree lias, however, been dis
covered. There are manv’ pois
onous trees in tlie world, and
under their shade other polsonou.s
plants may be found, which will
poison by contact; but there is
no Upas that cau kill you as you
pass.
The modern Darwinian theory
that one species of animals is de
veloped from another, seems
realK to have been an old one,
at least in one instance. The
barnacle is small shell-fish which
attaches itself to rocks, timber,
and the bottoms of ships. It w'as
forinely believed that the goose
known as the barnacle goose
took its origin from tliis little
shell-fish. One writer declares
that with his own eye he saw the
shell open and the goose fly forth.
Others held that the goose pro
ceeded not from the shell, but
from the wood on which it was
fastened, and which was, there
fore, called a goose tree. There
is, of course, really no connection
between the two except a name,
and this only in appearance.
The geese were originally called
hiberniculm, on the supposition
that they came from Hibernia or
Ireland, and this being shortened
into hernicidce, finally passed into
the similar word barnacle or berni-
cle.
There used to be an absurd
story that a ship in full sail could
be stopped by a little fish, called
remora, adhering to it. The palm
tree was believed to put forth just
twelve shoots in a year, one for
each month. There was also a
tree over which a cloud contiu-
which
,1
materials in a most laborpus man
ner, retired to his stud}’, and from
ually rested, and from
every evening trickled the dew
which supplied the inhabitants of
the Western isles with vrater.
More probably it was the intellect
of some persons which was thus
beclouded. Albertus proposed a
collysimn or eyewash, which would
enable men to see in the dark. It
consisted of the right eye of a
hedgehog, boiled in oil, and pre
served in a brazen vessel!
WHAT IT COSTS TO WKSTE
WEiLL,.
Excellence is not matured in a
day, and the cost of it is an old
story. The beginning of Plato’s
‘Republic’ it is said was found in
his tablets written over and over
in a vai'iety of ways. Addison,
we are told, wore out the patience
of his printer; frequently when
nearly a whole impression of a
Spectator was worked off, he
would stop the press to insert a
new proposition. Lamb’s most
spoi'tive essays were the results
of most intense brain work ; he
used to spend a week at the time
in elaborating a single humorous
letter to a friend. Tennyson is
reported to have written ‘Come
into the Garden Maud,’ more than
fifty times over before it pleased
him; and ‘Locksley Hall,’ the
first draft of which was written in
two days, he spent the better part
of six weeks, for eight hours a
day, in altering and polishing.
Dickens, when he intended to
write a Christmas story, shut
himself up for six weeks, lived
the life of a hermit, and came out
looking as haggard as a murderer.
Balzac, after he had thought
out thoroughly one of his philo
sophical romances, ammssed his
that time until his book had gone
to press, socity saw him no more.
When he appeared again among
his friends, he looked, said his
publisher, in the popular phrase,
like his own ghost. The manu
script was afterwards altered and
copied, when it passed into the
hands of the printer, from whose
slips the book was re-written for
the third time. Again it went
into the hands of the printer—
two, three and sometimes four
se])arate proofs being required
before the author’s leave could be
got, to send the perpetually re
written book to press at last, and
so be done with it. He was liter-
all}r the terror of all printers and
editors. Moore thouglit it quick
work to write seventy lines of
‘Lalla Rookli’ in a week. King-
lake’s ‘Eothen,’ we are told was,
re-written five or six times, and
was kept in the author’s writing
desk almost as long as Words
worth kept the ‘White Doe of
Kylstone,’ and kept, like that to
be taken out for review and cor
rection almost every day. Euf-
fon’s ‘Studies of Nature’ cost him
fifty years of labor, and he recop
ied it eigliteen times before he
sent it to the printer. He com
posed ill a singular manner, wri
ting on largo sized paper, in
which, as in a ledger, five distinct
columns were ruled. In the first
column he wrote down the first
thoughts ; in the second, he cor
rected, enlarged, and primed it;
and so on, until he had reached
the fifth column, within he finally
wrote the results of his labor.
But even after tin’s, ho would re
compose a sentence twenty times,
and once devoted fourteen hours
to find a word with which to
round off a period. John Foster
often spent hours on a single sen
tence. Ten years elapsed be
tween the first sketch of Gold-^/’’"Somebody has brought out the
smith’s ‘Traveller’ and its comple- following reminiscence ; ‘When
Benjamin Erankliii was a lad.
pie-
tion. La Rochefoucauld spent
fifteen years in preparing his lit
tle book of maxims, altering some
of them, Segrais savs, nearly
thirty times. We all know how
Sheridan polished his wit and
finished his jokes, the same things
being found on different bits of
paper, differently expressed. Rog
ers showed Crabb Robinson a
note to bis ‘Itaily,’ which, he said,
took him two weeks to write. It
consists of a very few lines. —A.
F. Ilnssell.
SETF-BERiT.IE.
To deny one’s self is simply
to put down a lower feeling, in
order to give a higher feeling as
cendency. Yon have all oppor
tunity for self-denial every time
you see a man. If you see a
man that yon dislike, put down
that hateful enmity of soul. That
will be self-denial. Every time
you see a person in misery, and
you shrink from relieving him,
then relieve him. That will be
self-denial. Do not say, “ I am
so busy I cannot stop to see that
little curmudgeon in the street,’
but stop. God says, “ You are
all brethren,” and ragged and dir
ty as that child is, it is related to
you in the larger relationship of
the eternal world ; a;id yon must
not be so busy as not to have
time to care for him. If your
he
began to study philosophy, and
soon became fond of apph’ing
teclmical names to common o^
jeots. One evening, when he
mentioned to his father that he
had swallowed some acephalofls
mollusks, the old man was much
alarmed, and, suddenly seizing
him called loudly for help. Mrs.
Eranklin came with warm water,
and the hired man rushed in with
the garden pump. They forced
half a gallon of warm water down
Benjamin’s throat, then held him
by the heels over the edge of the
porch, and shook him, while the
old man said : ‘If we don’t get
them things out of Benny he will
be pizeneJ, sure.’ When they
were out, and Benjamin explained
that the article alluded to were
oysters, his father fondled him
for half an hour with a trunk strap
for scaring the family. Ever af
terwards Franklin’s language was
marvelously simple and explicit.
Eirect of flight.
Doctor Moore, tlie metaphysi
cian, thus speaks of flie effect of
light on the body and mind : A
tadp)le confined in darkness
wouLl never become a frog; and
and infant deprived of heaven’s
free light will only grow into a
shapeless idiot instead of a beauti-
selfisliness says, “I cannot stop ;
I do not want to be plagued with
these little ruffians of the street,”
and a diviner element of the sonl
says, “Stop ! neither business nor
])leasure lias any right here; re
ligion, humanity find duty must
rule here and if you obey the
dictates of that divine element,
then you deny yourself. ■
“ In honor preferring one an
other.” This injunction suggests
an ample field for self-denial.
You that invent sack-cloth and
hair-mittens, to rub yourselves
with, so as to get up self-denial
arid suffering ; when you sit and
hear your, brother-in-law, in
the office next to yours, praised,
what is it that makes you hold
your breath? “Oh!” you say,
“that is envy. I ought not to
feel so.” There is a blessed strug
gle. What is born out of it ?
If you rise supei-ior to that com
parison between yourselt and
him, and say, “I thank God that
he is esteemed more than I am ;
I love and honor him, and I am
glad to see his name go up, and
it does not hurt me to have his
name go above,” then there is a
glorious self-denial. Wluit are
the elements of it ? Why, put
ting down your own selfishness,
and putting up the brotherhood
feeling.
No man, then, need hunt among
hair-shirts; no man need seek
for blankets too short at the bot-.
tom and too sliort at the top ; no
man need resort to iron seats and
cushionless chairs ; no man shut
himself up in grim cells ; no rnfin
need stand on the top of towers
of columns, in order to deny him
self J’here are abundant oppor
tunities for self-denial. If a man
is going to place the higher part
of his nature uppermost, he will
have-business enough on hand.—
Selected.
ful and reasonable being. Hence,
in the deep, dark gorges and ra
vines of the Swiss Valais, where
the direct sunsliine never readies,
the hideous prevalence of idioev
startles the traveler. It is a
strange, melancholy idiocy.
Many persons are incapable of
articulate speech ; some are deaf,
some are blind, some labor under
all these privations, and all are
mis-shapen in almost every jiart
of the body. I believe there is
in all places a marked differen. e
in the healthiness of hoii.«es ac
cording to their aspect in regard
to the sun, and those are decidedly
the healthiest, other things being
considered, in which all the rooms
are during some part of the day,
fully exposed to the direct light.
Epidemics attack inhabitants on
the sliady side of the street, and
totally exempt those on the other
side ; and even in epidemics such
as ague, the morbid influence is
often thus partial in its labors.
WHAT IS EIFE?
^ What is life, but a little crib be
side the bed ; a little face beneath
the spread ; a little frock behind
the door ; a little shoe upon the
floor; a little lad with dark-brown
hair; a little blue-eyed face and
fair; a little lane that leads to
school; a little pencil, slate and
rule; a blithesome, winsome
maid; a little band within one laid;
a little cottage, acres four; a lit
tle old-time fashioned store; a
little family gathering round ; a
little turf - heaped, tear-dewed
mound ; a little added to the soil;
a little rest from hardest toil ; a
little silver in his hair; a little
stool and easy chair; a little night
and earthlit gloom ; a little cor
tege to the tomb.
The Jains.
Some of the queerest people
that I ever saw live in India, and
are called Jains.
They build
asylums for cows, horses, don
keys, cats, and dogs, just as we
build them for sick folks, for or
phan children and for old people.
If you ever visit Bombay you
will find one of their establish
ments there, consisting of several
acres of ground. At first sight
you might think it was a cattle-
show—the sheds being arranged
like the cattle-pens, horse stalls
and poultry-coops, at our State
and count^^ fnirs.—Carleton.
A school boy being requested
to write a composition on the sub
ject of “pins,” produced the fol
lowing : “Pins are very useful.
They have saved the I'i’. es of a
great many men, women and
children—in fact whole families.”
'"How so,” asked the puzzled
teacher; and the boy replied:
“Why, by not swallowing them.’
This matches the story of the
other boy who defined salt as
“the stuff tliat makes potatoes
taste bad when you don’t put any
on.”
Webs'J’ek said :—“If vve work
upon marble it will perish ; if up
on brass, time will efface it; if
we rear temples they will crum
ble ill dust; hut if we work upon
our immortal minds—-if vve imbue
them with principles, with the
just tear of God and love of our
fellow men—vve engrave oil tliese
tablets s. iinet I ling' which will
brightcn_throagli all ctoruity.”
mm