NEW era is dawning on the

world. We are beginning to believe in the religion of usefulness 9 20

The men who felled the forests, cultivated the earth, spanned the rivers with bridges of steel, built the railways and canals, the great ships, invented the locomotives and engines, supplying the countless wants of civilization; the men who invented the telegraphs and cables, and freighted the electricspark with thought and love; the men who invented the looms and spindles that clothe the world, the inventors of printing and the great presses that fill the earth with poetry, fiction and fact, that save and keep all knowledge for the children yet to be; the inventors of all the wonderful machines that deftly mold from wood and steel the things we use; the men who explored the heavens and traced the orbits of the stars-who have read the story of the world in mountain range and billowed sea; the men who have lengthened life and conquered pain; the great philosophers and naturalists who have filled the world with light; the great poets whose thoughts have charmed the soul, the great painters and sculptors who have made the canvas speak, the marble live; the great orators who have swayed the world, the composers who have given their souls to sound, the captains of industry, the producers, the soldiers who have battled for the rightthese are our Christs, apostles and saints. The books filled with the facts of Nature are our sacred scriptures, and the force that is in every atom and in every star— in everything that lives and grows-is the only possible god.-R. G. Ingersoll.

ORATORY offers the acme of human

delight; it offers the nectar that Jupiter sips; it offers the draft that intoxicates the gods, the divine felicity of lifting up and swaying mankind. There is nothing greater on this earth. 'T is the breath of the Eternal-the kiss of the Immortal O DO

Oratory is far above houses and lands, offices and emoluments, possessions and power. While it may secure all of these it must not for a moment be classed with them. These things offer nothing that is worthy of a high ambition. Enjoyed to their fullest, they leave you hard, wrinkled and miserable. Get all they can give and the hand will be empty, the mind hungry, and the soul shriveled

Oratory is an individual accomplishment, and no vicissitudes of fortune can wrest it from the owner. It points the martyr's path to the future; it guides the reaper's hand in the present, and it turns the face of ambition toward the delectable hills of achievement. One great speech made to an intelligent audience in favor of the rights of man will compensate for a life of labor, will crown a career with glory, and give a joy that is born of the divinities. There is no true orator who is not also a hero.

-John P. Altgeld.

UKA: Treat every one with friendliness-injure no one. Natasha:-How good you are, grandfather! How is it that you are so good? Luka:-I am good, you say. Nyah-if it is true, all right. But you see, my girlthere must be some one to be good. We must have pity on mankind. Christ, remember, had pity for us all and so taught us. Have pity when there is still time, believe me, that is right. I was once for example, employed as a watchman, at a country place which belonged to an engineer, not far from the city of Tomsk, in Siberia. The house stood in the middle of the forest, an out-of-the-way location; and it was winter and I was all alone in the country house. It was beautiful there -magnificent! And once-I heard them scrambling up! Natasha:-Thieves?

Luka: Yes. They crept higher, and I took my rifle and went outside. I looked up-two men, opening a window, and so busy that they did not see anything of me at all. I cried to them: Hey, there, get out of that! And would you think it, they fell on me with a hand ax! I warned them. Halt, I cried, or else I fire! Then I aimed first at one and then at the other. They fell on their knees saying, Pardon us! I was pretty hot-on account of the hand ax, you remember. You devils, I cried, I told you to clear out and you did n't! And now, I said, one of you go into the brush and get a switch. It was done. And now, I commanded, one of you stretch out on the ground, and the other thrash him. And so they whipped each other at my command. And when they had each had a sound beating, they said to me: Grandfather, said they, for the sake of Christ give us a piece of bread. We have n't a bite in our bodies. They, my daughter, were the thieves who had fallen upon me with the hand ax. Yes, they were a pair of splendid fellows. I said to them, If you had asked for bread! Then they answered: We had gotten past that. We had asked and asked, and nobody would give us anything. Endurance was worn out. Nyahand so they remained with me the whole

winter. One of them, Stephen by name, liked to take the rifle and go into the woods. And the other, Jakoff, was constantly ill, always coughing. The three of us watched the place, and when spring came, they said, Farewell, grandfather, and went away-to Russia. Natasha:-Were they convicts, escaping? Luka:-They were fugitives-they had left their colony. A pair of splendid fellows. If I had not had pity on them— who knows what would have happened? They might have killed me? Then they would be taken to court again-put in prison, sent back to Siberia-why all that? You can learn nothing good in prison, nor in Siberia. But a man, what can he not learn!-Maxim Gorky.

D0 D0

WO contrary laws stand today opposed: one a law of blood and death, which, inventing daily new means of combat, obliges the nations to be ever prepared for battle; the other a law of peace, of labor, of salvation, which strives to deliver man from the scourges which assail him. One looks only for violent conquest; the other for the relief of suffering humanity. The one would sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives to the ambition of a single individual; the other places a single human life above all victories. The law of which we are the instruments essays even in the midst of carnage to heal the wounds caused by the law of war.-Louis Pasteur, at the opening of Pasteur Institute.

|H, God, here in my dressing room, with the door shut, I am alone with Thee.

I am glad I know the great spirit that stands silently by, here, as in every place where a human heart is beating!

Can not an actor be God's man? Can not I, whose business it is to play, be as conscientious as those in authority or peril or solemn function? Do Convention classes me and my fellows among the loose and thoughtless. So Thou art my secret. I triumph inwardly to find Thy presence and taste the mystic joy of Thy friendship, while the world suspects not.

through the streets of the city and whosoever will may drink.

Make me to achieve a better success in my role before the ever present audience of the angels than I hope to have when I play my part upon the mimic stage. Ever, in all junctures, in hours of lightness as in stress or trial, God of my soul, help me to play the man. Amen!" The Actor's Prayer,"by Dr. Frank Crane.

Thou washest my heart clean as the Priest's. Thou givest me a holy ambition to do my work well, that I also may be a devout craftsman Thou teachest me subtle ways to resist despair, to master my passions, to heal unworthy weakness; the rare medicine of Thy presence is for me, too, as well as for the cloistered monk or meditating scholar. ¶ Teach me to be great among the many who are content to be called great. Reveal to methe satisfaction of virtue, the inner rewards of loyalty, helpfulness, and self-control. Let me be an unusual person because of that simplicity of heart and that lovableness of nature that I learn from Thee.

HAT is the law of nature? Is it to know that my security and that of my family, all my amusements and pleasures, are purchased at the expense of misery, deprivation, and suffering to thousands of human beings-by the terror of the gallows; by the misfortune of thousands stifling within prisonwalls; by the fears inspired by millions of soldiers and guardians of civilization, torn from their homes and besotted by discipline, to protect our pleasures with loaded revolvers against the possible interference of the famishing! Is it to purchase every fragment of bread that I put in my mouth and the mouths of my children by the numberless privations that are necessary to procure my abundance? Or is it to be certain that my piece of bread only belongs to me when I know that every one else has a share, and that no one starves while I eat?-Leo Tolstoy.

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the commonest human clay; the devout worshiper at any shrine reflects something of its golden glow, even as the glory of a noble love shines like a sort of light from a woman's face.—Balzac.

HE place to take the true measure of a man is not in the darkest place or in the amen corner, nor the cornfield, but by his own fireside. There he lays aside his mask and you may learn whether he is an imp or an angel, cur or king, hero or humbug. I care not what the world says of him: whether it crowns him boss or pelts him with bad eggs. I care not a copper what his reputationor religion may be: if his babies dread his homecoming and his better half swallows her heart every time she has to ask him for a five-dollar bill, he is a fraud of the first water, even though he prays night and morning until he is black in the face and howls hallelujah until he shakes the eternal hills. But if his children rush to the front door to meet him the and love's sunshine illuminates his fate of his wife every time footfall, you can take it for granted that he is pure, for his home is a heaven-and the humbug never gets that near the great white throne of God. He may be a rank atheist and red-flag anarchist, a Mormon and a mugwump; he may buy votes in blocks of five, and bet on the elections; he may deal 'em from the bottom of the deck and drink beer until he can't tell a silver dollar from a circular saw, and still be an infinitely better man than the cowardly little humbug who is all suavity in society but who makes home a hell, who vents upon the helpless heads of his wife and children an ill nature he would inflict on his fellow men but dares not. I can forgive much in that fellow mortal who would rather make men swear than women weep; who would rather have the hate of the whole world than the contempt of his wife; who would rather call anger to the eyes of a

king than fear to the face of a child."A Man's Real Measure," by W. C. Brann.

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O

HE present position which we, the educated and well-to-do classes, occupy, is that of the Old Man of the Sea, riding on the poor man's back; only, unlike the Old Man of the Sea, we are

very sorry for the poor man, very sorry; and we will do almost anything for the poor man's relief. We will not only supply him with food sufficient to keep him on his legs, but we will teach and instruct him and point out to him the beauties of the landscape; we will discourse sweet music to him and give him abundance of good advice. Yes, we will do almost anything for the poor man, anything but get off his back.-Leo Tolstoy.

F you

it in succeed in life, you must do spite of the efforts of others to pull you down. There is nothing in the idea that people are willing to help those who help themselves. People are willing to help a man who can't help himself, but as soon as a man is able to help himself, and does it, they join in making his life as uncomfortable as possible.

-E. W. Howe.

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HAVE told you of the man who always put on his spectacles when about to eat cherries, in order that the fruit might look larger and more tempting. In like manner I always make the most of my enjoyments, and, though I do not cast my eyes away from troubles, I pack them into as small a compass as I can for myself, and never let them annoy others.-Robert Southey.

Come, follow me, and leave the world to its babblings.-Dante.