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of the officers, he remarked, with some feeling, I thought, that this would have a happy effect upon his army The much-talked-of surrendering of Lee's sword and my handing it back-this and much more that has been said about it is the purest romance. The word sword or side-arms was not mentioned by either of us until I wrote it in the terms. There was no premeditation, and it did not occur to me until the moment I wrote it down. If I had happened to omit it, and General Lee had called my attention to it, I should have put it in the terms, precisely as I acceded to the provision about the soldiers retaining their horses. Lee and I separated as cordially as we had met, he returning to his own line; and all went into bivouac for the night at Appomattox.

HE cost of a thing," says Thoreau, "is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run." I have been accustomed to put it to myself, perhaps more clearly, that the price we have to pay for money is paid in liberty. Between these two ways of it, at least, the reader will probably not fail to find a third definition of his own, and it follows, on one or other, that a man may pay too dearly for his livelihood by giving in Thoreau's terms, his whole life for it, or, in mine, bartering for it the whole of his available liberty, and becoming a slave till death. There are two questions to be considered-the quality of what we buy, and the price we have to pay for it. Do you want a thousand a year, a two thousand a year or a ten thousand a year, livelihood? and can you afford the one you want? It is a matter of taste; it is not in the least degree a question of duty, though commonly supposed so. But there is no authority for that view anywhere. It is nowhere in the Bible. It is true that we might do a vast amount of good if we were wealthy, but

it is also highly improbable; not many do; and the art of growing rich is not only quite distinct from that of doing good, but the practice of the one does not at all train a man for practising the other. "Money might be of great service to me," writes Thoreau, "but the difficulty now is that I do not improve my opportunities, and therefore I am not prepared to have my opportunities increased." It is a mere illusion that, above a certain income, the personal desires will be satisfied and leave a wider margin for the generous impulse. It is as difficult to be generous, or anything else, except perhaps a member of Parliament, on thirty thousand as on two thousand a year.

-Robert Louis Stevenson.

I owe all my success in life to having been always a quarter of an hour beforehand.-Lord Nelson.

D

EAR MADAM: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I can not refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.-Abraham Lincoln. (Letter to Mrs. Bixby. Washington, November 21, 1864.)

osity of the behavior toward him in every respect, but particularly in this, in the strongest terms of manly gratitude. In a conversation with a gentleman who visited him after his trial, he said he flattered himself he had never been illiberal; but if there were any remains of prejudice in his mind, his present experience must obliterate them. ¶ In one of the visits I made to

EVER, perhaps, did any man suffer death with more justice, or deserve it less. The first step he took, after his capture, was to write a letter to General Washington, conceived in terms of dignity without insolence, and apology without meanness. The scope of it, was to vindicate himself from the imputation of having assumed a mean character for treacherous or interested purposes; asserting that he had been involuntarily an impostor; that contrary to his intention which was to meet a person for intelligence on neutral ground, he had been betrayed within our posts, and forced into the vile condition of an enemy in disguise: soliciting only that, to whatever rigor policy might devote him, a decency of

him, (and I saw him several times during his confinement,) he begged me to be the bearer of a request to the general, for permission to send an open letter to Sir Henry Clinton. “ I

the bells;

treatment might be observed, due to a person, who, though unfortunate, had been guilty of nothing dishonorable. His request was granted in its full extent; for, in the whole progress of the affair, he was treated with the most scrupulous delicacy. When brought before the Board of Officers, he met with every mark of indulgence, and was required to answer no interrogatory which could even embarrass his feelings. On his part, while he carefully concealed everything that might involve others, he frankly confessed all the facts relating to himself; and, upon his confession, without the trouble of examining a witness, the board made their report. The members of it were not more impressed with the candor and firmness, mixed with a becoming sensibility, which he displayed, than he was penetrated with their liberality and politeness. He acknowledged the gener

said he, "and though I pretend not to play the hero, or to be indifferent about life, yet I am reconciled to whatever may happen, conscious that misfortune, not guilt, has brought it upon

me. There is only one thing that disturbs my tranquillity. Sir Henry Clinton has been too good to me; he has been lavish of his kindness. I am bound to him by too many obligations, and love him too well, to bear the thought that he should reproach himself, or that others should reproach him, on the supposition of my having conceived myself obliged, by his instructions, to run the risk I did. I would not, for the world, leave a sting in his mind that should embitter his future days." He could scarce finish the sentence, bursting into tears in spite of his efforts to suppress them; and with difficulty collected himself enough afterward to add: "I wish to be permitted to assure him, I did not act under this impression, but submitted to a necessity imposed upon me, as contrary to my own inclination as to his orders." His request was readily complied with; and

IFE is indeed a strange gift, and its privileges are most mysterious. No wonder when it is first granted to us that our gratitude, our admiration and our delight should prevent us from reflecting on our own nothingness, or from thinking it will ever be recalled. Our first and strongest impressions are borrowed from the mighty scene that is opened to us, and we unconsciously transfer its durability, as well as its splendor, to ourselves. So newly found we can not think of parting with it yet, or at least put off that consideration sine die. Like a rustic at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought of going home, or that it will soon be night. We know our existence only by ourselves, and confound our knowledge with the objects of it. We and nature are therefore one. Otherwise the illusion, the " feast of reason and the flow of soul," to which we are invited, is a mockery and a cruel insult. We do not go from a play till the last act is ended, and the lights are about to be extinguished. But the fairy face of nature still shines on: shall we be called away before the curtain falls, or ere we have scarce had a glimpse of what is going on? Like children, our step-mother nature holds us up to see the raree-show of the universe, and then, as if we were a burden to her to support, let us fall down again. Yet what brave sublunary things does not this pageant present, like a ball or fete of the universe!

To see the golden sun, the azure sky, the outstretched ocean; to walk upon the green earth, and to be lord of a thousand creatures; to look down yawning precipices or over distant sunny vales; to see the world spread out under one's feet as a map; to bring the stars near; to view the smallest insects through a microscope; to read history and consider the revolutions of empire and the successions of generations; to hear of the glory of Tyre, of Sidon, of Babylon, and of Susa, and to say all these were before me and are now nothing; to say I exist in such a point of time, and in such a point of space; to be a spectator and a

part of its ever-moving scene; to witness the change of season, of spring and autumn, of winter and summer; to feel hot and cold, pleasure and pain, beauty and deformity, right and wrong; to be sensible to the accidents of nature; to consider the mighty world of eye and ear; to listen to the stock-dove's notes amid the forest deep; to journey over moor and mountain; to hear the midnight sainted choir; to visit lighted halls, or the cathedral's gloom, or sit in crowded theaters and see life itself mocked; to study the works of art, and refine the sense of beauty to agony; to worship fame and to dream of immortality; to look upon the Vatican and to read Shakespeare; to gather up the wisdom of the ancients and to pry into the future; to listen to the trump of war, the shout of victory; to question history as to the movements of the human heart; to seek for truth; to plead the cause of humanity; tooverlook the world as if time and nature poured their treasures at our feet-to be and to do all this, and then in a moment to be nothing-to have it all snatched from us by a juggler's trick, or a phantasmagoria! There is something in this transition from all to nothing that shocks us and damps the enthusiasm of youth new flushed with hope and pleasure, and we cast the comfortless thought as far from us as we can. The world is a witch that puts us off with false shows and appearances.

-William Hazlitt.

AKE not anxious thought as to the results of your work nor of our work. If you are doing all that you can, the results, immediate or eventual, are not your affair at all. Such seed of truth as we plant can but grow. If we do not see the fruits here, we know nevertheless that here or somewhere they do spring up.

It would be great if we could succeed now; it will be greater if we patiently wait for success, even though we never see it ourselves. For it will come. Do not be fretted by abuse.Those who abuse you do not know what they are doing. We also were at one time deluded and cruel, therefore forgive.

Do not be worried by bigotry. We can not help it, we are not responsible for it -we are responsible to ourselves and for ourselves and for no one else. Do not be angry at opposition either; no one can really oppose the order of Nature or the decrees of God, which are one and the same. Our plans may be upset-there are greater plans than ours.

They may not be completed in the time we would wish, but our works and the work of those who follow us, they will be carried out.

Do not grieve over your own troubles: you would not have them if you did not need them. Do not grieve over the troubles of others;" there are no others

Therefore let us keep God in our hearts and quiet in our minds, for though in the flesh we may never stand upon our edifice, we are building that which shall never be pulled down.-Bolton Hall.

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.—Mark Twain.

LITTLE while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon-a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity-and gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of

the greatest soldier of the modern world.

I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon-I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris-I saw him at the head of the army of Italy-I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tricolor in his hand-I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo-at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster-driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris-clutched like a wild beastbanished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn

sea so so

I thought of the orphans and widows he had made of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky-with my children upon my knees and their arms about me-I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as "Napoleon the Great." -Robert G. Ingersoll.

No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his body, to risk his well-being, to risk his life, in a great cause.-Theodore Roosevelt.