EAR SIR:-I have read your manuscript with some attention. By the argument it contains against a particular Providence, though you allow a general Providence, you strike at the foundations of all religion. For, without the belief of a Providence that takes cognizance of, guards, and guides, and may favor particular persons, there is no motive to worship a Deity, to fear his displeasure or to pray for his protection. I will not enter into any discussion of your principles, though you seem to desire its At present I shall only give you my opinion that, though your rea sons it becomes habitual, which is the great point for its security. And perhaps you are indebted to her originally, that is, to your religious education, for the habits of virtue upon which you now justly value yourself. You might easily display your excellent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and thereby obtain a rank with our most distinguished authors se For among us it is When I consider Life and its few years- The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat; not necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a youth, to be raised into the company of men, should prove his manhood by The burst of music down an unlistening beating his mother. street I wonder at the idleness of tears. Ye old, old dead, and ye of yesternight, I would advise you, therefore, not to attempt un Chieftains, and bards, and keepers of the chaining the tiger, sheep, but to burn this are subtile, By every cup of sorrow that you had, piece before it is Loose me from tears, and make me see aright and may prevail How each hath back what once he stayed Homer his sight, David his little lad! But were you to suceed, do you imagine life, without the assistance afforded by religion; you having a clear perception of the advantages of virtue, and the disadvantage of vice, and possessing a strength of resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common temptations. But think how great a portion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced, inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till seen by any other person; whereby you will save yourself a great deal of mortification by the enemies it may raise against you, and perhaps a good deal of regret and repentance. If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it. I intend this letter itself as a proof of my friendship, and therefore add no professions to it; but subscribe simply yours, B. Franklin. -Alleged letter to Thomas Paine. ho feels that he must, either openly O man will ever be a big executive Dwman withat or under cover, follow up every order he gives and see that it is done-nor will he ever develop a capable assistant. -John Lee Mahin. Behavior is the theory of manners practically applied.-Mme. Necker. Whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful.-Shelley. HERE are few things of HEN Turner became an Acade more common Occurrence than shaking hands; and yet I do not recollect that much has been speculated upon the subject. I confess, when I consider to what unimportant and futile concerns the attention of writers and readers has been directed, I am surprised that no one has been found to handle so important a matter as this, and attempt to give the public a rational view of the doctrine and discipline of shaking hands. I have been unable to find in the ancient writers any distinct mention of shaking hands. They followed the heartier practice of hugging or embracing, which has not wholly disappeared among grown persons in Europe, and children in our own country, and has unquestionably the advantage on the score of cordiality. When the ancients trusted the business of salutation to the hands alone, they joined but did not shake them; and although I find frequently such phrases as jungere dextras hospitio, I do not recollect to have met with that of agitare dextras. I am inclined to think that the practice grew up in the ages of chivalry, when the cumbrous iron mail, in which the knights were cased, prevented their embracing; and when, with fingers clothed in steel, the simple touch or joining of the hands would have been but cold welcome; so that a prolonged junction was a natural resort, to express cordiality; and as it would have been awkward to keep the hands unemployed in this position, a gentle agitation or shaking might have been naturally introduced. How long the practice may have remained in this incipient stage it is impossible, in the silence of history, to say; nor is there anything in the chronicles, in Philip de Comines or the Byzantine historians, which enables us to trace the progress of the art into the forms in which it now exists among us.-Edward Everett. There are two worlds; the world that we can measure with line and rule, and the world that we feel with our hearts and imagination.-Leigh Hunt. mician, he took his old father away from his business of barber, and gave him a home in his own house. It is said that he was kind and respectful to the old man, invariably; which we may easily believe, though there have been stories to the contrary, originating in the simple habits of both father and son. It seemed to both of them perfectly natural that the elder man, having now so much time on his hands, should occupy himself in little tasks which would save a shilling here and there; but that the painter readily consented to this, was it not the most delicate conduct possible under the circumstances? Old William Turner had been industrious and economical all his life, and like all old men who have been accustomed to work for a living, he felt the need of useful occupations I It is said that he acted as porter at his son's gallery, would stretch canvases for him, and do other little things, in all of which there is certainly no real humiliation, but simply the gratification of an old man's wish to be useful. The relation between father and son is indeed quite the prettiest part of the life-story we have to tell. The artist was never hindered by his father, but aided by him in all possible ways with tender parental care and sagacious foresight. The son, on his part, was dutiful and filial to the last, taking the old man to his home and drawing closer the bonds of affection as the social distance between them became wider. Thus it is precisely when the painter wins the full honors of the Academy, honors which got the recognized and envied position in London society, that he takes his father home. A meaner nature would have tried to keep the old man at a safe distance. -Philip G. Hamerton. (Life of J. M. W. Turner). Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself. -James A. Garfield. UST now the whole effort of our country is bent toward securing an adequate foodsupply If our dietitians could only learn the truth, how easy it would be to get a supply of this kind! We eat brands when we ought to be eating bran. Our wheat has all its vitality taken out of it to make white flour. We care more for the dairy cow than we do for the American citizen She gets the real cream of wheat and we get what she is supposed to have-the husks Simple, wholesome wheat-bread and porridge, an abundance of fruits in season, succulent vegetables, particularly the potato, spinach and asparagus, with a generous supply of pure, fresh, clean, tuberculin-tested milk, will give the citizen a diet wholesome, nutritious and full of vitamins. To this may be added a moderate supply of good meat and eggs. In so far as food is concerned, the common idea that beer, whisky and wine have food value is largely an illusion. It is true that a moderate amount of alcohol is burned in the tissues of the body, furnishing heat and energy. The effort of the body to get rid of the ingested poison, however, takes out all of this heat and energy, so that little or none of it is available for the other business of life. Let me prescribe the diet of the country: Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes. -T. W. Higginson. BERNARD SHAW will never be a character universally loved. I think if Bernard Shaw felt himself universally loved he would be the most chagrined individual that Nature has ever produced. George Bernard Shaw loves nothing so much as being hated, if the hatred is sincere; he loves nothing so much as being criticized, if the criticism is honest; he loves nothing so much as being intellectually knocked down, if the individual that attempts it has the capacity to achieve the effort. George Bernard Shaw is a fighter through and through, an intellectual warrior, a man who I might say is pre-eminently one of us; he belongs to this age. Every one of his intellectual efforts is but a reflection and reproduction of the intellectualism of this present age. Shaw is made by the age, is part of the age, is the articulation of the age, and is pre-eminently so because he articulates no one phase of it: he reflects no one facet of the universal crystal; he exhibits no one characteristic that marks the peculiarities of our time; but in a sort of cosmopolitan universalism Bernard Shaw seems to reflect the refined potentialities of the age in which we live. -Dr. Henry Frank. Manhood, not scholarship, is the first aim of education. -Ernest Thompson Seton. HE leader for the time being, who ever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used until broken and then to be cast aside; and if he is worth his salt he will care no more when he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent where his life is forfeit in order that the victory may be won. In the long fight for righteousness the watchword for all of us, is spend and be spent. It is a little matter whether any one man fails or succeeds; but the cause shall not fail, for it is the cause of mankind. We, here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men. If on this new continent we merely build another country of great but unjustly divided material prosperity, we shall have done nothing; and we shall do as little if we merely set the greed of envy against the greed of arrogance, and thereby destroy the material well-being of all of us.-Theodore Roosevelt. I envy the beasts two things-their ignorance of evil to come, and their ignorance of what is said about them. -Voltaire. was a faults. I remember the greatest HERE was Lamb himself, the most delightful, the most provoking, the most witty and sensible of men. He always made the best pun, and the best remark in the course of the evening 30His serious conversation, like his serious writing, is his best. No one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things in a half a dozen halfsentences as he does His jests scald like tears; and he probes a question with a play upon words. What a keen, laughing, harebrained vein of home-felt truth! What choice venom! How often did we cut into the haunch of letters, while we discussed the haunch of mutton on the table! How we skimmed the cream of criticism! How we got into the heart of controversy! How we picked out the marrow of authors! If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, Far or forgot to me is near; 66 Shadow and sunlight are the same; And one to me are shame and fame. They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. we blackballed most of his list! But with what a gusto would he describe his favorite authors, Donne, or Sir Philip Sidney, and find their most crabbed passages delicious! He tried them on his palate as epicures taste olives, and his observations had a smack in them, like a roughness, on the tongue. With what discrimination he hinted a defect in what he admired most-as in saying that the display of the sumptuous banquet in Paradise Regained was not in true keeping, as the simplest fare was all that was necessary to tempt the extremity of hunger and stating that Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost were too much like married people. The strong gods pine for my abode. And pine in vain the sacred Seven; And, in our flowing cups, many a good name and true was freshly remembered.' Recollect (most sage and critical reader) that in all this I was but a guest! Need I go over the names? They were but the old everlasting set-Milton and Shakespeare, Pope and Dryden, Steele and Addison, Swift and Gay, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Richardson, Hogarth's prints, Claude's landscapes, the Cartoons at Hampton Court, and all those things that, having once been, must ever be. The Scotch Novels had not then been heard of: so we said nothing about them. In general, we were hard upon the moderns. The author of the Rambler was only tolerated in Boswell's Life of him; and it was as much as any one could do to edge in a word for Junius. Lamb could not bear Gil Blas. This HE supreme consolation Break, break, break, relief the grandeur to which he has aspired, the greatness at which he aimed. On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! which I find is in the view that life is a grand tragedy. There are islands of joy, havens of pure bliss; there is the laughter of children, the effulgence of love in young, hyacinthian days, and there is the steady glow of love in after years. I take account of all this; yet I say that around this glow and brightness, enveloping it, tragedy is always present or imminent-if no other tragedy, then the tragedy of death, which all must face. But the tragic view is not a funereal, gloomy and melancholy view. The effect of a great tragedy is elevating, not depressing. After witnessing a tragedy on the stage, when the curtain is rung down on the fifth act, the spectator O, well for the fisherman's boy, Transfer the idea of tragedy from the stage to life itself. There are high powers at work, a great and noble strain is trying to express itself in things and in men; but conditions are not fit or adequate, and the greatness is constantly breaking down, the nobility failing, not because it ought to fail, but because conditions are insufficient, because the finite can not embody the infinite s Yet the failures only serve to set off the infiniteness in the tendency Je Work helps; sympathy helps; in all the ordinary circumstances of life, not to be sorry for one's self but to be sorry for others is the best help. But the thought that life is a grand tragedy, that over the ruins a glory shines, is to me the supreme help.-Felix Adler. That he shouts with his sister at play! That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on, To their haven under the hill; Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! "Break, Break, Break,"by Alfred, Lord Tennyson finds himself in an uplifted mood, despite all the strain that has been put upon his feelings. He is not prostrated to the ground, he is uplifted. Great music rolls through his soul. He seems to float as in some high ether, and far beneath him lie the gulfs of pity and of terror through which he has passed. The effect of tragedy-the tragedy on the stage, which is a mirror of life is blended of defeat and victory. Both enter in. Ruin there is, but a glory shines above the ruin. The effect of tragedy on the stage is produced by great qualities in the hero, which we admire, but which are prevented from successful manifestation by some flaw in his nature. Or the hero strives after some high ideal, carries in his breast some noble purpose. The fault is not in him, but in his surroundings. The time is not ripe for him, the people with whom he must deal are below his standard; and he fails, but in failing he sets forth in high HIS London City, with all its houses, palaces, steam-engines, cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic and tumult, what is it but a Thought, but millions of Thoughts made into Onea huge immeasurable Spirit of a Thought, embodied in brick, in iron, smoke, dust, Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, Katherine Docks, and the rest of it! Not a brick was made but some man had to think of the making of that brick. -Carlyle. The consciousness of being loved softens the keenest pang, even at the moment of parting; yea, even the eternal farewell is robbed of half its bitterness when uttered in accents that breathe love to the last sigh.-Addison. God gives all things to industry-Franklin |