HERE is no more valuable subordinate than the man to whom you can give a piece of work and then forget it, in the confident expectation that the next time it is brought to your attention it will come in the form of a report that the thing has been done. When this self-reliant quality is joined to executive power, loyalty and common sense, the result is a man whom you can trust.

On the other hand, there is no greater nuisance to a man heavily burdened with the direction of affairs than the weak-backed assistant who is continually trying to get his chief to do his work for him on the feeble plea that he thought the chief would like to decide this or that himself. The man to whom an executive is most grateful, the man whom he will work hardest and value most, is the man who accepts responsibility willingly.-Gifford Pinchot.

WHILE

HILE the railroads of the United states may

States may have mistakes to answer for, they have created the most effective, useful, and by far the cheapest system of land transportation in the world. This has been accomplished with very little legislation and against an immense volume of opposition and interference growing out of ignorance and misunderstanding. It is not an exaggeration to say that in the past history of this country the railway, next after the Christian religion and the public school, has been the largest single contributing factor to the welfare and happiness of the people.-James J. Hill.

HERE is music in the beauty, and the silent note that Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument; for there is music wherever there is harmony, order or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.

-Sir Thomas Browne.

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in stranger's gardens. -Douglas Jerrold.

YOU want a better position than you now have in business, a better and fuller place in life. All right; think of that better place and you in it as already existing. Form the mental image. Keep on thinking of that higher position, keep the image constantly before you, and -no, you will not suddenly be transported into the higher job, but you will find that you are preparing yourself to occupy the better position in life your body, your energy, your understanding, your heart will all grow up to the job-and when you are ready, after hard work, after perhaps years of preparation, you will get the job and the higher place in lite.-Joseph H. Appel.

I KNOW the beds of Eastern princes,

and the luxurious couches of Occidental plutocrats, but under the rafters of a farmhouse, where the mudwasp's nest answers for a Rembrandt and the cobweb takes the place of a Murillo, there is a feather-bed into which one softly sinks until his every inch is soothed and fitted, and settling down and farther down falls into sweet unconsciousness, while the screech-owl is calling from the moonlit oak and frost is falling upon the asters. Stocks may fluctuate and panic seize the town, but there is one man who is in peace.

-Robert T. Morris.

HAT is music? This question occupied my mind for hours last night before I fell asleep. The very existence of music is wonderful, I might even say miraculous. Its domain is between thought and phenomena. Like a twilight mediator, it hovers between spirit and matter, related to both, yet differing from each. It is spirit, but it is spirit subject to the measurement of time. It is matter, but it is matter that can dispense with space.-Heinrich Heine.

O renounce your individuality, to see with another's eyes, to hear with another's ears, to be two and yet but one, to so melt and mingle that you no longer know you are you or another, to constantly absorb and constantly radiate, to reduce earth, sea and sky and all that in them is to a single being, to give yourself to that being so wholly that nothing whatever is withheld, to be prepared at any moment for sacrifice, to double your personality in bestowing it-that is love.-Gautier.

ELODY has by Beethoven been freed from the influence of Fashion and changing Taste, and raised to an ever-valid, purely human type. Beethoven's music will be understood to all time, while that of his predecessors will, for the most part, only remain intelligible to us through the medium of reflection on the history of art.-Richard Wagner.

NATURE, like a loving mother, is

ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony and beauty may reign supreme.

-Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

HY should we call ourselves men, unless it be to succeed in everything, everywhere? Say of nothing, "This is beneath me,' "" nor feel that anything is beyond our powers. Nothing is impossible to the man who can will. -Mirabeau.

-John Lubbock.

IT is indisputably evident that a

great part of every man's life must be employed in collecting materials for the exercise of genius. Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory: nothing can come of nothing: he who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations. The more extensive, therefore, your acquaintance is with the works of those who have excelled, the more extensive will be your powers of invention, and, what may appear still more like a paradox, the more original will be your conceptions. -Sir Joshua Reynolds.

HANK God every morning when

you get up that you have something to do which must be done, whether you like it or not. Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance, self-control, diligence, strength of will, content, and a hundred other virtues which the idle never know. -Charles Kingsley.

HE study of art possesses this great

and peculiar charm, that it is absolutely unconnected with the struggles and contests of ordinary life. By private interests and by political questions, men are deeply divided and set at variance; but beyond and above all such party strifes, they are attracted and united by a taste for the beautiful in art. It is a taste at once engrossing and unselfish, which may be indulged without effort and yet has the power of exciting the deepest emotions-a taste able to exercise and to gratify both the nobler and the softer parts of our nature-the imagination and the judgment, love of emotion and power of reflection, the enthusiasm and the critical faculty, the senses and the reason.-Guizot.