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. Ꮽ Ꮽ 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 ATURE, 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. WHY 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. F we do our best; if we do not mag nify trifling troubles; if we look resolutely, I will not say at the bright side of things, but at things as they really are; if we avail ourselves of the manifold blessings which surround us, we can not but feel that life is indeed a glorious inheritance.-John Lubbock. HE passions are the only orators that always persuade; they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it. -La Rochefoucauld. LL those who love Nature she loves in turn, and will richly reward, not perhaps with the good things, as they are commonly called, but with the best things, of this world-not with money and titles, horses and carriages, but with bright and happy thoughts, contentment and peace of mind. -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. ANY a woman committing herself to a course that disregards the edicts of society knows with her mind that she is doing a foolish thing, while with her heart she rejoices in her folly and lauds herself for her high indifference to convention. Then when she finds herself suspected, assailed or ridiculed, she is amazed and deeply wounded, though with her intellect she has clearly understood the inevitableness of her reward This propensity to divorce impulse from good judgment, to do a rash thing for affection's sake, and then to writhe when the condemnation comes-is there any more truly feminine bit of sophistry in the strange round of woman's reason? The ostrich with her head in the sand is not more pathetic or absurd than a woman thus hoodwinking herself. HE sun is just rising on the morning of another day, the first day of a new year. What can I wish that this day, this year, may bring to me? Nothing that shall make the world or others poorer, nothing at the expense of other men; but just those few things which in their coming do not stop with me, but touch me rather, as they pass and -Margaret Ashmun. HIS earth with its infinitude of life and beauty and mystery, and the universe in the midst of which we are placed, with its overwhelming immensities of suns and nebulae, of light and motion, are as they are, firstly, for the development of life culminating in man; secondly, as a vast schoolhouse for the higher education of the human race in preparation for the enduring spiritual life to which it is destined. -Alfred Russel Wallace. Wonder is involuntary praise.-Young. gather strength: A few friends who understand me, and yet remain my friends. A work to do which has real value without which the world would feel the poorer. A return for such work small enough not to tax unduly any one who pays. A mind unafraid to travel, even though the trail be not blazed. An understanding heart A sight of the eternal hills and unresting sea, and of something beautiful the hand of man has made. A sense of humor and the power to laugh. A little leisure with nothing to do. A few moments of quiet, silent meditation. The sense of the presence of God And the patience to wait for the coming of these things, with the wisdom to know them when they come.—“A Morning Wish," by W. R. Hunt. HERE is quite as much education and true learning in the analysis of an ear of corn as in the analysis of a complex sentence; ability to analyze clover and alfalfa roots savors of quite as much culture as does the study of the Latin and Greek roots. O. H. Benson. O lead a people in revolution wisely and successfully, without ambition and without crime, demands indeed lofty genius and unbending virtue. But to build their State amid the angry conflict of passion and prejudice, to peacefully inaugurate a complete and satisfactory government-this is the very greatest service that a man can render to mankind. But this also is the glory of Washington do d☛ With the sure sagacity of a leader of men, he selected at once for the three highest stations the three chief Americans. Hamilton was the head, Jefferson was the heart, and John Jay the conscience of his administration. Washington's just and serene ascendency was the lambent flame in which these beneficent powers were fused; and nothing else than that ascendency could have ridden the whirlwind and directed the storm that burst around him. Party spirit blazed into fury. John Jay was hung in effigy; Hamilton was stoned; insurrection raised its head in the West; Washington himself was denounced. But the great soul was undismayed. Without a beacon, without a chart, but with unwavering eye and steady hand, he guided his country safe through darkness and through storm. He held his steadfast way, like the sun across the firmament, giving life and health and strength to the new nation; and upon a searching survey of his administration, there is no great act which his country would annul; no word spoken, no line written, no deed done by him, which justice would reverse or wisdom deplore.-George William Curtis. WAS born an American; I live an American; I shall die an American; and I intend to perform the duties incumbent upon me in that character to the end of my career. I mean to do this with absolute disregard of personal sequences. What are the personal consequences? What is the individual man, with all the good or evil that may betide him, in comparison with the good or evil which may befall a great country, and in the midst of great transactions which concern that country's fate? Let the consequences be what they will, I am careless. No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer, or if he fall, in the defense of the liberties and constitution of his country. -Daniel Webster. O man today can lay claim to a liberal education unless he knows something of the reach and sweep of those peaks of poesy and learning raised by the spirit of man in the civilizations of Greece and Rome.-Edwin Markham. ORK is the mission of mankind on this earth. A day is ever struggling forward, a day will arrive, in some approximate degree, when he who has no work to do, by whatever name he may be called, will not find it good to show himself in our quarter of the solar system but may go and look out elsewhere if there be any idle planet discoverable. Let all honest workers rejoice that such law, the first of Nature, has been recognized by them. -George Bernard Shaw. OTHING is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded, and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings toward all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges toward another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions; obstinate, envenomed and bloody contests. Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens), the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial.-George Washington. ODERN civilization rests upon physical science, for it is physical science that makes intelligence and moral energy stronger than brute force. The whole of modern thought is steeped in science. It has made its way into the works of our best poets, and even the mere man of letters, who affects to ignore and despise science, is unconsciously impregnated with her spirit and indebted for his best products to her methods. She is teaching the world that the ultimate court of appeal is observation and experience, not authority. She is creating a firm and living faith in the existence of immutable moral and physical laws, perfect obedience to which is the highest possible aim of an intelligent being. -Huxley. NE fact stands out in bold relief in the history of men's attempts for betterment. That is that when compulsion is used, only resentment is aroused, and the end is not gained. Only through moral suasion and appeal to men's reason can a movement succeed. -Samuel Gompers. Ꮽ Ꮽ E have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. We have lost the power of even imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant; the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are or do, and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly-the more athletic trim; in short, the moral fighting shape. It is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.-William James. |