HAT Raphael is to color, what Mozart is in music, that Burns is in song. With his sweet words, "the mother soothes her child, the lover wooes his bride, the soldier wins his victory." His biographer says his genius was so overmastering that the news of Burns' arrival at the village inn drew farmers from their fields and at midnight wakened travelers, who left their beds to listen, delighted, until the morn One day this child of poverty and obscurity left his plow behind, and entering the drawing-rooms of Edinburgh, met Scotland's most gifted scholars, her noblest lords and ladies. Mid these scholars, statesmen and philosophers, he blazed" like a torch amidst the tapers," showing himself wiser than the scholars, wittier than the humorist, kinglier than the courtliest. And yet, in the very prime of his mid-manhood, Burns lay down to die, a broken-hearted man. He who had sinned much suffered much, and being the victim of his own folly, he was also the victim of ingratitude and misfortune. Bewildered by his debts, he seems like an untamed eagle beating against bars he can not break. The last time he lifted his pen upon the page it was not to give immortal form to some exquisite lyric he had fashioned, but to beg a friend in Edinburgh for a loan of ten pounds to save him from the terrors of a debtor's prison. By contrast with the lot of other worthies, Robert Burns seems to have been the child of good fortune. In the last analysis the blame is with the poet himself. Not want of good fortune without, but want of good guidance within, wrecked his youth. Save Saul alone, history holds no sadder tragedy that that of Burns, who sang "the short and simple annals of the poor."-Newell Dwight Hillis. EALTH is, indeed, so necessary to all the duties as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly; and he that for a short gratification brings weakness and diseases upon himself, and for the pleasure of a few years passed in the tumults of diversion and clamors of merriment, condemns the maturer and more experienced part of his life to the chamber and the couch, may be justly reproached, not only as a spendthrift of his happiness, but as a robber of the public; as a wretch that has voluntarily disqualified himself for the business of his station, and refused that part which Providence assigns him in the general task of human nature. Samuel Johnson. Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. John Quincy Adams. A MERICA is God's crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming! Here you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. But you won't be long like that, brothers, for these are the fires of God you 've come to—these are the fires of God. A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians-into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American. The real American has not yet arrived. He is only in the crucible, I tell you-he will be the fusion of all races, the common superman. I -Israel Zangwill. T'S good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure you have n't lost the things that money can't buy. -George Horace Lorimer. He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.-Goethe. N China letters are respected not merely to a degree but in a sense which must seem, I think, to you unintelligible and overstrained. But there is a reason for it. Our poets and literary men have taught their successors, for long generations, to look for good not in wealth, not in power, not in miscellaneous activity, but in a trained, a choice, an If I should die tonight And you should come to my cold corpse and say, Weeping and heartsick o'er my lifeless clay If I should die tonight, exquisite appreciation of the most simple and univer sal relations of life. To feel, and in order to feel to express, or at least And you should come in deepest grief to understand the and woe GREAT many people run down jealousy on the score that it is an artificial feeling, as well as practically inconvenient. This is scarcely fair; for the feeling on which it merely attends, like an ill-humored courtier, is self artificial in exactly the same sense and to the same degree. I suppose what is meant by that objection is that jealousy has not always been a character of man; formed no part of that very modest kit of sentiments with which he is supposed to have begun the world; but waited to make its appearance in better days and among richer natures. And this is equally true of love, and friendship, and love of country, and delight in what they call the beauties of nature, and most other things worth having. Love, in particular, will not endure any histor "Here's that ten dollars that And say: I owe," expression of all that is lovely in Nature, all that is I might arise in my large white cravat poignant and senAnd say, "What's that? If I should die tonight And you should come to my cold corpse and kneel, Clasping my bier to show the grief you feel, Just even hint at paying me that ten, sitive in man, is to us in itself a sufficient end. A rose in a moonlit garden, the shadow of trees on the turf, almond bloom, scent of pine, the wine-cup and the guitar, these and the pathos of life and death, the long embrace, the hand stretched out in vain, the moment that glides for ever away, with its freight of music and light, into the shadow and hush of the haunted past, all that we have, all that eludes us, a bird on the wing, a perfume escaped on the galeto all these things we are trained to respond, and the response is what we call literature.-G. Lowes Dickinson. But I'd drop dead again. "If I Should Die To-Night," by Ben King ical scrutiny: to all who have fallen across it, it is one of the most incontestable facts in the world; but if you begin to ask what it was in other periods and countries, in Greece for instance, the strangest doubts begin to spring up, and everything seems so vague and changing that a dream is logical in comparison. Jealousy, at any rate, is one of the consequences of love; you may like it or not, at pleasure; but there it is. -Robert Louis Stevenson The law of worthy life is fundamentally the law of strife. It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.-Theodore Roosevelt. Reason elevates our thoughts as high as the stars, and leads us through the vast space of this mighty fabric; yet it comes far short of the real extent of our corporeal being.-Samuel Johnson. The man who trusts men will make fewer mistakes than he who distrusts them.-Cavour. HERE are two sorts of people in the world, who, with equal degrees of health and wealth, and the other t comforts of life, become, the one happy, and the other miserable. This arises very much from the different views in which they consider things, persons and events; and the effect of those different views upon their own minds. In whatever situation men can be placed they may find conveniences and inconveniences; in whatever company they may find persons and conversation more or less pleasing; at whatever table they may meet with meats and drinks of better and worse taste, dishes better and worse dressed; in whatever climate they will find good and bad weather; under whatever government, they may find good and bad laws, and good and bad administration of those laws; in whatever poem or work of genius they may see faults and beauties; in almost every face and every person they may discover fine features and defects, good and bad qualities. Under these circumstances the two sorts of people above mentioned fix their attention; those who are disposed to be happy, on the convenience of things, the pleasant parts of conversations, the welldressed dishes, the goodness of the wines, the fine weather, etc., and enjoy all with cheerfulness. Those who are to be unhappy think and speak only of the contraries. Hence they are continually discontented themselves, and by their remarks, sour the pleasure of society, offend personally many people, and make themselves everywhere disagreeable. If this turn of mind was founded in nature, such unhappy persons would be the more to be pitied. But as the disposition to criticise, and to be disgusted, is perhaps taken up originally by imitation, and is unawares grown into a habit, which, though at present strong, may nevertheless be cured, when those who have it are convinced of its bad effects on their felicity. . . . If these people will not change this bad habit, and condescend to be pleased with what is pleasing, without fretting themselves and others about the contraries, it is good for others to avoid an acquaintance with them; which is always disagreeable, and sometimes very inconvenient, especially when one finds one's self entangled in their quarrels.-Franklin. I NEED not tell you what it is to be knocking about in an open boat. I remember nights and days of calm when we pulled, we pulled, and the boat seemed to stand still, as if bewitched within the circle of the sea horizon. I remember the heat, the deluge of rainsqualls that kept us bailing for dear life (but filled our water-cask), and I remember sixteen hours on end with a mouth dry as a cinder and a steering-oar over the stern to keep my first command head on to a breaking sea. I did not know how good a man I was till then. I remember the drawn faces, the dejected figures of my two men, and I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more-the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires—and expires, too soon-before life itself.-Joseph Conrad. O be strong and true; to be generous in praise and appreciation of others; to impute worthy motives even to enemies; to give without expectation of return; to practise humility, tolerance and self-restraint; to make the best use of time and opportunity; to keep the mind pure and the judgment charitable; to extend intelligent sympathy to those in distress; to cultivate quietness and nonresistance; to seek truth and righteousness; to work, love, pray and serve daily, to aspire greatly, labor cheerfully, and take God at His word-this is to travel heavenward.-Grenville Kleiser. Manners, the final and perfect flower of noble character.—William Winter. EN I find to be a sort of beings very badly constructed, as they are generally more easily provoked than reconciled, more disposed to do mischief to each other than to make reparation, much more easily deceived than undeceived, and having more pride and even pleasure in killing than in begetting one another; for without a blush they assemble in great armies at noonday to destroy, and when they have killed as many as they can, they exaggerate the number to augment the fancied glory. In what light we are viewed by superior beings may be gathered from a piece of late West India news. A young angel of distinction being sent down to this world on some business, for the first time, had an old courier-spirit assigned him as a guide. They arrived over the seas of Martinico, in the middle of the long day of obstinate fight between the fleets of Rodney and De Grasse. When, through the clouds of smoke, he saw the fire of the guns, the decks covered with mangled limbs, and bodies dead or dying; the ships sinking, burning, or blown into the air; and the quantity of pain, misery, and destruction, the crews yet alive were thus with so much eagerness dealing round to one another, he turned angrily to his guide, and said: "You blundering blockhead, you are ignorant of your business; you undertook to conduct me to the earth, and you have brought me into hell!" "No, Sir," says the guide, I have made no mistake; this is really the earth, and these are men. Devils never treat one another in this cruel manner; they have more sense, and more of what men (vainly) call humanity."-Franklin. 66 horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in; glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendor, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of Chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiments and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.-Edmund Burke. in it, that it leaves the possessor of it nothing farther to desire. There is one object (at least) in which the soul finds absolute content, for which it seeks to live, or dares to die. The heart has, as it were, filled up the moulds of the imagination. The truth of passion keeps pace with and outvies the extravagance Over the shoulders and slopes of HE presence that thus rose strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon 66 which all the ends of the world are come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has I saw the white daisies go down to A host in the sunshine, an army in The people God sends us to set The bobolinks rallied them up The orioles whistled them out of passed! All the And all of their saying was, “Earth, it is well!" And all of their dancing was, "Daisies," by Bliss Carman thoughts and ex- An appreciation of da Vinci's Mona Lisa of mere language. There are no words so fine, no flattery so soft, that there is not a sentiment beyond them, that it is impossible to express, at the bottom of the heart where true love is. What idle sounds the comable creature, anmon phrases, adorgel, divinity, are! What a proud reflection it is to have a feeling answering to all these, rooted in the breast, unalterable unutterable, to which all other feelings are light and vain! Perfect love reposes on the object of its choice, like the halcyon on the wave; and the air of heaven is around it.-William Hazlitt LAY very little stress either upon asking or giving advice. Generally speaking, they who ask advice know what they wish to do, and remain firm to their intentions. A man may allow himself to be enlightened on various points, even upon matters of expediency and duty; but, after all, he must determine his course of action for himself. -Wilhelm von Humboldt. Bed is a bundle of paradoxes; we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.-Colton. |