HE majesty of suffering labor is no longer dumb: it speaks now with a million tongues, and it asks the nations not to increase the ills which crush down the workers by an added burden of mistrust and hate, by wars and the expectation of wars.

Gentlemen, you may ask how and when and in what form this longing for international concord will express itself to some purpose. . . . I can only answer you by a parable which I gleaned by fragments from the legends of Merlin, the magician, from the Arabian Nights, and from a book that is still unread.

Once upon a time there was an enchanted forest. It had been stripped of all verdure, it was wild and forbidding. The trees, tossed by the bitter winter wind that never ceased, struck one another with a sound as of breaking swords. When at last, after a long series of freezing nights and sunless days that seemed like nights, all living things trembled with the first call of spring, the trees became afraid of the sap that began to move within them. And the solitary and bitter spirit that had its dwelling within the hard bark of each of them said very low, with a shudder that came up from the deepest roots: Have a care! If thou art the first to risk yielding to the wooing of the new season, if thou art the first to turn thy lance-like buds into blossoms and leaves, their delicate raiment will be torn by the rough blows of the trees that have been slower to put forth leaves and flowers.”

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break into a shower of verdure, and give from afar the signal for a renewal of all life? Or did a warmer and more lifegiving beam start the sap moving in all the trees at once? For lo! in a single day the whole forest burst forth into a magnificent flowering of joy and peace. —Jean Leon Jaurès.

JOIN with you most cordially in

rejoicing at the return of peace. I hope it will be lasting, and that mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable creatures, have reason enough to settle their differences without cutting throats; for, in my opinion, there never was a good war or a bad peace. What past additions to the conveniences and comforts of life might mankind have acquired, if the money spent in wars had been employed in works of utility! What an extension of agriculture, even to the tops of the mountains; what rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads, and other public works, edifices and improvements, rendering England a complete paradise, might not have been obtained by spending those millions in doing good, which in the last war have been spent in doing mischief-in bringing misery into thousands of families and destroying the lives of so many working people, who might have performed the useful labors.

-Franklin.

T is a glorious privilege to live, to know, to act, to listen, to behold, to love. To look up at the blue summer sky; to see the sun sink slowly beyond the line of the horizon; to watch the worlds come twinkling into view, first one by one, and the myriads that no man can count, and lo! the universe is white with them; and you and I are here.-Marco Morrow.

ELIEVE me, every man has his secret

sorrows, which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold when he is only sad.—Longfellow.

GE, that lessens the enjoyment of life, increases our desire of living. Those dan

gers which, in the vigor of youth, we had learned to despise, assume new terrors as we grow old. Our caution increasing as our years increase, fear becomes at last the prevailing passion of the mind, and the small remainder of

WHAT if I differ from some in relig

ious apprehensions? Am I therefore incompatible with human societies? I know not any unfit for political society but those who maintain principles subversive of industry, fidelity, justice and obedience. Five things are requisite for a good officer; ability, clean hands, dispatch, patience and impartiality. -William Penn.

life is taken up in useless efforts to keep off our end, or provide for a continued existence Whence, then, is this increased love of life, which grows upon us with our years? Whence comes it that we thus make greater efforts to preserve our existence at a period when it becomes scarce worth the keeping? Is it that Nature, attentive to the preservation of mankind, increases our wishes to live, while she lessens our enjoyments; and, as she robs the senses of every pleasure, equips imagination in the spoil? Life would be insupportable to an old man, who loaded with infirmities, feared death no more than when in the vigor of manhood: the numberless calamities of decaying Nature, and the consciousness of surviving every pleasure would at once induce him with his own hand to terminate the scene of misery: but happily the contempt of death forsakes him at a time when it could only be prejudicial, and life acquires an imaginary value in proportion as its real value is no more.

-Oliver Goldsmith.

He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. -Parkman.

HEN we say a man or a woman we know is a thorough-bred, we pay to him or her the greatest compliment of which we are capable. There is not in the vocabulary of pleasant terms a stronger word. Visit a stock-farm, the home of highgrade horses or cattle, and you will see that the physical signs of the thoroughbred are fine eyes and an erect bearing. These are the symbols of a high, generous spirit NO

The keeper of the stock-farm will tell you that a thoroughbred never whines. One illustrated this to me by swinging a dog around by the tail. The creature was in pain, but no sound escaped him. "You see," said the keeper, "they never complain. It ain't in 'em. Same way when a stable burns. It ain't the best horses that scream when they're burnin'. It 's the worst."

All this is quite as true of the human thoroughbred. The visible signs of the invisible spirit are the eyes that are steady and shoulders that are straight. No burden except possibly the weight of many years bends his shoulders, and his eyes meet yours in honest fashion, because he neither fears, nor has been shamed, at the bar of his own soul.

He never complains. He keeps his troubles to himself, having discovered, as thoroughbreds do, that to tell troubles is to multiply them, and to lock them in the breast is to diminish and finally end them. He never talks about what Fate has done to him. He knows he is master of his own destiny. He never bewails the treatment he has received from another, for he knows no one can do him lasting harm except himself.—Ada Patterson.

HE fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.-Oscar Wilde.

ODAY is your day and mine, the

only day we have, the day in which we play our part. What our part may signify in the great whole we may not understand; but we are here to play it, and now is our time. This we know: it is a part of action, not of whining. It is a part of love, not cynicism. It is for us to express love in terms of human helpfulness.-David Starr Jordan.

Ꮽ Ꮽe

HE perfect historian is he in whose work the character and spirit of an age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact, he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not authenticated by sufficient testimony By judicious selection, rejection and arrangement, he gives to truth those attractions which have been usurped by fiction. In his narrative a due subordination is observed: some transactions are prominent; others retire. But the scale on which he represents them is increased or diminished not according to the dignity of the persons concerned in them, but according to the degree in which they elucidate the condition of society and the nature of man. He shows us the court, the camp and the senate. But he shows us also the nation. He considers no anecdote, no peculiarity of manner, no familiar saying, as too significant for his notice which is not too insignificant to illustrate the operation of laws, of religion, and of education, and to mark the progress of the human mind. Men will not merely be described, but will be made intimately known to us. -Macaulay.

HE ideal life is in our blood and

never will be still. Sad will be the day for any man when he becomes contented with the thoughts he is thinking and the deeds he is doing,-where there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was meant and made to do.

-Phillips Brooks.

He jests at scars that never felt a wound. -Shakespeare.

E rejoined the Colors on Friday. On Monday we are to move out. Today, being Sunday, is full dress Church Parade de

I slept badly last night, and am feeling uneasy and limp.

And now we are sitting close-packed in church

The organ is playing a voluntary. I am leaning back and straining my ears for the sounds in the

dim twilight of the building se Childhood's days rise before my eyes again. I am watching a little solemnfaced boy sitting crouched in a corner and listening to the divine ser

that pale man in his long, dignified black gown, toward that sonorous, unctuous mouth, from whose lips flows the name of God o

Look! He is now stretching forth his hands. We incline our heads. He is pronouncing the Benediction over us in a voice that echoes from the tomb. He is blessing us in the name of God, the

vice The priest is standing in front of the altar, and is intoning the Exhortation devoutly. The choir in the gallery is chanting the responses. The organ thunders out and floods through the building majestically. I am rapt in an ecstasy of sweet terror, for the Lord God is coming down upon us. He is standing before me and touching my body, so that I have to close my eyes in a terror of shuddering ecstacy..

That is long, long ago, and is all past and done with, as youth itself is past and done with...

Strange! After all these years of doubt and unbelief, at this moment of lucid consciousness, the atmosphere of devoutness, long since dead, possesses me, and thrills me so passionately that I can hardly resist it. This is the same heavy twilight-these are the same yearning angel voices-the same fearful sense of rapture

I pull myself together, and sit bolt upright on the hard wooden pew.

In the main and the side aisles below, and in the galleries above, nothing but soldiers in uniform, and all, with level faces, turned toward the altar, toward

Merciful. He is blessing our rifles that they may not fail us; he is blessing the wiredrawn guns on their patent recoilless carriages; he is blessing every lest a single bullet precious cartridge,

be wasted, lest any pass idly through the air; that each one may account for a hundred

human beings, may shatter a hundred human beings simultaneously. Father in Heaven! Thou art gazing down at us in such terrible silence. Dost Thou shudder at these sons of men? Thou poor and slight God! Thou couldst only rain Thy paltry pitch and sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah. But we, Thy children, whom Thou hast created, we are going to exterminate them by high-pressure machinery, and butcher whole cities in factories. Here we stand, and while we stretch our hands to Thy Son in prayer, and cry Hosannah! we are hurling shells and shrapnel in the face of Thy Image, and shooting the Son of Man down from His Cross like a target at the rifle-butts.

And now the Holy Communion is being celebrated. The organ is playing mysteriously from afar off, and the flesh and blood of the Redeemer is mingling with our flesh and blood.

There He is hanging on the Cross above me, and gazing down upon me. How pale those cheeks look! And those eyes are the eyes as of one dead! Who was this Christ Who is to aid us, and Whose blood we drink? What was it they once taught us at school? Didst Thou not

love mankind? And didst Thou not die for the whole human race? Stretch out Thine arms toward me. There is something I would fain ask of Thee.... Ah! they have nailed Thy arms to the Cross, so that Thou canst not stretch out a finger toward us.

Shuddering, I fix my eyes on the corpselike face and see that He died long ago, that He is nothing more than wood, nothing other than a puppet. Christ, it is no longer Thee to whom we pray. Look there! Look there! It is he. The new patron saint of a Christian State! Look there! It is he, the great Genghis Khan. Of him we know that he swept through the history of the world with fire and sword, and piled up pyramids of skulls. Yes, that is he. Let us heap up mountains of human heads, and pile up heaps of human entrails. Great Genghis Khan! Thou, our patron saint! Do thou bless us! Pray to thy blood-drenched father seated above the skies of Asia, that he may sweep with us through the clouds; that he may strike down the accursed nation till it writhes in its blood, till it never can rise again. A red mist swims before my eyes. Of a sudden I see nothing but blood before me. The heavens have opened, and the red flood pours in through the windows. Blood wells up on the altar. The walls run blood from the ceiling to the floor, and— God the Father steps out of the blood. Every scale of his skin stands erect, his beard and hair drip blood. A giant of blood stands before me. He seats himself backward on the altar, and is laughing from thick, coarse lips-there sits the King of Dahomey, and he butchers his slaves. The black executioner raises his sword and whirls it above my head. Another moment and my head will roll down on the floor-another moment and the red jet will spurt from my neck Murderers, murderers! None other than murderers! Lord God in Heaven! Then

.....

The church door opens creakingLight, air, the blue of heaven, burst in. I draw a breath of relief. We have risen to our feet, and at length pass out of the twilight into the open air.

My knees are still trembling under me.

We fall into line, and in our hobnailed boots tramp in step down the street toward the barracks. When I see my mates marching beside me in their matter-of-fact and stolid way, I feel ashamed, and call myself a wretched coward. What a weak-nerved, hysterical breed, that can no longer look at blood without fainting! You neurasthenic offspring of your sturdy peasant forebears, who shouted for joy when they went out to fight!

I pull myself together and throw my head back.

I never was a coward, and eye for eye I have always looked my man in the face, and will so do this time, too, happen what may.-Wilhelm Lamszus.

NOWLEDGE is essential to con

quest; only according to our ignorance are we helpless. Thought creates character. Character can dominate conditions. Will creates circumstances and environment.— Annie Besant.

T is assumed that labor is avail

able only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it, induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to do it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves.

Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as here assumed. . Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.-Abraham Lincoln.

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.

-Oliver Wendell Holmes.