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HERE are few things of

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 HEN Turner became an Acade

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 de

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 I 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 s

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: I do not care who makes its laws.

-Dr. Harvey W. Wiley.

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.

O

-Ernest Thompson Seton.

HE leader for the time being, whoever 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.

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 ♪ ♪❤

was a fault I remember the greatest
triumph I ever had was in persuading
him, after some years' difficulty, that
Fielding was better than Smollett.
On one occasion, he was for making out
a list of persons famous in history that
one would wish to see again—at the
head of which were Pontius Pilate, Sir
Thomas Browne, and Dr. Faustus-but

If the red slayer think he slays,

Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near;

Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.

His serious conversation, like his serious
writing, is his best. No one ever stam-
meredout such fine,
piquant, deep, elo-
quent things in a
half a dozen half-
sentences as he
does His jests
scald like tears;
and he probes a
question with a
play upon words.
What a keen,
laughing, hare-
brained vein of
home-felt truth!
What choice ven-
om! How often
did we cut into the
haunch of letters,
while we discuss-
ed the haunch of
mutton on the
table! How we

They reckon ill who leave me out;

When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,

And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode.

And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
“Brahma,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

skimmed the cream of criticism! How we got into the heart of controversy! How we picked out the marrow of authors!

66

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

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.

-"Charles Lamb," by W. Hazlitt.

HE truth is, progress and reaction

are but words to mystify the millions. They mean nothing, they are nothing, they are phases and not facts. In the structure, the decay, and the development of the various families of man, the vicissitudes of history find their main solution-all is race.-Disraeli.

We must not blame God for the fly, for man made him. He is the resurrection, the reincarnation of our own dirt and carelessness.

-Woods Hutchinson, M. D.

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!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

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 not embody the infinite s the failures only serve to set off the infiniteness in the tendency se Work helps; sympathy helps; in all the ordinary cir cumstances of life, not to be sorry for one's self but to be sorry for others is the best help. But

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,

That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on,

To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

Yet

But the tender grace of a day that is dead the thought that
Will never come back to me.

life is a grand tra

"Break, Break, Break,"by Alfred, Lord Tennyson gedy, that over the

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

ruins a glory shines,

is to me the supreme help.-Felix Adler.

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.

Godgives all things to industry-Franklin

HE day is done. Soft darkness fills all spaces The turmoil has ceased. The clatter of hoofs and the whir of motors have died away. One late straggler shuffles past. All is quiet. The shadows hide from the white-faced moon.

I am tired of the toil of the day-weary of this fretful little earth, so full of things. My feet are hot with tramping the stolid street. My throat is choked with the dust of trivial traffic. The things of my labor have become irksome to me mere toys that I have played with all day. I will lay them aside. What matter if I can not find them again? Valedico, peevish little earth, I am going out into the Universe to stroll on the Milky Way and bathe in the Ocean of Night.

O, great, good, beautiful Night, you are so calm, so pure. I gaze through the ripples of the night-wind down into your dark depths where the stars lie strewn about Are they the jewel-offerings some ill-fated lover cast in ruthless despair upon your bosom? Or are they the pebbles that sparkle in your depths? I wander down the Milky Way. I gather the Pleiades and make a necklace for my Love. I string them on a golden strand from the tresses of Andromeda. What matter if the sea-nymphs do rage? Perseus is near and he has slain the Draco. I scatter the star-gems before my feet on the path. Wait! Triumphant Orion is passing and his gaudy girdle flashes a challenge at mad Taurus.

Here are some of the flowers of Nokomis. I will gather a few and weave them into the necklace. What is that I hear? Why-it's the chimes of Saint Francis striking the twelfth hour. Have I been dreaming? I can retire, now, and rest on my pillow. Ah, there are the things, too— the toys. Perhaps I shall play with them again tomorrow.-Hugh Robert Orr.

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along the verges of precipitous dream, light leaper from crag to crag of inaccessible fancies; towering Genius, whose soul, rose like a ladder between heaven and earth with the angels of song ascending and descending it-he is shrunken into the little vessel of death, and sealed with the unshatterable seal of doom, and cast down deep below the rolling tides of Time. Mighty meat for little guests, when the heart of Shelley was laid in the cemetery of Caius Cestius! Beauty, music, sweetness, tears, the mouth of the worm has fed of them all. Into that sacred bridalgloom of death where he holds his nuptials with eternity let not our rash speculations follow him; let us hope, rather, that as, amidst material nature, where our dull eyes see only ruin, the finer art of science has discovered life in putridity and vigor in decay, seeing dissolution even and disintegration, which in the mouth of man symbolize disorder, to be in the works of God undeviating order, and the manner of our corruption to be no less wonderful than the manner of our health-so amidst the supernatural universe some tender undreamed surprise of life in doom awaited that wild nature, which, worn by warfare with itself, its Maker, and all the world, now

Sleeps, and never palates more the dug, The beggar's nurse and Cæsar's. -"The Death of Shelley," by Francis Thompson de

T is related by a peasant that he had persuaded himself that beyond his fields there were no others, and when he happened to lose a cow and was compelled to go in search of her, he was astonished at the great number of fields beyond his own few acres. This must also be the case of many theorists who have persuaded themselves that beyond this field or little globe of earth there lie no other worlds-simply because he has not seen them.-Spinoza.

Let the farmer forevermore be honored in his calling; for they who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.

-Thomas Jefferson.

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