rest. We know that through the common wants of life-the needs and duties of each hour-their griefs will lessen day by day, until at last this grave will be to them a place of rest and peace-almost of joy. There is for them this consolation. The dead do not suffer. And if they live again, their lives will surely be as good as ours. We have no fear. We are all children of the same mother, and the same fate awaits us all. We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the livingHope for the dead. -Robert G. Ingersoll. IT is a mistake to suppose that in planting colonies in the New World the nations of Europe were moved mainly by a philanthropic impulse to ex under heavy penalties. They became a nation of law-breakers. Nine-tenths of the colonial merchants were smugglers. Nearly half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were bred to commerce, to the command of ships and to contraband trade. John Hancock was the prince of contraband traders; and with John Adams as his counsel, was on Out of the dusk a shadow, Then a spark; Out of the cloud a silence, Then, a lark; Out of the heart a rapture, trial before the admiralty court in Boston, at the exact hour of the shedding of the first blood at Lexington, to answer for a $500,000 penalty alleged to have been incurred as a smuggler. Half the tonnage of the world was engaged Out of the dead, cold ashes, in smuggling or piracy. Life again. "Evolution," by John Banister Tabb tend the area of liberty and civilization. Colonies were planted for the purpose of raising up customers for home trade. It was a matter of business and speculation, carried on by joint stock com The war of independence was a war against commercial despotism; against an industrial policy which oppressed and tortured the industry of our fathers, and would have reduced them to perpetual vassalage for the gain of England.—James A. Garfield. panies for the benefit of corporations.transactions of the day, and follows E who every morning plans the While our Revolution was in progress Adam Smith, when discussing and condemning the colonial system, declared that "England had founded an empire in the New World for the sole purpose of raising customers for her trade." When the colonies had increased in numbers and wealth, the purpose of the mother country was disclosed in the legislation and regulations by which the colonies were governed. Whatever did not enhance the trade and commerce of England was deemed unfit to be a part of the colonial policy. Worse even than its effects on the industry of the colonies was the influence of this policy on political and commercial morality. The innumerable arbitrary laws enacted to enforce it created a thousand new crimes.Transactions which the colonists thought necessary to the welfare, and in no way repugnant to the moral sense of good men, were forbidden out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life. The orderly arrangement of his time is like a ray of light which darts itself through all his occupations. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidents, all things lie huddled together in one chaos, which admits of neither distribution nor review.-Hugo. Amid my list of blessings infinite, -Edward Young. It is not he that enters upon any career, or starts in any race, but he that runs well and perseveringly that gains the plaudits of others, or the approval of his own conscience.-Alexander Campbell. HE life of a people is a tissue of crimes, miseries, and follies. That is no less true of Penguinia than of other nations ∞ Gratian, the sage, toured Penguinia in the time of the last of the Draconide dynasty. Travelling one day through a lovely valley where cow bells tinkled in the pure air, he sat down on a bench at the foot of an oak tree, near a thatched cottage. On the doorstep a woman was suckling an infant; a youngster was playing with a big dog; a blind old man, seated in the sun, was drinking in the light of day through half-opened lips. The master of the house, a robust young man, offered Gratian bread and milk and, the Marsouin philosopher after partaking of this repast, exclaimed, 66 Kindly inhabitants of a gentle land, I thank you. Everything here breathes joy, concord and peace." Even as he spoke, however, a shepherd passed, playing a martial air upon his bagpipes "What is that lively tune?" demanded Gratian "That's our war hymn against the Marsouins," replied the peasant." Everybody here sings it. Little children know it before they can talk. We are all good Penguin patriots." "You don't like the Marsouins?" "We hate them." "For what reason do you hate them?" "How can you ask? They are our neighbors, are n't they?" 66 Certainly. Who says ' neighbors' says 'enemies Look at the field which touches mine. It belongs to the man I hate most in the world. After him my worst enemies are the people of the village on the other slope of the valley at the foot of that birch wood. In this narrow valley, closed in on all sides, there is only that village and my village. Of course they are enemies. Every time our chaps meet theirs, they exchange insults and blows. And you don't see why the Penguins should be the enemies of the Marsouins! Don't you know what patriotism means? For me there are only two possible battlecries: 'Long live the Penguins! Death to the Marsouins!'" -Anatole France. HIS Mahomet, son of Abdallah, was a sublime charlatan. He says in his tenth chapter, “ Who but God can have composed the Koran? Do you think Mahomet has forged this book? Well, try and write one chapter resembling it, and call to your aid whomsoever you please." In the seventeenth chapter, he exclaims, "Praise be to him who in a single night transported his servant from the sacred temple of Mecca to that of Jerusalem!" This was a fine journey, but nothing compared to the one he took that same night from planet to planet. He pretended that it was five hundred years' journey from one to the other, and that he had cleft the moon in twain. His disciples who, after his death, collected in a solemn manner the verses of his Koran, suppressed this celestial journey, for they dreaded raillery and rationalization. After all, they had more delicacy than was needed. They might have trusted to the commentators, who would have found no difficulty in explaining the itinerary Mahomet's friends should have known by experience that the marvelous is the reason of the multitude. The wise contradict in a silence, which the multitude prevents their breaking. But while the itinerary of the planets was suppressed, a few words were retained about the adventure of the moon; one can not forever be on one's guard ›› The Koran is a rhapsody, without connection, without order, and without art. . . . It is a poem or a sort of rhymed prose, consisting of about three thousand verses No poem ever advanced the fortunes of its author so much as the Koran He has the humility to confess that he himself will not enter Paradise because of his own merits, but purely by the will of God. Through this same pure Divine will, he orders that a fifth part of the spoil shall always be reserved for the Prophet April, April, served and morality to flourish. Later, disgraced and poor, he teaches them s He practices them, alike in greatness and in humility. He renders virtue amiable, and has for his disciples the most ancient and wisest people upon the earth Laugh thy girlish laughter; Mahomet is admired for having raised himself from being a camel driver, to be a pontiff, a legislator, and a monarch, for having subdued Arabia, which had never before been subjugated; for having given the first shock to the Roman Empire in the East, and to that of the Persians But I admire him still more for having kept peace in his house amongst his wives. It is not true that he excludes women Then, the moment after, April, that mine ears If I tell thee, sweetest, All my hopes and fears, Laugh thy golden laughter, But, the moment after, He is excused by some on the first of these charges, because, say they, the Arabs had a hundred and twenty-four thousand prophets before him, and there could be no great harm in the appearance of one more. Men, it is added, require to be deceived. But how are we to justify a man who says, "Either believe that I have conversed with the Angel Gabriel, or pay me tribute?" How superior is Confucius-the first of mortals who did not claim to have been favored with divine revelations! He employs neither falsehood nor the sword, but only reason. As viceroy of a great province he causes the laws to be ob He changed the face of part of Europe, one half of Asia, and nearly all of Africa. Nor was his religion unlikely at one time, to subjugate the whole earth. On how trivial a circumstance will revolutions sometimes depend! A blow from a stone, a little harder than that which he received in his first battle, might have changed the destinies of the world.-Voltaire. He who loveth a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, or an effectual comforter.-Isaac Barrow. VERY man will have his own criterion in forming his judgment of others. I depend very much on the effect of affliction. I consider how a man comes out of the furnace; gold will lie for a month in the furnace without losing a grain.-Richard Cecil. If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should not grow old. ―James A. Garfield. HERE is nothing to make one indignant in the mere fact that life is hard, that men should toil and suffer pain. The planetary conditions once for all are such, and we can stand it. But that so many men, by mere accidents of birth and opportunity, should have a life of nothing else but toil and pain and hardness and inferiority imposed upon them, should have no vacation, while others natively no more deserving never get any taste of this campaigning life at all-this is capable of arousing indignation in reflective minds. It may end by seeming shameful to all of us that some of us have nothing but campaigning, and others nothing but unmanly ease. If now-and this is my idea-there were, instead of military conscription, a conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against Nature, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous other goods to the commonwealth would follow. The military ideals of hardihood and discipline would be wrought into the growing fiber of the people; no one would remain blind, as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man's real relations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently sour and hard foundations of his higher life. To coal and iron mines, to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, to dish-washing, clotheswashing, and window-washing, to roadbuilding and tunnel-making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames of skyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, according to their choice to get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas They would have paid their blood-tax, done their own part in the immemorial human warfare against nature, they should tread the earth more proudly, the women would value them more highly, they would be better fathers and teachers of the following generation. Such a conscription, with the state of public opinion that would have required it, and the many moral fruits it would bear, would preserve in the midst of a pacific civilization the manly virtues which the military party is so afraid of seeing disappear in peace. We should get toughness without callousness, authority with as little criminal cruelty as possible, and painful work done cheerily because the duty is temporary, and threatens not as now, to degrade the whole remainder of one's life.-William James. ORD, let me never tag a moral to a tale, nor tell a without a meaning. Make me respect my material so much that I dare not slight my work. Help me to deal very honestly with words and with people, for they are both alive. Show me that as in a river, so in a writing, clearness is the best quality, and a little that is pure is worth more than much that is mixed. Teach me to see the local color without being blind to the inner light. Give me an ideal that will stand the strain of weaving into human stuff on the loom of the real. Keep me from caring more for books than for folks, for art than for life. Steady me to do the full stint of work as well as I can; and when that is done, stop me; pay what wages Thou wilt, and help me to say, from a quiet heart, a grateful Amen.-Henry van Dyke. HE new church will be founded on moral science. Poets, artists, musicians, philosophers, will be its prophetteachers. The noblest literature of the world will be its Bible-love and labor its holy sacraments—and instead of worshiping one savior, we will gladly build an altar in the heart for every one who has suffered for humanity.-Emerson. You can not believe in honor until you have achieved it. Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world. -George Bernard Shaw. Men, even when alone, lighten their labor by song, however rude it may be. -Quintilian. was ambitious to see and learn all that a painter ought to know. My Cherbourg masters had not spoilt me in this respect during my apprenticeship. Paris seemed to me the center of knowledge, and a museum of all great works. I started with my heart very full, and all that I saw on the road and in Paris itself made me still sadder. The wide straight roads, the long lines of trees, the flat plains, the rich grass-pastures filled with cattle, seemed to me more like stage decorations than actual nature. And then Paris-black, muddy, smoky Paris-made the most painful and discouraging impression upon me. It was on a snowy Saturday evening in January that I arrived there. The light of the street lamps was almost extinguished by the fog. The immense crowd of horses and carriages crossing and pushing each other, the narrow streets, the air and smell of Paris seemed to choke my head and heart, and almost stifled me. I was seized with an uncontrollable fit of sobbing. I tried to get the better of my feelings, but they were too strong for me, and I could only stop my tears by bathing my face with water at a fountain in the street. The sensation of freshness revived my courage. I stopped before a print-seller's window and looked at his pictures, while I munched my last Gruchy apple. The plates which I saw did not please me: there were groups of half-naked grisettes, women bathing and dressing, such as Devéria and Maurin then drew, and, in my eyes, seemed only fit for milliners' and perfumer's advertisements. Paris appeared to me dismal and insipid. I went to an hotel garni, where I spent my first night in one continual nightmare. I saw again my native village, and our house, looking very sad and lonely. I saw my grandmother, mother and sister, sitting there spinning, weeping, and thinking of me, and praying that I might escape from the perdition of Paris. Then the old demon appeared again, and showed me a vision of magnificent pictures so beautiful and dazzling that they seemed to glow with heavenly splendor, and finally melt away in a celestial cloud. But my awakening was more earthly. My room was a dark and suffocating hole. I got up and rushed out into the air. The light had come back and with it my calmness and force of will. -Millet's First Visit to Paris. LIFE without love in it is like a heap of ashes upon a deserted hearth -with the fire dead, the laughter stilled, and the light extinguished. It is like a winter landscape-with the sun hidden, the flowers frozen, and the wind whispering through the withered leaves God knows we need all the unselfish love that can come to us. For love is seldom unselfish. There is usually the motive and the price. Do you remember William Morris, and how his life was lived, his fortune spent, his hands busied—in the service of others? He was the father of the settlement movement, of co-operative homes for working people, and of the arts and crafts revival, in our day. He was a soldier of the common good." After he was gone-his life began to grow in radiance and power, like a beacon set high upon a dangerous shore. In the twilight of his days he wrote what I like to think was his creed-and mine: "I'm going your way, so let us go hand in hand. You help me and I 'll help you. We shall not be here very long, for soon death, the kind old nurse, will come back and rock us all to sleep. Let us help one another while we may."-Frank P. Tebbetts. The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed.-Lloyd Jones. |