S far back as we know anything about civilization, the cultivation of the soil has been the first and most im portant industry in any thriving State. It will always be. Herodotus, the father of history, tells the story of the human race in the Valley of the Euphrates He says that with poor cultivation those who tilled the soil there got a yield of fiftyfold, with fair cultivation one hundredfold, and with good cultivation two hundredfold. That was the garden of the world in its day. Its great cities, Babylon and Nineveh, where are they? Piles of desert sand mark where they stood. In place of the millions that overran the world, there are a few wandering Arabs feeding half-starved sheep and goats. The Promised Land-the Land of Canaan itself-to which the Children of Israel were brought up from Egypt, what is it now? A land overflowing with milk and honey? Today it has neither milk nor honey. It is a barren waste of desert, peopled by scattered robber bands. A provision of Providence fertilized the soil of the valley of the Nile by overflowing it every year. From the earliest records that history gives, Egypt has been a land of remarkable crops; and today the land thus fertilized by overflow is yielding more abundantly than ever. It is made clear by every process of logic and by the proof of historic fact that the wealth of a nation, the character of its people, the quality and permanence of its institutions are all dependent upon sound and sufficient agricultural foundation. Not armies or navies or commerce or diversity of manufacture or anything other than the farm is the anchor which will hold through the storms of time that sweep all else away.-James J. Hill. S man advanced gradually in intellectual power, and was enabled to trace the more remote consequences of his actions; as he acquired sufficient knowledge to reject baneful customs and superstitions; as he regarded more and more, not only the welfare, but the hap H! Unseen Power that rules and controls the destinies of the children of earth: teach me the symphony of life so that my nature may be in tune with Thine. Reveal to me the joy of being loving, self-sacrificing and charitable. Teach me to know and play life's game with courage, fortitude and confidence. Endow me with wisdom to guard my tongue and temper, and learn with patience the art of ruling my own life for its highest good, with due regard for the privacy, rights and limitations of other lives Help me to strive for the highest legitimate reward of merit, ambition, and opportunity in my activities, ever ready to extend a kindly helping hand to those who need encouragement and succor in the struggle. Enable me to give a smile instead of a frown, a cheerful, kindly word instead of harshness and bitterness. Make me sympathetic in sorrow, realizing that there are hidden woes in every life no matter how exalted or lowly. If in life's battle I am wounded or tottering, pour into my wounds the balm of hope, and imbue me with courage undaunted to arise and continue the strife. Keep me humble in every relation of life, not unduly egotistical, nor liable to the serious sin of self-depreciation. In success keep me meek. In sorrow, may my soul be uplifted by the thought that if there were no shadow, there would be no sunshine, and that everything in life must have its antithesis. happy in the receipt of an increased income. Manufacturers, merchants, contractors for military stores, will hurry joyously about their business, in the hope of double receipts. All sorts of Government officials will buzz about, foreseeing a possibility of purloining something more than usual. The military authorities will hurry hither and thither, drawing double pay and rations, and with the expectation of receiving for the slaughter of other men various silly little ornaments which they so highly prize, as ribbons, crosses, orders, and stars. Idle ladies and gentlemen will make a great fuss, entering their names in advance for the Red Cross Society, and ready to bind up the wounds of those whom their husbands and brothers will mutilate; and they will imagine that in so doing they are performing a most Christian work And, smothering despair within their souls by songs, licentiousness, and becomes so great that there are not hands enough left to pick them up, and when the air is so infected with the putrefying scent of the "food for powder" that even the authorities find it disagreeable, a truce will be made, the wounded will be pickedupanyhow,thesick will be brought in and huddled together in heaps, the killed will be covered with earth and lime, and once more the crowd of deluded men will be led on and on till those who have devised the project, weary of it, or till those who thought to find it profitable receive their spoil. And so once more men will be made savage, fierce and brutal, and love will wane in the world, and the Christianizing of mankind, which has already begun, will lapse for scores and for hundreds of years And so the men who reaped profit from it all will assert that since there has been awar there must needs have been one, and that other wars must follow, and they will again prepare future generations for a continuance of slaughter, depraving them from their birth.-Leo Tolstoy. N a sinless and painless world the moral element would be lacking; the goodness would have no more significance in our conscious life than that load of atmosphere which we are always carrying about with us. moral value or significance of a race of human beings ignorant of sin, and doing beneficent acts with no more consciousness or volition than the deftly contrived machine that picks up raw material at one end, and turns out some finished product at the other? Clearly, for strong and resolute men and women, an Eden would be at best but a fool's A silence there expectant, meaning, A thousand hearers, forward-leaning, We are thus brought to a striking conclusion, the essential soundness of which can not be gainsaid. In a happy world there must be pain and sorrow, and in a moral world the knowledge of evil is indispensable. The stern necessity of this has been proved to inhere in the innermost constitution of the human soul. It is part and parcel of the universe him who is disposed to cavil at the world which To He saw the graves of heroes sleeping, He saw men's eyes suffused and dim; A triumph great, a nation weeping, Found true expression there in him. Not often in a nation's story, Such words supreme, such manhood He gave that day our grief and glory God has in such wise created, we may fairly put the question whether the prospect of escape from its ills would ever induce him to put off this human consciousness, and accept some form of existence unknown and inconceivable! The alternative is clear: on the one hand a world with sin and suffering, on the other hand an unthinkable world in which conscious life does not involve contrast. We do not find that evil has been interpolated into the universe from without; we find that, on the contrary, it is an indispensable part of the dramatic whole. God is the creator of evil, and from the eternal scheme of things diabolism is forever excluded. Ormuzd and Ahriman have had their day and perished, along with the doctrine of special creation and other fancies of the untutored mind. From our present standpoint we may fairly ask, what would have been the worth of that primitive innocence portrayed in the myth of the Garden of Eden, had it ever been realized in the life of men? What would have been the paradise. Fiske. O-NOTHING days may be the busiest ones They are the days in which we absorb; while on the do-much days we try to make others absorb from us whatever we have in overplus: ribbons, wisdom or cheese. If we oftener eased the strain on our eyes and minds, we should be enriched by im pressions that in our usual attent and mastering attitude we refuse to heed. Americans ought to have a wholesome laziness preached to them, after three centuries of urging to gain and work, and several patriotic citizens make examples of themselves, for the public benefit, by refraining from toil. -Charles M. Skinner. Brief, so brief-the words were falling No EN will have, and must have, their pleasures. Social reformers and temperance agitators could not make a greater mistake than by following the example of the Puritans and tabuing all pleasures. They ought to distinguish between those that have a tendency to excess and vice, and those that are harmless and ennobling, encouraging the latter in every possible way. And first among those that should be encouraged is music, because it is always ennobling, and can be enjoyed simultaneously by the greatest number. Its effect is well described in Margaret Fuller's private journal: "I felt raised above. all care, all pain, all fear, and every taint of vulgarity was washed out of the world." That is precisely wherein the moral power of music lies; for vulgarity is the twin sister of vice. impulse this, no actor speaking Of thoughts which came by happy chance; The man, the place, were God's own seeking; The words are our inheritance. A pause, a hush, a wonder growing; self. Lift my eyes from the earth, and let me not forget the uses of the stars. Forbid that I should judge others, lest I condemn myself. Let me not follow the clamor of the world, but walk calmly in my path. Give me a few friends who will love me for what I am; and keep ever burning before my vagrant steps the kindly light of hope. And though age and infirmity overtake me, and I come not within sight of the castle of my dreams, teach me still to be thankful for life, and for time's olden memories that are good and sweet; and may the evening's twilight find me gentle still. -Max Ehrmann. R EADING is to the mind what exercise is to the body. As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated: by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished and confirmed.-Addison. by Harrison D. Mason O Art has become foolishly confounded with education that all should be equally qualified Whereas, while polish, refinement, culture and breeding are in no way arguments for artistic results, it is also no reproach to the most finished scholar or greatest gentleman in the land that he be absolutely without eye for painting or ear for music-that in his heart he prefer the popular print to the scratch of Rembrandt's needle, or the songs of the hall to Beethoven's C minor symphony. Let him have but the wit to say so, and not feel the admission a proof of inferiority. Art happens-no hovel is safe from it, no Prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence can not bring it about, and puny efforts to make it universal end in quaint comedy, and coarse farce. This is as it should be and all attempts to make it otherwise are due to the eloquence of the ignorant, the zeal of the conceited.-Whistler. T is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another. The moment that we have something to say to each other, we are compelled to hold our peace: and if at such times we do not listen to the urgent commands of silence, invisible though they be, we shall have suffered an eternal loss that all the treasures of human wisdom can not make good; for we shall have let slip the opportunity of listening to another soul, and of giving existence, be it only for an instant, to our own. And again, I doubt whether anything in the world can beautify a soul more spontaneously, more naturally, than the knowledge that somewhere in its neighborhood exists a pure and noble being whom it can unreservedly love. When the soul has veritably drawn near to such a being, beauty is no longer a lovely, lifeless thing that one exhibits to the stranger, for it suddenly takes unto itself an imperious existence, and its activity becomes so natural as to be henceforth irresistible. --Maeterlinck. IT is the prime secret of the Open Road that you are to pass nothing, reject nothing, despise nothing upon this earth. As you travel, many things both great and small will come to your attention; you are to regard all with open eyes and a heart of simplicity. Believe that everything belongs somewhere; each thing has its fitting and luminous place within this mosaic of human life. The Road is not open to those who withdraw the skirts of intolerance or lift the chin of pride. Rejecting the least of those who are called common or unclean, it is (curiously) you yourself that you rejects If you despise that which is ugly you do not know that which is beautiful. -David Grayson. N its heart the world cares for little but play; but in its life it does hardly anything but work, for the world has forgotten that the reason of its work isplay. The natural man works that he may play-works that he may love and dream, and know while he may the wonders and joys of the strange and lovely world which for a short space he is allowed to inhabit; the unnatural man plays that he may work. So unnatural indeed have we become that not only have we forgotten our dreams, but we have actually grown ashamed of them. Proverbially there is nothing of which an Englishman is so much ashamed as his emotions. To suspect him of sentiment is to imply insult, to surprise him in tears is to commit a mortal offense. Laughter he still retains, but too often for the unworthy purpose of laughing at other people's emotions, and ridiculing beautiful things he no longer understands. England indeed is the Siberia of emotions. Let us all escape from Siberia. -Richard Le Gallienne. HE law should be loved a little because it is felt to be just; feared a little because it is severe; hated a little because it is to a certain degree out of sympathy with the prevalent temper of the day; and respected because it is felt to be a necessity.-Emile Fourget. |