THE FIRESIDE.-THE PENNY POST BOX.

Mrs. B., who by this time was very much impressed that "godliness with contentment" was truly "great_gain," said, "Well, Aunt Peggy, I will send for you this afternoon. We have a nice little room fitted up, and your wants shall be supplied as long as you live."

Clasping her hands together, she fell down upon her knees, and with tears of joy streaming down her poor old black cheeks, she praised the Lord; then, quieting down, said, "Dar, now! didn't I tell you I takes it all freely? S'pose Aunt Peggy hadn't been in such a fix, whar'd Miss Mary got sich a chance to put another star in her crown? En' I knows its gwyin to be sot full on 'em, 'kase you was always good to us.',

The Fireside.

THE ART OF LIVING TOGETHER.

1. IF people are to live happily together they must not fancy, because they are thrown together now, that all their lives have been exactly similar up to the present time, that they started exactly alike, and that they are to be for the future exactly of the same mind.

2. Avoid having stock subjects of disputation.

3. Do not hold too much to logic, and suppose that everything is to be settled by sufficient reason.

4. If you would be loved as a companion, avoid unnecessary criticism upon those with whom you live.

5. Let not familiarity swallow up all courtesy.

6. We must not expect more from the society of our friends and companions than it can give; and especially must never expect contrary things.

The Penny Post Box.

HAPPY EVERY DAY.

SIDNEY SMITH cut the following from a newspaper and preserved it for himself:

"When you rise in the morning, form the resolution to make the day a happy one to a fellow creature. It is easily done. A left-off garment to the man who needs it; a kind word to the sorrowful; an encouraging expression to the striving-trifles in themselves as light as air-will do at least for the twenty-four hours. And if you are old, rest assured it will send you gently and happily down the stream of time to eternity. By the most simple arithmetical sum, look at the result. If you send one person only happily through the day, that is three hundred and sixty-five in the course of a year. And suppose you live forty years only after you commence that course of medicine, you have made 14,600 persons happy at all events for a time."

FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY.

Facts, Hints, Gems, and Poetry.

The deepest mining shaft in the As it is the characteristic of great world is located near Charleroi, in wits to say much in few words, so it is Belgium, and is 2,820 feet deep. The of small wits to talk much and say deepest coal shaft in England is 2,625 nothing.-Rochefoucault. feet deep, and the deepest shaft in the Cornwall tin mines is 2,160 feet. In the Hartz mountains there are several shafts which are more than 2,400 feet in depth.

Eight hundred thousand acres of Indian soil are now under jute cultivation, producing nearly 8,000,000 maunds of fiber, which ultimately takes the form of 32,767,930 gunny bags, and an enormous quantity of matting, twine, and paper.

Altogether there are twenty-five cotton mills in India in full operation, working 600,000 spindles, and 7,000 looms.

Since 1800, England has waged fortynine wars, France thirty-eight, Russia twenty-two, Austria twelve, Prussia eight.

Hints.

What an argument in favour of social connections is the observation that, by communicating our grief we have less, and by communicating our pleasure we have more. Greville.

If thou hast Christ in thy heart, a cross on thy shoulder, a world under thy feet, and heaven in thy eye, thou art the happy man.

The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humour, and the fourth wit.

Look at your mercies with both eyes; at your troubles and trials with only

one.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity. Attempts to do too much are as bad as no attempt at all.

Curiosity is the parent of attention. -Archbishop Whately.

Thought is invisible nature,-nature is visible thought.-Heine.

Hurry and cunning are the two apprentices of dispatch and skill; but neither of them ever learn their master's trade.-Colton.

We hate some persons because we do not know them, and we will not know them because we hate them.

If we do not flatter ourselves the flattery of others will not hurt us.— Rochefocault.

Not every one who has the gift of speech understands the value of silence. That man lacks something who has not known trouble.

Make friends with the bear, but keep hold of your hatchet.

Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.

Poetic Selections.

MY CROSS.

Ir is not heavy agonizing woe
Bearing me down with hopeless, crushing
weight;
No ray of darkness in the gathering gloom,

A heart bereaved, a household desolate.
It is not sickness, with her withering hand,
Keeping me low upon a couch of pain,
Longing each morning for the weary night,
At night for weary day to come again.
It is not poverty, with chilling blast,

The sunken eye, the hunger-wasted form,
The dear ones perishing for lack of bread,

With no safe shelter from the winter's
storm.

It is not slander with her evil tongue;
"Tis no "presumptuous sin" against my
God;

Not reputation lost, or friends betrayed;
That such is not my cross, I thank Thee,
Lord!

Mine is a daily cross of petty cares,

Of little duties pressing on my heart,
Of little troubles hard to reconcile,

Of inward struggles overcome in part.
My feet are weary in their daily rounds,
My heart is weary of its daily care,
My sinful nature often doth rebel:
I pray for grace my daily cross to bear.

POETIC SELECTIONS.-THE CHILDRENS' CORNER.

It is not heavy, Lord, yet oft I pine;

It is not heavy, but 'tis ever here; By day and night, each hour my cross I bear:

I dare not lay it down-Thou placed it

there.

I dare not lay it down. I only ask

That, taking up my daily cross, I may Follow my Master humbly, step by step, Through clouds and darkness unto perfect day.

THE KINSHIP OF LOVE.

THERE are a thousand eyes that never see
The ripple of the long grass on the lea,
Nor the bright, blushing sunset; nor, more
fair,

The crescent queen that silvers all the air.
There are a thousand ears that never hear
The list of poplars when the wind is near,
Nor the sweet cadence of the tinkling
stream,

Nor the full choirs that wake with morn-
ing's beam.

They live, if life be life that is but breath,
Where only their own living is not death.
There are a thousand eyes that never see
The shrunken cheek of pale-eyed poverty,
Nor the wan fever of a famished frame,
Nor the dense air with pestilence aflame.
There are a thousand ears that never hear
The ceaseless dripping of the mourner's
tear,

The wail that rises o'er the dearest dead,
Nor, sadder still, the children's cry for bread.
They live where all is beautiful and bright,
Like flowers that blossom in a land of light.

SHALL Christ my Saviour be forgot,
Or seldom brought to mind?
Shall all His loving-kindness shown
To oblivion be consigned?

When for my sake He left His throne,
And laid His glory by,

Came down to earth in human form
To suffer, bleed, and die;

When He, with His own precious blood,
Wash'd all my guilt away,

Shall I of Him unmindful be,
Ingratitude repay?

When He has suffer'd in my stead,
And cancell'd all my debt,
Shall I, for aught this world affords,
My Saviour e'er forget?

No: never shall He be forgot
While life's prolong'd to me,
Till I behold Him face to face
He shall remember'd be.

Then when before His throne I stand,
Salvation's song I'll sing;

And evermore love and adore
My Saviour and my King.

The Childrens' Corner.

WHAT IS THE TONGUE FOR?

-J. Dore.

"SINCE God made the tongue, and He never makes anything in vain, we may be sure He made it for some good purpose. What is it, then?" asked a teacher one day of her class.

"He made it that we may pray with it," answered one boy.

"To sing with," said another.

"To talk to people with," said a third.

"To recite our lessons with," replied another.

"Yes; and I will tell you what He did not make it for. He did not make it for us to scold with, to lie with, or to swear with. He did not mean that we should say unkind, or foolish, indecent, or impatient words with it. Now, boys, think every time you use your tongue if you are using them in the way God means you to. Do good with your tongues, and not evil. It is one of the most useful members in the whole body, although it is so small. Please God with it every day."

ALL THE DAYS.

THERE is, perhaps, no passage in the New Testament which will better repay that minute study which inquires for every hidden, possible sense of every word, than the last verse of the Gospel of Matthew; more especially that promise with which it closes. And there is no word of those there aggregated, which is richer in the unfolding of its power and beauty, if you go out of the English into the Greek, than the last word but eight: "Alway."

As it stands in our translation, it is very good. There is a sturdy strength of assertion about it which is full of comfort to the believer; who realizes how much there is to be done, and for how much of that much he himself may be rightly held accountable; who realizes his own feebleness, inaptness and inefficiency. To know that Christ will alway be with him to help him—" alway" in its literal sense of, "in all ways"—this may make him feel that, as a matter of reason and philosophy, there can be no denying that he has the promise of such, and so much, aid as to take away all excuse for faint-heartedness and inaction.

But the Greek lifts the thought out of the domain of the reason into that of the affections. The Greek is-pasas tas hemeras,— all the days. "Lo, I am with you all the days, until the end shall come. This, we say, wonderfully freshens and brightens the promise, because it brings it, in a sense, out of the cold vagueness of the abstract into the vivid intensity of the concrete; and so makes that blessed comforting presence seem nearer and sweeter, and its succour stronger and more available.

Jesus says to us, if we are His children indeed in truth and spirit, I am not I will be; not "you may have no fear lest, if any need should urgently call, I will very soon be there with every needed succour and sustenance,"—but, I am with you. And I am with you all the days, until the end predestined, the thorough emancipation of the world from sin, and its complete subdual to its risen and redeeming Lord,-shall come.

There are merry days and sad days; there are anxious days and serene days; there are days of feasting and days of fasting; days when heaven seems very near and its good motives are quick and living in the soul, and days when the mind is sluggish and the will is weak, and the affections are torpid and everything is out of gear, and heaven seems impossibly far off; there days of encouragement over success, and days of chagrin and self-accusation over defeat; days of temptation and days of glorious exultation; days of sickness and days of health; days of poverty and

BARBERS AND SURGEONS.

days of wealth; days of wedding and days of dying; but what matters it to us what kind of days the days are so long as Jesus is with us all the days; and keeps to us, as forevermore He will keep, -the gracious and sufficient promise; "As thy days, so shall thy strength be."

"As thy day thy strength shall be!"
This should be enough for thee;
He who knows thy frame will spare
Burdens more than thou canst bear.

When thy days are veiled in night,
Christ shall give thee heavenly light;
Seem they wearisome and long,
Yet in Him thou shalt be strong.

Cold and wintry though they prove,
Thine the sunshine of His love;
Or with fervid heat opprest,
In His shadow thou shalt rest.

BARBERS AND SURGEONS.

It must be recollected that in early times there was plenty of need of the surgeon's art, and comparatively little for that of the physician. Taking into account the big wars, crusades, rebellions, the free exercise of the "right of private war" by persons of noble birth, and ordinary brawls and squabbles, it seems to have been long odds on cold steel against all other ailment whatsoever, and there was little fear of a gentleman's life being protracted to the prejudice of his heirs by a correct observance of hygiene. The chances were all in favour of being knocked on the head at a comparatively early age; but it is well known that in the hand to hand conflicts, with sword and buckler, for instance, many more were hurt than killed. The wounded sought either the monks or the Jews, who employed as their assistants the barbers of the period, an alliance whence arose the famous Company of Barber-Surgeons. How closely the two callings were at one time knit together, is shown by the sign which surgeons have abandoned altogether, which English barbers nowadays rarely hang out. The well-known pole is an imitation of one formerly held in the hands of patients during the operation of phlebotomy-now abolished altogether,and the stripes represent the tap or bandages used for fastening the arm; both pole and tap being in older times hung up outside the shop as soon as done with, to announce that there was a vacancy for a patient wishing to be "blooded." The foundation