THE PENNY POST BOX.-FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY.

brightened up considerably, "I don't mind telling you, ma'am, for I don't think it will go any further-though horders is horders-they can't prevent me from a-kissing' of his little toes."-N. Y. Graphic.

The Penny Post Box.

CARE FOR THE AGED.

Do the young people ever think that they will be old; that they will soon feel that the grasshopper is a burden, and fear is in the way? Only a few short years ago that aged man and feeble woman were young, strong, and full of life; their loving hearts were gushing with tenderness and care for the little ones who now stand in their places. Do not jostle that aged couple out of your pathway, but rather lift them with tender care over the rough, declining road. You may have forgotten how carefully they kept your tender feet from stumbling, and with what care they watched your advancing steps. But they have not forgotten, and the time will come when you will be forcibly reminded of it by the love you have for your own little one. Will they hand you the same bitter cup to drink that you pour out for that aged father and stricken mother? Verily, "with what measure you mete it shall be measured to you again." Think of the anxious days and nights your mother has watched by your sick bed; remember her loving care, her patience and long-suffering with your fretfulness, and then let the blush of shame dye your brow that you should be impatient or unkind to her now that she is old. Old folks are such a trial! Yes, they know it, and they feel it; and so will you be just such a trial to your children in the days that will surely come; aye, and you will remember, too.

Facts, Hints, Gems, and Poetry.

Facts.

MERCURY.-The only metal that is a fluid at ordinary temperature is mercury, or quicksilver. This fact led the ancient Greeks to give it the name of fluid silver. This metal is sometimes found in veins of rock and earth in globules, but most of it is obtained from an ore named cinnabar. The largest known mines from which mercury is taken are situated in Spain, in the province of La Mancha. These mines were worked a great many years ago. According to Pliny, the ancient Romans took 700,000 lbs. of mercury from these mines each year, yet they

are so large, containing so much, they never have been obliged to dig more than a thousand feet in depth.

BLACK PEPPER.-The common black pepper is a native of the East Indies. It is a climbing plant, sometimes the vines are twelve feet in length. Poles are set out for these vines to run on, but more often trees, as the pepper vines do better when partly shaded. The fruit when ripe is a bright red colour and about as large as a pea. It was known to the ancients. In the middle ages it was a very costly spice; and we are told that in the thirteenth century a few pounds of it were reckoned a princely present.

FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY.

Hints.

CHINESE MAXIMS.

How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound. The greatest part of abstract terms are

The court is like the sea,-every-shadows that hide a vacuum.-Joubert. thing depends upon the wind.

The tree overthrown by the wind has more branches than roots.

Receive your thoughts as guests, and treat your desires like children.

One never needs one's wits so much as when one has to do with a fool.

We must do quickly what there is no hurry for, to be able to do slowly what demands haste.

Who is the man most insupportable

Suffering becomes beautiful when any one bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility, but through greatness of mind.Aristotle.

Poetic Selections.

COMFORT.

to us? He whom we have offended, IF there should come a time, as well there

and whom we can approach with

nothing.

Whoever makes a great fuss about

When sudden tribulation smites thine

may,

heart,

doing good does very little; he who And thou dost come to me for help, and

stay,

And comfort-how shall I perform my part?

wishes to be seen and noticed when he is doing good will not do it long; he who mingles humour and caprice with How shall I make my heart a resting place, it will do it badly; he who only thinks of avoiding faults and reproaches will never acquire virtues.

Gems.

If a man have love in his heart, he may talk in broken language, but it will be eloquence to those who listen.

Half the troubles for which men go slouching in prayer to God are caused by their intolerable pride. Many of our cares are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges. We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.-Beecher.

I must live higher, nearer to the reach

Of angels in their blessed trustfulness, Learn their unselfishness, ere I can teach Content to thee whom I would greatly bless.

The furnace of conviction; the lamp of pardon. The furnace of trial; the lamp of consolation. The furnace of want; the lamp of prosperity. The Ah me! what woe furnace of death; the lamp of glory.

Say not that thou hast royal blood in thy veins, and art born of God, except thou canst prove thy pedigree by daring to be holy in spite of men and

POETIC SELECTIONS.-THE CHILDRENS' CORNER.

"ROCK OF AGES."

"Rock of ages, cleft for me,"

Thoughtlessly the maiden sung.
Fell the words unconsciously
From her girlish, gleeful tongue;
Sang as little children sing;

Sang as sing the birds in June;
Fell the words like bright leaves down

On the current of the tune"Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee."

"Let me hide myself in Thee,"

Felt her soul no need to hide;
Sweet the song as sweet could be,
And she had no thought beside;
All the words unheedingly

Fell from lips untouched by care,
Dreaming not that each might be
On some other lips a prayer;
"Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee."

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me"

"Twas a woman sang them now, Pleadingly and prayfully;

Every word her heart did know; Rose the song as storm-tossed bird Beats with weary wing the air, Every note with sorrow stirred, Every syllable a prayer:

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee."

Rock of Ages, cleft for me"

Lips grown aged sang the hymn
Trustingly and tenderly,

Voice grown weak and eyes grown dim, "Let me hide myself in Thee."

Trembling though the voice and low,
Ran the sweet strain peacefully,
Like a river in its flow.
Sang as only they can sing

Who life's stormy paths have pressed;
Sang as only they can sing

Who behold the promised rest"Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee."

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me,"
Sung above a coffin lid;
Underneath, all restfully,

All life's joys and sorrows hid.
Nevermore, O storm-tossed soul!
Nevermore from wind or tide,
Nevermore, from billow's roll,

Wilt thou need thyself to hide.
Could the sightless, sunken eyes,

Closed beneath the soft gray hair,
Could the mute and stiffened lips

Move again in pleading prayer,
Still, aye, still the words would be,
"Let me hide myself in Thee."

The Childrens' Corner.

TRUE OBEDIENCE.

A CERTAIN man in Prussia, whom they call a pointsman, whose work it was to see that all the switches along the railway were right, found that he had just a moment to turn a switch, so that two trains coming from different directions might not run together on the same track. Just then he saw his little son playing right in the way of the coming engine. There was time enough to run forward and snatch him away; but should he do this, the father knew the trains would run together and that hundreds of lives would be lost. So he cried to his boy, "Lie down!" while he himself ran to make the switch all right.

The child did exactly as he was told, and the great heavy train of cars passed over him; he was between the rails and was unharmed. Suppose he had stopped a moment, or even stood up to ask, “Why must I lie down, father?" he would then have been crushed to death. You see that he was saved only through instant obedience.

peace

ON THE PEACE OF GOD.

We live

THE of God is rare among us. Some say that it is rarer than it was. I know not how that may be; but I see all manner of causes at work around us, which should make it rare. faster than our forefathers. We hurry, we bustle, we travel, we are eager for daily, almost for hourly news from every quarter, as if the world could not get on without us, and we are eager to know a hundred facts which merely satisfy the curiosity of the moment, as if the great God could not take excellent care of us all meanwhile.

We are eager, too, to get money, and get more money still— piercing ourselves through too often, as the apostle warned us, with many sorrows, and falling into foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. We are luxurious, more and more fond of show, more apt to live up to our incomes and probably a little beyond, more and more craving for this or that gewgaw, especially in dress and ornament, which if our neighbour has, we must have too, or we shall be modified, envious. Nay, so strong is this temper of rivalry, of allowing no superiors, grown in us, that we have made now-a-days a god of what used to be considered the basest of all vices-the vice of envy, and dignify it with the names of equality and independence. Men in this temper of mind cannot be at peace.

They are not content; they cannot be content. But with what are they not content? That is a question worth asking. For there is a discontent (as I have told you ere now) which is noble, manful, heroic, and divine. Just as there is a discontent which is base, mean, unmannerly, earthly-sometimes devilish.

There is a discontent, which is certain, sooner or later, to bring with it the peace of God. There is a discontent which drives the peace of God away, forever and a day. And the peacebringing discontent is to be discontented with ourselves, as very And the mean peace-destroying discontent is to be discontented with things around us, as too many are.

few are.

Now, my friends, I cannot see into your hearts; and I ought not to see it. For if I saw, I should be tempted to judge; and if I judged, I should most certainly judge rashly, shallowly, and altogether wrong. Therefore, examine yourselves, and judge yourselves in this matter. Ask yourselves each, Am I at peace? And if not, then apply to yourselves the rule of old Epictetus, the heroic slave, who, heathen though he was, sought God, and the peace of God, and found them, doubt it not, long, long ago. Ask your

HEBREW WOMEN.

selves with Epictetus, Am I discontented with things which are in my own power, or with things which are not in my own power? That is, discontented with myself, or with things which are not myself? Am I discontented with myself, or with things about me, and outside of me?-Canon Kingsley.

HEBREW WOMEN.

WHO does not think of Deborah, prophetess, poetess, and warlike chieftainess, who could awaken the dormant spirit of her people and lead them triumphantly to the battle? "She is," to borrow

the eloquent words of Dean Stanley, "the magnificent impersonation of the spirit of the Jewish people and of Jewish life. On the coins of the Roman empire, Judah is represented as a woman, seated under a palm-tree, captive and weeping. It is the contrast of that figure which will best place before us the character and call of Deborah. It is the same Judæan palm, under whose shadow she sits, not with downcast eyes and folded hands and extinguished hopes, but with all the fire of faith and energy, eager for the battle, confident of the victory. Hers is the one voice of inspiration (in the full sense of the word) that breaks out in the Book of Judges. Hers is the prophetic word that gives an utterance and a sanction to the thoughts of freedom, of independence, and of national unity such as they had never had before in the world, and have rarely had since." The very possibility of the existence of a Deborah speaks trumpet-tongued for the moral and mental worth of Hebrew women.

We may surmise that Deborah's heroic mantle fell, after the lapse of centuries, upon the shoulders of Judith, for in this second avenger of her people's wrongs we find the same patriotic zeal, the same independent action, coupled, it is true, with more questionable attributes. The cruelty to enemies which obscures the lustre of both characters, and which we often find in those hearts whose patriotism beats loudest, was, we must in justice remember, the reflex shadow cast by their intense love of race and country-a sentiment common among all young nations, and which only faded before the more perfect light of civilization. Even in Esther, the gentler and more delicately-drawn queen of Ahasuerus, the Hebrew myrtle, blossoming on an Asiatic court of barbarous pomp, we find patriotism and self-forgetting courage darkened by an act of revenge and cruelty.

Courage and grandeur of character seem to have reached their acme in the story of the noble mother whose story is told in the