POETRY.

many years, with God's increasing blessing, circulated to the uttermost parts of the earth. And why? Because the enemy knew well that so long as the Bible survives the church will live. The enemy knew well that so long as the Scriptures remain, full as they are from Genesis to Revelation of Jesus Christ and Him crucified, the church will over and over again reassert her existence.-Bishop of Carlyle.

Poetry.

THE LIGHT AT HOME.

THE light at home, how bright it beams
When evening shades around us fall;
And from the lattice far it gleams,

To love, and rest, and comfort all;
When wearied with the toils of day,
And strife for glory, gold, or fame,
How sweet to seek the quiet way,
Where loving lips will lisp our name
Around the light at home!

When through the dark and stormy night
The wayward wanderer homeward flies,
How cheering is that twinkling light

Which through the forest gloom he spies!

It is the light of home. He feels

That loving hearts will greet him there,
And safely through his bosom steals
The joy and love that banish care
Around the light at home.

The light at home-how still and sweet
It peeps from yonder cottage door
The weary labourer to greet,

When the rough toils of day are o'er!
Sad is the soul that does not know

The blessings that its beams impart,
The cheerful hopes and joys that flow,
And lighten up the heaviest heart
Around the light at home.

ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS.

Anecdotes and Selections.

THE OLD JUDGE.-An American judge whom we know had a son who went into the army at the time of the civil war. The old man was led by the fact to take a warm interest in schemes for the welfare of the soldiers; but by and by he thought this interfered too much with his business, and he resolved to give it up. The first day he sought to put this determination in force a poor, broken-down soldier entered his office, but he waved him away, saying he had no time to attend to him. The soldier fumbled in his pocket for a letter, which he quietly laid on the judge's desk. The old man's eye lit on the address, and seeing it to be in the handwriting of his absent son, he snatched it up and read. The letter told how the bearer had been his friend on the field of battle; how he was wounded and going home. "If he calls, treat him kindly for Charley's sake." The old judge was completely broken down. He rose from his desk, carried the soldier to his home, and kept and nursed him there, and when he was better, saw him off by the train for his own home. All this he did for "Charley's sake.” Now, let us always pray God to save souls for Jesus' sake.

-D. L. Moody.

CHRIST AND HIS PEOPLE.-It is between Christ and His Church as it is between two lute-strings that are tuned one to another: no sooner is one struck but the other trembles. "In all their afflictions He was afflicted"-Isaiah xliii. 9. Christ took to heart the afflictions of His church; He was grieved for them, and with them. The Lord, the better to allure and draw His people to Himself, speaks after the manner of men, attributing to Himself all the affection, love, and fatherly compassion that can possibly be in them to men in misery. Christ did so sympathize with His people in all their afflictions and sufferings, as if He Himself had felt the weight, the smart, and pain of them all. "He was in all things made like unto His brethren," not only in nature, but also in infirmities and sufferings, and by all manner of temptations, that thereby He might be able experimentally to succour them that are tempted.-Brooks.

THE ARAB'S PROOF.-Some year's ago a Frenchman who, like many of his countrymen, had won a high rank among men of science, yet who denied the God who is the Author of all science, was crossing the great Sahara in company with an Arab guide. He noticed, with a sneer, that at certain times his guide, whatever obstacles might arise, put them all aside, and kneeling on the burning sands, called on his God. Day after day passed, and still the Arab never failed, till at last one evening the philosopher, when he rose from his knees, asked him, with a contemptuous smile: "How do you know there is a God?" The guide fixed his eyes on the scoffer, for a moment, in wonder, and then said, solemnly, "How do I know there is a God? How do I know that a man, and not a camel, passed my hut last night in the darkness? Was it not by the print of his foot in the sand? Even so," and he

· ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS.

pointed to the sun, whose last rays were flashing over the lone desert, "that footprint is not that of a man.'

A LECTURE ON SCOLDING.-Scolding is mostly a habit. There is not much meaning to it. It is often the result of nervousness and an irritable condition of both mind and body. A person is tired or annoyed at some trivial cause, and forthwith commences finding fault with everything and everybody in reach. Scolding is a habit very easily formed. It is astonishing how soon one who indulges in it at all becomes addicted to it and confirmed in it. It is an unreasoning and unreasonable habit. Persons who once get in the way of scolding, always find something to scold about. If there is nothing else, they fall to scolding at the mere absence of anything to scold at. It is an extremely disagreeable habit. It is contagious. Once introduced into a family, it is pretty certain, in a short time, to affect all the members. People in the country more readily fall into the habit of scolding than people in town. Women contract the habit more frequently than men. This may be because they live more constantly in the house, in a confined and heated atmosphere, very trying to the nervous system and the health in general; and it may be, partly, that their natures are more susceptible and their sensitiveness more easily wounded. The proper remedy for the habit, if formed, is to experience an endowment of that divine love shed abroad in the renewed heart by the Holy Ghost, the characteristics of which are that it "is not easily provoked," "thinketh no evil," and "beareth all things.”

MIMICKING A PREACHER.-In the days of Whitefield, when hundreds were converted by his preaching, "lewd men of the baser sort" loved to indulge in ridicule of religion, making sport of the earnest preacher. A merry band of carousers gathered, one evening, in an inn in Yorkshire, and cracked many a joke over their cups. At length one of them, to add to the merriment, proposed to take off Whitefield's preaching. He was a famous mimic, and could produce to perfection the gestures and tones, and even the words, of the preacher. A Bible was brought, he mounted the table for a pulpit, and turned the leaves of the holy book for a text. His eyes fell on the words, "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." The company laughed and applauded his wonderful imitation of the tones and manner of the great preacher; but soon their laughter ceased. They looked up in surprise and terror, for the speaker seemed terribly in earnest. His words were solemn, and took hold of their consciences, and his appeals startled their fears. A profound silence spread over the bar-room. The Spirit of God was too strong for the mimic, John Thorp. The mock sermon was the means of his conversion, and he went away from the scene of merriment to begin a new life.

CHRIST'S GENTLENESS.-One of the sweetest things in the life of our Saviour is the gentleness of His manners. The ordinary anxieties of daily living which we allow to fret us so, had no power to ruffle Him. If He told people to "be not anxious over the morrow," He also obeyed the injunction Himself. With Him, "sufficient for the day is

ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS.

the evil of it." The present burden is always enough for us. God knows this, and forbids us to enlarge it by forestalling what is to come. Meet your troubles as your Master met His, fellow disciples, one by one, and sweetly. It is enough, remember, for the servant to be like his Master, and the disciple as His Lord.

ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS.-Ladies who deck their hair with mimic bloom, have, in general, little idea of the way in which those false flowers grew. They wear them light-heartedly in the gayest scenes, and think not that they are transplanted from the saddest. They put forth their leaves and delicate hues in stifling garrets, in fetid back kitchens, or in hot, over-crowded factories, where the health of those who made them was withering away, where the gas-burners are often without glass or shade, and gas-stoves are set on the tables to heat the tools, while a hundred women and girls, from nine years and upwards, bend over their hot-house plants. Some hold the hand stamp which cuts through sixteen folds at a time of the muslin or silk that is to make the leaves or flowers. Others vein the leaves by pressing them between dies, or paint the petals separately with a brush when the centre is to be left white. Most of them are busy with the finer work of constructing the flowers. They gum and wax, dust for bloom with potato flower, or with blown glass powder for frost; they twist paper or silk thread to the stalk, and make the foundation on which the petals may stick. Slender wires are run through the blossoms, and a small goffering iron gives them the curl. All this is straining and fidgety work, especially by gaslight, with blistered fingers, thumb nails worn to the quick, and the dust of paints and other materials inflaming the eyes and preparing patients for the Ophthalmic Hospital. The bright blues and carmines try the sight sadly, and the latter causes heaviness in the head. Arsenic green and verdigris blue are now seldom used; but enough is left to poison the poor "flower girls" existence. She works in London fourteen or fifteen hours' a day, and sometimes longer. After thirteen hours work girls often take home sufficient for two hours more.

AN ANCIENT CUSTOM.-It was customary in the old Babylonian empire, in making statues of metal or stone, to inlay the eyes of the figures with gems or agates cut so as to resemble the shape and colour of the eye. Around these eyes inscriptions were sometimes written. Mr. Smith discovered such a statue at Nineveh dedicated to a deity. The reign of the monarch who erected it began about 1370 B.C. Another statue that Mr. Smith discovered had an inscription on the pupil of the eye, though in this case we are not told that the eye was a gem. Mr. Smith obtained a cast of this inscription. The statue had been dedicated to a deity, and was offered in the sixth century B.C. by Nebuchadnezzer, the same king who is mentioned in the biblical book of Daniel.

NERVOUSNESS IN SPEAKING.—Mr. Rufus Choate's biographer says of him: "Although so familiar with the courts, and always master of himself, he was often filled with a nervous agitation when approaching the argument, sometimes saying that he 'should certainly break down;

THE FIRESIDE.-THE PENNY POST BOX.

every man must fall at some time, and his hour had come.' However deeply absorbed in the case before him, he seemed to see everything that was going on in the court-room. As he was once addressing a jury, a woman in a distant part of the court-room rose and went out with some rustling of silk. Being asked afterward if he noticed it, 'Noticed it!' he said, 'I thought forty battalions were moving."

The Fireside.

BADLY TRAINED HUSBANDS.

How many unhappy girls have paid dearly for the early upbringing of their young husbands, who, the first glamour of love passed, treat their wives as they were allowed to treat their sisters, and as they saw their fathers treat their mothers, carelessly, disrespectfully, with a total want of that considerate tenderness which is worth all the passionate love in the world. This, though they may pass muster outside as excellent husbands, never doing anything really bad, and possessing many good and attractive qualities, yet contriving somehow quietly to break the poor womanly heart, or harden it into that passive acceptance of pain which is more fatal to married happiness than even temporary estrangement. Anger itself is a safer thing than stolid, hopeless indifference.

The best husbands I ever met came out of a family where the mother, a most heroic and self-denying woman, laid down the absolute law, "Girls first." Not in any authority; but first to be thought of, as to protection and tenderness. Consequently, the chivalrous care which these lads were taught to show to their own sisters, naturally extended itself to all women. They grew up true gentlemen-gentle men-generous, unexacting, courteous of speech and kind of heart. In them was the protecting strength of manhood, which scorns to use its strength except for protection; the proud honesty of manhood, which infinitely prefers being lovingly and openly resisted, to being แ twisted around one's finger," as mean men are twisted, and mean women will always be found ready to do it; but which, I think, all honest men and brave women would not merely dislike, but utterly despise.-Mrs. Craik.

The Penny Post Box.

LOW SPIRITS.

THE grand constituents of health and happiness, the cardinal points upon which everything turns, are exercise for the body, and occupation for the mind. Motion seems to be a great preserving principle of nature, to which even inanimate things are subject, for the wind, waves, the earth itself, are restless, and the waving of trees, shrubs and flowers, are known to be an essential part of their economy. A