POETRY. great many barbers; and, with all the millions of people in China, they have a large business. Besides the shops, many barbers have little moveable stands, containing all their tools; and they may often be seen plying their art by the way-side or at the houses of their customers. The barber has a basin of hot water, a towel, and an awkward kind of razor; and when he has shaven and washed the head and braided the hair of a man he ends up all by patting him with both hands upon the back and shoulders, in a way which, to him, is truly delightful. For all this his charge is not more than six cents, and a poor man would pay still less. To make his queue thicker, sometimes a Chinaman wishes to grow more hair, and the barber will leave his head unshaven for perhaps a quarter of an inch all round the old circle of hair. When the new hair is an inch or two long, being very stiff, it stands up in a fringe-like a kind of black halo-all round his head, looking very comically, and annoying the Chinaman very much until it is long enough to be put into the braid. When a man is at work, he finds his queue very much in his way, and he binds it about his head, or winds it up in a ball behind, where he sometimes fastens it with a small wooden comb; but, in his own country, on all occasions of form and dress, he wears it hanging, and it would not be polite to do otherwise. Poetry. LET US NOT REND IT. SEAMLESS and fair! Let us not rend Thy perfect garment, Lord, Let all be one! One church, one faith, one love, one hope, one joy, This unity divine let none destroy. One temple vast! Builded of living stones by Thine own hand, Knit all together by love's perfect band. THE DEVIL AND BILLY BRAY'S 'TATURS. I WAS goin' to tell the story that I heard from dear Old Billy Bray. He was preachin' about temptations, and this is what he said :— "Friends, last week I was a-diggin' up my 'taturs. It was a poor yield, sure 'nough; there was hardly a sound one in the lot. And while I was a-diggin' the devil come to me, and he says, ‘Billy, do you think your Father do love you?' "I should reckon He do,' I says. "Well, I don't,' says the tempter in a minute. "If I'd thought about it, I shouldn't ha' listened to him, for his 'pinions ben't worth the leastest bit o' notice. "I don't,' says he, 'and I tell 'ee what for; if your Father loved you, Billy Bray, He'd give you as pretty yield o' 'taturs, so much as ever you do want, and evey one of 'em as big as your fist. For it ben't no trouble for your Father to do anything; and He could just as easy give you plenty as not. An' if He loved you, He would, too.' "O' course I wasn't goin' to let him talk o' my Father like that, so I turned round 'pon him; 'Pray, sir,' says I, 'who may you happen to be, comin' to me a talkin' like this here? If I ben't mistaken, I know you, sir, and I know my Father, too. And to think o' your comin' a-sayin' He don't love me! Why, I've got your written ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS. character home to my house, and it do say, sir, that you be a liar from the beginnin'. An' I'm sorry to add, that I used to have a personal acquaintance with you some years since, and I served you faithful as ever any poor wretch could; and all you gave me was nothing but rags to my back, and a wretched home, and an achin' head,-an' no 'taturs, and the fear o' hell fire to finish up with. And here's my dear Father in heaven; I've been a poor servant of His, off and on, for thirty years. And He's given me a clean heart, and a soul full o' joy, and a lovely suit o' white as 'll never wear out; and He says that He'll take me home to His palace to reign with Him for ever and ever. And now you come up here a-talkin' like that! "Bless 'e, my dear friends, he went off in a minute, like as if he'd been shot, I do wish he had, and he never had the manners to say good-morning."-Dan'l Quorm. PRAY ON. It is easy to know the knock of a beggar at one's door. Low, timid, hesitating; it seems to say-"I have no claim on the kindness of this house; I may be told I come too often; I may be treated as a troublesome and unworthy mendicant; the door may be flung in my face by some surly servant." How different, on his return from school, the loud knocking, the bounding step, the joyous rush of the child to his father's presence, and as he climbs on his knee, and flings his arms around his neck, the bold face and ready tongue with which he reminds his father of some promised favour. Now, why are God's people bold? To a Father in God, to an elder brother in Christ, faith conducts our steps in prayer; therefore, in an hour of need, faith, bold of spirit, raises her suppliant hands and cries to God, "Oh that Thou wouldest rend the heavens and come down."-Dr. Guthrie. PRAY WITHOUT CEASING.-To present a petition is one thing; to prosecute a suit is another. Most prayers answer to the former. But successful prayer corresponds to the latter. God's people frequently lodge their petition in the court of heaven, and there they let it lie. They do not press their suit. They do not employ other means of furthering it beyond the presenting of it. The whole of prayer does not consist in taking hold of God. The main matter is holding on. How many are induced by the slightest appearance of repulse to let go, as Jacob did not! I have often been struck with the manner in which petitions to the Legislature are usually concluded-“ And your petitioners will ever pray." So men ought always to pray to God, and never faint. Payson says, "The promise of God is not to the act, but to the habit of prayer."-Nevins. LORD DUFFERIN.-When Lord Dufferin was travelling in Egypt, he was accompanied by Wilson, a servant of the melancholy temperament, who was given to phrases of dolorous import. One day at Thebes he was lying in his berth prostrate, with a feverish attack, when suddenly Wilson entered the cabin and proclaimed in hollow tones, "If you please, my lord, the corpse is come aboard," by which dignified but depressing title he was pleased to designate a mummy THE FIRESIDE. which Lord Dufferin's attendants had just brought down from a rock ple discovered by his Excellency. STREET LESSONS.-A gentleman visited an unhappy man in jail, awaiting his trial. "Sir," said the prisoner, tears running down his cheeks, "I had a good home education; it was my street education that ruined me. I used to slip out of the house, and go off with the boys in the street. In the street I learned to lounge; in the street I learned to swear; in the street I learned to smoke; in the street I learned to gamble; in the street I learned to pilfer. Oh, sir, it is in the street the devil lurks to work the ruin of the young!" The Fireside. ADVICE TO MARRIED PEOPLE. Now all men who are married, all husbands, come at one time, sooner or later, to a point in their lives where they have to decide whether amenities and courtesies, and sweetness which characterized the early days of their affection shall be continued, or whether it shall be given up and harsh sentiment, and speech, and thought, and feeling, shall pervade the life. To some of us, perhaps, this time has come, and we have not decided rightly, and harshness has crept into that which had been perfect melody, and there has been chronic discord in our family circles. The time comes now to us again; now, at the suggestion of your pastor, to recall those sweeter days, and reform your conduct, husbands, if you have lapsed from that sweet era. Forbearance is the key-note of married life. There can be no great discord, there can be no large divergences from tunefulness so long as the husband forbears and the wife forbears. Now, this cannot be attained without some labour. Results are approached gradually in character, as they are in making a sand-hill. It is grain upon grain, shovelful upon shovelful, and load upon load, that makes the mound to rise. So results of character come gradually. An act at this time, a deed yesterday, a word this morning, a word to-morrow morning, a cross answer to-day, repeated a month hence, and so on, till at last you find there is a ridge between you and your wife's or husband's affection. -Rev. W. H. H. Murray. EVILS OF GOSSIP. I HAVE known a country society which withered away to nothing under the dry rot of gossip only. Friendships, once as firm as granite, dissolved to jelly, and then ran away to water, only because of this; love, that promised a future as enduring as heaven, and as stable as truth, evaporated into a morning mist that turned to a day's long tears, only because of this; a father and a son were set foot to foot with the THE FIRESIDE. fiery breath of an anger that would never cool again between them; and a husband and his young wife, each straining at the heated lash which, in the beginning, had been the golden bondage of a God-blessed love, sat mournfully by the side of the grave where all their love and all their joy lay buried, and all because of this. I have seen faith transformed to mean doubt, joy give place to grin despair, and charity take on itself the features of black malevolence, all because of the fell words of scandal, and the magic mutterings of gossip. Great crimes work great wrong, and the deeper tragedies of human life spring from the larger passions; but woeful and most mournful are the uncatalogued tragedies that issue from the gossip and detraction; most mournful the shipwreck often made of noble natures and lovely lives by the bitter winds and dead salt waters of slander. So easy to say, yet so hard to disprove-throwing on the innocent all the burden and the strain of demonstrating their innocence, and punishing them as guilty if unable to pluck out the stings they never see, and to silence words they never hear-gossip and slander are the deadliest and cruelist weapons man has ever forged for his brother's heart.-All the Year Round. A STORY FOR THE GIRLS. SIT down on the porch, children, and let me tell you about Aunt Rachel, and the story she once told me. One day I had planned to go after strawberries, but Aunt Rachel said to me, "A girl of your age should begin to learn how to do house work. Take off your hat, roll up your sleeves, and help me do the baking." I pouted, and sighed, and shed tears, but was encouraged by the promise that I might go after the baking. Under good Aunt Rachel's direction I mixed a big loaf of bread, placed it on a tin as bright as a new shilling, and was rubbing the flour off my hands, when she called out, "This will never, never do, child, you haven't scraped your bread-bowl clean.' I shall never forget the picture she made standing there, her eyes regarding me sternly, one hand resting on her hip, while in the other she held the untidy bowl. "It will never do, child," she went on; "it is not only untidy, but it makes too much waste; to be a good housekeeper you must learn to be economical. You have heard the story of the young man who wanted an economical wife ?" "No," I answered, and I might have added that I didn't wish to hear it either. One "Well," she continued, "he was a very likely young man, and he wanted a careful wife, so he thought of a way he could find one. morning he went to call upon the different girls of his acquaintance and asked them each for the scrapings of their bread-bowls to feed his horses. You see they all wanted him, so they got all they could for him. Finally he found a girl who hadn't any; so he asked her to be his wife, because he thought she must be economical. "Now," said |