THE FIRESIDE. THE PENNY POST BOX. The Fireside. LIVING TOGETHER. WE have seen, on a printed slip, a set of pithy maxims on the "Art of Living Together." We do not know who wrote them, but they are full of good sense, and might well be laid to heart by every one who lives in constant companionship with another, whether as husband and wife, college chums, or partners in business. "Avoid having stock subjects of disputation. Do not hold too much to logic and suppose that everything is to be settled by sufficient reason. "If you would be loved as a companion, avoid criticism of those with whom you live. "Let not familiarity swallow up all courtesy." The Penny Post Box. THE ONLY WAY. AN elderly lady, but a short time resident of a western village, became bewildered and uncertain of her way, and asked a young woman walking near if she were right. The person addressed answered courteously that she too was a stranger, and the two walked a little distance in company. The old lady had, in early life, taken refuge among infidel authors, and after God's Spirit showed her their sophistry, she felt that she could never do enough to atone for her error. Before parting from the stranger she asked, "Do you love the Saviour?" The woman looked surprised, hesitated a moment, and said, "I think my mother does; and I have been a church-goer all my life; but you are the first person who ever asked me such a question. I ought to love him." She carried the thought out to her new home and acted upon it; and when, a year later, she folded her hands to wait for the last great trumpet, she died in the triumph of a living faith. Two friends had spent a pleasant hour together. At parting the visitor, a young mother, said, "We may not stay in our present home, for we want our little boy to have the right kind of surroundings. Whatever we may be, I want him to grow into a noble man." The hostess replied, in a gentle but earnest tone, "The only way to insure his being brought up right anywhere, Mrs. Campbell, is for his parents to be genuine Christians." Mrs. Campbell afterwards told me that "the only way" sounded in her ears all the way home. She knew it was true. She knew, too, that nothing but her own indifference prevented her being a Christian mother. She had neither minister nor place of worship, but she had the Bible, and that Listener whose ear is never dull to the faintest yearning toward His warm heart. So, stepping from the broad way, she set her feet in the narrow path, her new FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY. heart joyful in the Saviour's love. Then, with an earnestness that would take no denial, she began to pray for her husband's conversion; to "pray without ceasing"-to use her own words. Within a fortnight of the time when that pebble of thought was dropped into the well of her soul, the family altar was set up in their home, and its fires kept alive by a praying father and mother. Facts, Hints, Gems, and Poetry. Facts. Two thousand acres of land were recently sold in Alabama for a half penny an acre. Over 13,000 applications for space have already been filed by the authorities of the French Exposition next year; 7,800 are from the city of Paris alone. The departures of Chinamen from San Francisco by sea this year were 88 per cent. of the arrivals, against 25 per cent. last year. San Francisco has thirty millionaires who talk of forming an association for the purpose of devising a form of will that cannot be contested. Over fifty per cent. of the surface of Ireland, excluding lakes and rivers, is in pasture, while Belgium has but eleven per cent. France has 50,000 farms averaging 600 acres, 500,000 averaging 60 acres, and over 5,000,000 under six acres. In this extended sub-division of land under culture consists her agricultural prosperity. Hints. Men too often forget that evil is overcome in detail. No flower finds its way up till it is sun-called.-Beecher.. Our chief want in life-is it not somebody who can make us do what we can?-Emerson. The bright side of things is the one we do not see in this world, but for all that it exists.-Eugenie de Guerin. Beware of those who are homeless by choice! You have no hold on a -Rochefoucauld. We do not believe immortality because we have proved it, but we forever try to prove it because we believe it.-Martineau. The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are all blindly adopted, the second wilfully preferred.-Bancroft. It is only the loveless who descry defects in others; to perceive these, therefore, we must become loveless, but not more than is absolutely necessary.-Goethe. There is sanctity in suffering when meekly borne. Our duty, though set "AND is this all my mother could do for me," grumbled the woollybear caterpillar, as he crossed the gravel path where the little golden bettles shrank from him in something like disgust. "Frightful, of course, frightful; very humiliating !" he exclained, as he began to make his dinner of the dead nettle to which he had crawled. "Patience!" said the dead nettle; "you won't always be a woolly bear." A little time and the woolly-bear became a pupa, that is, an insect mummy. "Is this change for the better? am I any nearer beauty now?" he asked despairingly of the nettle. "Surely I was better off when I could at least show life and move about, than I am in this living tomb." "Patience; when things come to the worst they mend," said the nettle, "you won't always be a mummy." One morning the sun shone on the glorious wings of a tiger-moth, as it balanced itself on the hedge, trembling with delight. "Ah," cried the nettle, "I told you so; the training wasn't pleasant, but see what has come of it!" BURIED LIKE A DOG. "Without are dogs."-Rev. xxii. 15. TINY'S GRAVE. A CLERGYMAN who, though he declined to bury a Dissenter in the churchyard, allowed his wife's poodle to be buried there, also had a stone erected, with the inscription, "Tiny's grave." The facts are as follows:- "The Rev. T. Turner, vicar of Marden (six miles from Devizes), has on more than one occasion refused to bury the deceased children of one Thomas Smith, because they were not christened; but about twelve months ago a little pet dog died belonging to Mrs. Turner; it was buried in the parish churchyard, and a stone was placed over the grave with this inscription, 'Tiny's grave.' About four months ago the same Thomas Smith (who is a Baptist) lost another unregenerate, because an unbaptized, child. Again the vicar refused to officiate, and a neighbouring Baptist minister (Mr. Collins) conducted the service in the street near the church, after which the corpse was lowered into the grave, the vicar watching the proceedings, as on a former occasion, from an upstair window." The facts were stated in the Devizes Gazette, some time in 1876, and we understand that so many pilgrimages have been made to "Tiny's grave," that the churchyard gates are kept locked in the week! Had Tiny been sprinkled and regenerated? SMUT'S GRAVE. Passing a stonemason's yard in Leicester the other day, our attention was arrested by a splendid marble monument with a long inscription upon it. What was our astonishment to find, on a closer inspection, that it was erected to the memory of a dog, and was to be placed in a conspicuous position in the private grounds of Bosworth Hall. We understand that it was intended to place it in the churchyard, but this was refused by the incumbent of the parish. Some draw the line at dogs, and others at unregenerated babies (poor little wretches). We commend the inscription and epitaph to the careful perusal of our readers as a BURIED LIKE A DOG. specimen of composition and dogology. Board pupils endeavour to parse the following? TO SMUT Will School Board A BLACK AND TAN OLD ENGLISH TERRIER KILLED BEING RUN OVER BY A TRAIN WHILE TRYING TO TRACE HIS MISTRESS WHO HAD BEEN TO THE SAME SPOT WITH HIM THE DAY BEFORE SHE LEFT ENGLAND, WHICH DAY WAS FIVE DAYS PREVIOUS TO THAT OF HIS DEATH HERE LIES AN OLD AND FAITHFUL FRIEND NEVER FORGOTTEN. Forget me not My little sweet companion, little friend Oh think not lying in the lonely grave My thoughts can wander or forget the spot, Forget me not I seem to hear thee say When I have sought my last eternal rest I can rejoin thee neer to part again. It was amusing to hear the various remarks of the bystanders, chiefly working people, who gave vent to their opinion after reading the stone, such as-" She must a bin werry fond o' the dawg!" "Well, I never see such a thing in all my life;" "Some dogs are as sensible as Christians ;" "Does she think the dog will be in heaven," &c., &c. But it is really sad to find that the best and brightest hopes of the lady are that she may meet her dog in some other world. |