much as you dare in a consistence with truth and justice.

It is a very great and fatal mistake in persons who attempt to convince and reconcile others to their party, when they make the difference appear as wide as possible; this is shocking to any person who is to be convinced; he will choose rather to keep and maintain his own opinions, if he cannot come into yours without renouncing and abandoning everything that he believed before.- From "The Improvement of the Mind."

WEBSTER, DANIEL (America, 1782–1852)

The Sense of Duty.-There is no evil that we cannot either face or fly from, but the consciousness of duty disregarded.

A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity.-Argument on the Trial of John F. Knapp

Pride of Ancestry. There may be, and there often is, indeed, a regard for ancestry, which nourishes only a weak pride; as there is also a care for posterity, which only disguises an habitual avarice, or hides the workings of a low and groveling vanity. But there is also a moral and philosophical respect for our ancestors, which elevates the character and improves the heart. Next to the sense of religious duty and moral feeling, I hardly know what should bear with stronger obligation on a liberal and enlightened mind, than a consciousness of alliance with excellence which is departed; and a consciousness, too, that in its acts and conduct, and even in its sentiments, it may be actively operating on the happiness of those who come after it. Poetry is found to have few stronger conceptions, by which it would affect or overwhelm the mind, than those in which it presents the moving and speaking image of the departed dead to the senses of the living. This belongs to poetry only because it is congenial to our nature. Poetry is, in this respect, but the handmaid of true philosophy and morality. It deals with us as human beings, naturally reverencing those whose visible connection with this state of being is severed, and who may yet exercise we know not what sympathy with ourselves; - and when it carries us forward, also, and shows us the long-continued result of all the good we do in the prosperity of those who follow us, till bears us from ourselves, and absorbs us in an intense interest for what shall happen to the generations after us, it speaks only in the language of our nature, and affects us with sentiments which belong to us as human beings. From a Discourse in Commemoration of the First Settlement of New England.

WEBSTER, NOAH (America, 1758-1843)

▲ Dandy Defined.-A dandy, in modern usage, is a male of the human species who dresses himself like a doll and who carries his character on his back.

On Novels for Girls. —With respect to novels so much admired by the young, and so generally condemned by the old, what shall I say? Per

haps it may be said with truth, that some of them are useful, many of them pernicious, and most of them trifling. A hundred volumes of modern novels may be read, without acquiring a new idea. Some of them contain entertaining stories, and where the descriptions are drawn from nature, and from characters and events in themselves innocent, the perusal of them may be harmless.- Woman's Education in the Last Century.

WHITMAN, WALT (America, 1819-1892)

The Only Valuable Investments. — Nothing endures but personal qualities; charity and per sonal force are the only investments worth anything.

WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF (America, 1807-1892)

The Voice of the Pines.-A faint, low mur mur, rising and falling on the wind. Now it comes rolling in upon me wave after wave of sweet, solemn music. There was a grand organ swell: and now it dies away as into the infinite distance; but I still hear it-whether with ear or spirit I know not-the very ghost of sound. . . . It is the voice of the pines yonder a sort of morning song of praise to the Giver of life and Maker of beauty.-My Summer with Dr. Singletary, Chap. V.

WILLIAMS, ROGER (England, c. 1600-1684)

Bigotry in Religion. A tenent that fights against the common principles of all civility, and the very civil being and combinations of men in nations, cities, etc., by commixing (explicitly or implicitly) a spiritual and civil state together, and so confounding and overthrowing the purity and strength of both.

A tenent of high blasphemy against the God of Peace, the God of Order, who hath of one blood made all mankind, to dwell upon the face of the earth, now all confounded and destroyed in their civil beings and subsistences by mutual flames of war from their several respective religions and consciences.

A tenent that stunts the growth and flourish. ing of the most likely and most hopeful com. monweals and countries, while consciences, the best, and the best deserving subjects are forced to fly (by enforced or voluntary banishment) from their native countries; the lamentable proof whereof England hath felt in the flight of so many worthy English into the Low Countries and New England, and from New England into old again and other foreign parts.- From the "Bloody Tenent Made Yet More Bloody," WILLIS, N. P. (America, 1806-1867)

On the Death of Poe.- Our first knowledge of Mr. Poe's removal to this city was by a call which we received from a lady who introduced herself to us as the mother of his wife. She was in search of employment for him, and she excused her errand by mentioning that he was ill, that her daughter was a confirmed invalid, and that their circumstances were such as compelled her taking it upon herself. The coun

tenance of this lady, made beautiful and saintly with an evidently complete giving up of her life to privation and sorrowful tenderness, her gentle and mournful voice urging its plea, her long forgotten but habitually and unconsciously refined manners, and her appealing and yet appreciative mention of the claims and abilities of her son, disclosed at once the presence of one of those angels upon earth that women in adversity can be. It was a hard fate that she was watching over. Mr. Poe wrote with fastidious difficulty, and in a style too much above the popular level to be well paid. He was always in pecuniary difficulty, and, with his sick wife, frequently in want of the merest necessaries of life. Winter after winter, for years. the most touching sight to us, in this whole city, has been that tireless minister to genius, thinly and insufficiently clad, going from office to office with a poem, or an article on some literary subject, to sell-sometimes simply pleading in a broken voice that he was ill, and begging for him-mentioning nothing but that "he was ill," whatever might be the reason for his writing nothing-and never, amid all her tears and recitals of distress, suffering one syllable to escape her lips that could convey a doubt of him, or a complaint, or a lessening of pride in his genius and good intentions. Her daughter died, a year and a half since, but she did not desert him. She continued his ministering angel living with him-caring for him-guarding him against exposure, and, when he was carried away by temptation, amid grief and the loneliness of feelings unreplied to, and awoke from his self-abandonment prostrated in destitution and suffering, begging for him still. If woman's devotion, born with a first love and fed with human passion, hallow its object, as it is allowed to do, what does not a devotion like this - pure, disinterested and holy as the watch of an invisible spirit-say for him who inspired it? WINTER, WILLIAM (America, 1836-)

Character. It is of little traits that the greatest human character is composed.- "English Rambles," Part II., Chap. II.

Noble Friendship.-As often as I came back to his door, his love met me on the threshold, and his noble serenity gave me comfort and peace.-"English Rambles," Part II., Chap. II.

The Reserve of Greatness.-There is a better thing than the great man who is always speaking, and that is the great man who only speaks when he has a great word to say.—“English Rambles," Part I., Chap. V.

WINTHROP, JOHN (New England, 1587-1649)

The Twofold Liberty.-There is a twofold liberty, natural (I mean as our nature is now corrupt) and civil or federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with authority, and cannot endure the least restraint of the most

just authority. The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more evil, and in time to be worse than brute beasts: omnes sumus licentia deteriores. This is that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which all the ordinances of God are bent against, to restrain and subdue it. The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal, it may also be termed moral, in reference to the covenant between God and man, in the moral law, and the politic covenants and constitutions, amongst men themselves. This liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist without it; and it is a liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard (not only of your goods, but) of your lives, if need be. Whatsoever crosseth this is not authority, but a distemper thereof.—From an Address in the Massachusetts Assembly of 1645. XENOPHON (Greece, 430-357 B.C.)

On Trusting the Gods.-Socrates prayed to the gods simply that they would give him what was good, inasmuch as the gods knew best what things are good for man. Those who prayed for gold, or silver, or high power, or anything of that kind, he regarded as doing the same as if they prayed that they might play at dice, or fight, or anything of that kind, of which the result was dependent on chance. - "Memorabilia,» i. 3.

Where the Polite Fool Fails. In the sallies of badinage a polite fool shines; but in gravity he is as awkward as an elephant disporting.

Wit that Perishes. Many species of wit are quite mechanical: these are the favorites of witlings, whose fame in words scarce outlives the remembrance of their funeral ceremonies. ZOLA, Émile (France, 1840-)

Life and Labor.-Labor! remember that it is the unique natural law of the world, the reg. ulator which leads organized matter to its un known goal. Life has no other meaning, no other raison d'être; we only appear on this earth in order that we each may contribute our share of labor and disappear. One can only define life by that motion which is communi cated to it and which it transmits, and which after all is but so much labor toward the great final work to be accomplished in the depths of the ages. Why, then, should we not be mod est, why should we not accept the respective tasks that each of us comes here to fulfill without rebellion, without giving way to the pride of egotism which prompts men to consider themselves centres of gravity, and deters them from falling into the ranks with their fellows? - From the New Review.