HAVE something more to say about trees; and I have brought down this slice of hemlock to show you. Tree blown down in the year 1852. Twelve feet and a half round, fair girth-nine feet, where I got my section, higher up. This is a wedge, going to the center, of the general shape of a slice of apple-pie in a large and not opulent family. Length, about eighteen inches. I have studied the growth of this tree by its rings, and it is curious. Three hundred and fortytwo rings. Started, therefore, about A. D. 1510. The thickness of the rings tells the rate at which it grew. For five or six years the rate was slow, then rapid for twenty years. A little before the year 1550 it began to grow very slowly, and so continued for about seventy years. In 1620 it took a new start, and grew fast until 1714; then, for the most part, slowly until 1786, when it started again and grew pretty well and uniformly until within the last dozen years, when it seems to have got on sluggishly. Look here! Here are some human lives laid down against the periods of its growth, to which they corresponded. This is Shakspeare's. The tree was seven inches in diameter when he was born; ten inches when he died. A little less than ten inches when Milton was born; seventeen when he died. Then comes a long interval, and this thread marks out Johnson's life, during which the tree increased from twenty-two to twenty-nine inches in diameter. Here is the span of Napoleon's career; the tree doesn't seem to No. 5. have minded it. I never saw the man yet who was not startled at looking on this section. I have seen many silent preachers-never one like this. How much more striking would be the calendar counted on the rings of one of those awful trees which were standing when Christ was on earth, and where that brief mortal life is chronicled with the stolid apathy of vegetable being, which remembers all human history as a thing of yesterday in its own dateless existence. I KNOW well the common censure by which objections to the various futilities of so-called education are met by the men who have been ruined by them-the common plea that anything does to "exercise the mind upon." It is an utterly false one. The human soul, in youth, is not a machine of which you can polish the cogs with any kelp or brick dust near at hand; and, having got it into working order, and good, empty, oiled serviceableness, start your immortal locomotive at twenty five years old or thirty, express for the Straight Gate, on the Narrow Road. The whole period of youth is one essentially of formation, edification, instruction. I use the words with their weight in them; intaking of stores, establishment in vital habits, hopes and faiths. There is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies-not a moment of which, once past, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron. Take your vase of Venice glass out of the furnace and strew chaff over it in its transparent heat, and recover that to its clearness and rubied glory when the north wind has blown upon it, but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from God's presence and to bring the heavenly colors back to him—at least in this world.—John Ruskin. Of all miracles, far the most wonderful is that of life-the common, daily life which we carry with us, and which everywhere surrounds us. The sun and stars, the blue firmament, day and night, the tides and seasons are as nothing compared with it. Life-the soul of the world, but for which creation were not! It is life which is the grand glory of the world; it was, indeed, the consummation of creative power, at which the morning stars sang together for joy. Is not the sun glorious, because there are living eyes to be gladdened by his beams? Is not the fresh air delicious, because there are living creatures to inhale and enjoy it? Are not odors fragrant, and sounds sweet, and colors gorgeous, because there is the living sensation to appreciate them? Without life, what were they all? What were a Creator himself, without life, intelligence, understanding, to know and adore Him? Flower in the crannied wall I pluck you out of the crannies; Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, IT had happened that amongst our nursery collection of books was the Bible, illustrated with many pictures. And in long, dark evenings, as my three sisters and myself sat by the firelight round the guard of our nursery, no book was so much in request amongst us. It ruled us and swayed us as mysteriously as music. One young nurse, whom we all loved, before any candle was lighted would often strain her eyes to read it for us; and sometimes, according to her simple powers, would endeavor to explain what we found obscure. We, the the children, were all constitutionally touched with pensiveness; the fitful gloom and sudden lambencies of the room by firelight suited our evening state of feelings; and they suited, also, the divine revelations of power and mysterious beauty which awed us. Above all, the story of a just man-man and yet not man; real above all things, and yet shadowy above all things, who had suffered the passion of death in Palestineslept upon our minds like early dawn upon the waters.-Thomas De Quincey. THAT the truths of the Bible have the power of awakening an intense moral feeling in man, under every variety of character, learned or ignorant, civilized or savage-that they make bad men good, and send a pulse of healthful feeling through all the domestic, civil and social relations-that they teach men to love right, to hate wrong, and to seek each other's welfare, as the children of one common Parent-that they control the baleful passions of the human heart, and thus make men proficient in the science of self-government, and, finally, that they teach him to aspire after a conformity to a Being of infinite holiness, and fill him with hopes infinitely more purifying, more exalted, more suited to his nature than any other which this world has ever known, are facts as incontrovertible as the laws of philosophy or the demonstrations of mathematics. THE age of chivalry has gone. An age of humanity has come. The horse, whose importance, more than human, gave the name to that early period of gallantry and war, now yields his foremost place to man. In serving him, in promoting his elevation, in contributing to his welfare, in doing him good, there are fields of bloodless triumph nobler far than any in which the bravest knight ever conquered. Here are spaces of labor wide as the world, lofty as heaven. Let me say, then, in the benison once bestowed upon the youthful knight-scholars, jurists, artists, philanthropists, heroes of a Christian age, companions of a celestial knighthood, "Go forth. Be brave, loyal and successful." And may it be our office to light a fresh beacon-fire sacred to truth! Let the flame spread from hill to hill, from island to island, from continent to continent, till the long lineage of fires shall illumine all the nations of the earth, animating them to the holy contests of Knowledge, Justice, Beauty, Love.Charles Sumner. ALL hail to our glorious ensign! courage to the heart and strength to the hand, to which, in all time, it shall be entrusted! May it ever wave first in honor, in unsullied glory and patriotic hope, on the dome of the Capitol, on the country's strong- | hold, on the intented plain, on the waverocked topmast. Wheresoever on the earth's surface the eye of the American shall behold it, may he have reason to bless it! On whatever spot it is planted, there may freedom have a foothold, humanity a brave champion and religion an altar. Though stained with blood in a righteous cause, may it never, in any cause, be stained with shame. Alike, when its gorgeous folds shall wanton in lazy holiday triumphs on the summer breeze and its tattered fragments be dimly seen through the clouds of war, may it be the joy and pride of the American heart. First raised in the cause of right and liberty, in that cause alone may it forever spread out its streaming blazonry to the battle and the storm. Having been borne victoriously across a mighty continent, and floating in triumph on every sea, may virtue, and freedom, and peace forever follow where it leads the way!-Edward Everett. IMPERFECTION. I never yet heard music, howe'er sweet, Never found shapes half fair enough to fill The royal galleries of my boundless will; Never wrote I one line that I could greet A twelvemonth after with a brow of fire. Thus, then, I walk my way and find no restOnly the beauty unattained, the cry After the inexpressible unexpressed, The unsatiated insatiatiable desire Which at once mocks and makes all poesy. Alexander. PAUSE for a while, ye travelers upon the earth, to contemplate the universe in which you dwell, and the glory of Him who created it. What a scene of wonders is here presented to your view! If beheld with a religious eye, what a temple for the worship of the Almighty! The earth is spread out before you, reposing amid the desolation of winter, or clad in the verdure of the spring-smiling in the beauty of summer, or loaded with autumnal fruit-opening to an endless variety of beings the treasures of their Maker's goodness, and ministering subsistence and comfort to every creature that lives. The heavens, also, declare the glory of the Lord. The sun cometh forth from his chambers to scatter the shades of night, inviting you to the re newal of your labors, adorning the face of Nature, and as he advances to his meridian brightness, cherishing every herb and flower that springeth from the bosom of the earth. Nor, when he retires from your view, doth he leave the Creator without a witness. He only hides his own splendor for a while to disclose to you a more glorious scene-to show you the immensity of space filled with worlds unnumbered, that your imagination may wander without a limit in the vast creation of God.-Moodie. ROBERT L. COLEMAN, son of Walter H. Coleman, a New York millionaire, on his graduation from Cornell University, in 1898, was told by his father to get out into the world and hustle for three years, in order to learn the value of a dollar. The New York World is authority for the statement that the young man is a bell-boy in the Turkish baths connected with the St. Charles Hotel, New York. He first took a place in the treasurer's office of the South Carolina and Georgia Railroad. Next he tried a broker's office on Wall street, New York, but his employers failed, and the young man was without resources. Then he got on the Eighth avenue electric car line as a conductor, remaining there four months, and working for fifteen hours at a stretch. Then he was in a Brooklyn iron foundry for a month, where he lost sixteen pounds in weight. Then he obtained a position as bell-boy at the St. Charles. He is reported to have said: "Father thought I wouldn't stand the kind of work I've been doing, but I've done it for two and a half years now, and I guess I can stick to it. The experience has been tough, but great. When the three years are up I'll know the value of money all right. I've paid my way with the money I've earned myself. It was pretty close sometimes, but I did it.”—American Boy. THAT man is not perfect who is so in and for himself alone. An essential part of true manhood is in the relationships that he sustains to other beings, in the midst of whom and with reference to whom his life is lived. . . . Man is not great, nor rich, nor strong for himself. alone. He is not, then, to make these the occasions for lording it over his fellows. The poor, the ignorant, the low, are not stepping-stones, nor lawful plunder; they are brothers, to be respected |