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October.

66 HOW FADING ARE THE JOYS WE DOTE UPON !

LIKE APPARITIONS SEEN AND GONE;

BUT THOSE WHICH SOONEST TAKE THEIR FLIGHT,

ARE THE MOST EXQUISITE AND STRONG:

LIKE ANGELS' VISITS, SHORT AND BRIGHT,

MORTALITY 'S TOO WEAK TO BEAR THEM LONG."

OCTOBER.

OCTOBER 1.

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AN ANCIENT PROVERB.

Every day in thy life is a leaf in thy history." -A leaf which shall once be turned back to again, that it may be seen what was written there; and that whatever was written, may be read out in the hearing of all! (Trench.)

[A solemn thought! A Scriptural doctrine! This view of the indelible impression made by our words and actions, is strongly, yet powerfully, illustrated in the writings of an eminent American mathematician. He states his belief, that "the air is one vast sounding library, in whose pages are for ever written, all that man ever said, or woman whispered." This sounds fanciful, but the learned Professor (Babbage) asserts that it is a principle capable of being proved by the discoveries of modern science, and illustrated by the

doctrine of mechanical re-action. Bringing this principle to bear on the impression made, not only by our words and our actions, but also by our thoughts, it seems pretty correct to say (with another American writer on the same subject), that, thrown into a poetic form, this belief converts creation

"Into a vast sounding gallery;

Into a vast picture gallery ;

And into a universal telegraph."]

(P. M.)

October 2.

TWO TRUTHS CANNOT CONTRADICT EACH OTHER.

There cannot be two truths in contradiction to each other; and a man must have a mind fitted neither for scientific, nor for religious truth, whose religion can be disturbed by geology, or whose geology can be distorted from its character of an inductive science, by a determination to accommodate its results to preconceived interpretations of the Mosaic cosmogony.

(Sir John Herschel.)

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