subject. So he called aside one of the other students with whom he had been longer acquainted, and told him his dilemma. "Now," said he, "I want you this noon at the table to hold up your knife and fork as Daniel does. I will speak to you about it, and we will see if the boy does not take a hint for himself." The young man consented to be the scapegoat for his fellow-student, and several times during the meal planted his fists on the table, with his knife and fork as straight as if he had received orders to present arms. The Squire drew his attention to his position, courteously begged his pardon for speaking of the matter, and added a few kind words on the importance of young men correcting such little habits before going out into the world. The student thanked him for his interest and advice, and promised reform, and Daniel's knife and fork were never from that day seen elevated at table. SOME CURIOUS PATENTS THAT HAVE BEEN ISSUED. Some of the applications made for patents are very amusing; but how ever funny the idea, if it is only original with the applicant, the patent can be secured. The rights of the American inventor are sacred, and no Commissioner of Patents dares infringe upon them. It will be sad news to many a prudent housewife to learn that every time she pricks a hole in an egg with a pin she is violating the patent of an American inventor, but such is the case. Years ago an inventive genius devoted himself to discovering a method to prevent eggs from cracking during the process of boiling. He solved the problem by pricking a pinhole in one end of the egg, through which the air in the shell was allowed to escape, and this pin-hole he duly patented according to law. Precisely how he manages to collect his royalty is a mystery; but the fact remains, that he has a legal claim for royalty on every pin-hole made in an egg before boiling. An application has recently been made for the patent of a machine to prevent young orphan This is an inprobably will, The inventor chickens from being lonely. vention which should, and commend itself to Mr. Bergh. claims that hundreds of chickens hatched out in the artificial incubators become lonely because they miss the "cluck! cluck!" of the mother-hen, which is the lullaby of all wellregulated chickens hatched in the natural way, and that many are killed by this loneliness. He has arranged a system of clock-work which produces a noise somewhat similar to that of the hen, which he proposes to attach to the incubator, and on this machine the patent is asked. A patent has been issued on a clog for fowls, designed to prevent them from scratching in gardens. It consists of a wire in the shape of a hair-pin, sharp at the points. This is attached to the feet of the fowl in such a way that when it attempts to scratch, the points enter the ground and prevent the claws from reaching it. Hens have ever been the subject of much patient thought on the part of inventors A nest designed to deceive them into laying more than the one egg daily which every respectable bird contributes to the farmer's larder, has been devised and patented. It has a false bottom, through which the eggs drop as soon as laid, and the patient hen, feeling that she has failed in her duty, proceeds to lay another, until her treasury becomes exhausted or she discovers the deception. A beehive has been patented, the doors of which are attached to the hen-roost in such a manner that when the fowls go to roost, they close the hive and thus secure the inmates against the ravages of the bee-moth, and at daylight, when the hens leave the roost, the hive doors are opened and the bees set at liberty. Even the faithful horse has been made the subject of optical delusion by the inventors. A patent has been secured for what is known as a horse fence. It consists simply of a wire frame placed over the head of the horse, so that when he approaches a fence with the laudable desire of jumping it, he sees the wires above his head, mistakes them for part of the fence, and concludes that it is too high for him to leap. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO CHEERFULLY. WHATEVER you do, do cheerfully, As if your heart were in it; poet of the middle classes, represents in the mind of men to-day that great uprising of the middle class against the armies and privileged minorities, that uprising which worked politically in the American and French Revo 'T will smooth the way to the goal you seek, lutions, and which, not in governments so And give you strength to win it. For little of silver or gold you'll get, If you make up your mind to frown or fret ; Little of joy for a lonely hour, If you never have planted a single flower. What though the task a hard one be, Still with a smile begin it; And whatever you do, do cheerfully, much as in education and social order, has changed the face of the world. In order for this destiny, his birth, breeding, and fortunes were low. His organic sentiment was absolute independence, and rested, as it should, on a life of labor. No man existed who could look down on him. They that looked into his eyes saw that they might look down the sky as easily. His muse and teaching were common sense, joyful, aggressive, irresistible. Not Latimer, not Luther, struck more EMERSON'S FAMOUS TRIBUTE TO telling blows against False Theology, than BURNS. MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN, -I do not know by what untoward accident it has chanced, and I forbear to inquire, that in this accomplished circle it should fall to me, the worst Scotsman of all, to receive your commands, and at the latest hour, too, to respond to the sentiment just offered, and which indeed makes the occasion. But I am told there is no appeal, and I must trust to the inspiration of the theme to make a fitness which does not otherwise exist. At the first announcement, from I know not whence, that the 25th of January was the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, a sudden consent warmed the great English race, in all its kingdoms, colonies, and States, all over the world, to keep the festival. We are here to hold our parliament with love and poesy, as men were wont to do in the Middle Ages. Those famous Parliaments might or might not have had more stateliness and better singers than we, though that is yet to be known, but they could not have had better reason. I can only explain this singular unanimity in a race which rarely acts together, but rather after their watchword, each for himself, by the fact that Robert Burns, the did this brave singer. The "Confession of Augsburg," the "Declaration of Independence," the French "Rights of Man," and the "Marseillaise," are not more weighty documents in the history of freedom than the songs of Burns. His satire has lost none of its edge. His musical arrows yet sing through the air. He is so substantially a reformer, that I find his grand, plain sense in close chain with the greatest masters, Rabelais, Shakspeare in comedy, Cervantes, Butler, and Burns. If I should add another name, I find it only in a living countryman of Burns. He is an exceptional genius. The people who care nothing for literature and poetry care for Burns. It was indifferent, they thought who saw him, whether he wrote verses or not; he could have done anything else as well. Yet how true a poet he is! And the poet, too, of poor men, of gray hodden and the guernsey coat and the blouse. He has given voice to all the experiences of common life; he has endeared the farmhouse and cottage, patches and poverty, beans and barley; ale, the poor man's wine; hardship, the fear of debt, the dear society of weans and wife, of brothers and sisters, proud of each other, knowing so few, and finding amends for songs, and can say them by heart, and, what is strangest of all, never learned them from a book, but from mouth to mouth. The wind whispers them, the birds whistle them, the corn, barley, and bulrushes hoarsely rustle them, - nay, the music-boxes at Geneva are framed and toothed to play them, the handorgans of the Savoyards in all cities repeat them, and the chimes of bells ring them in the spires. They are the property and the solace of mankind. want and obscurity in books and thought. What a love of nature, and,-shall I say it? of middle-class nature! Not like Goethe, in the stars, or like Byron, on the ocean, or Moore, in the luxurious East; but in the lonely landscape which the poor see around them, bleak leagues of pasture and stubble, ice and sleet and rain and snow-choked brooks; birds, hares, field-mice, thistles, and heather, which he daily knew. How many "Bonny Doons," and "John Anderson my Joes," and "Auld Lang Synes," all around the earth have his verses been applied to! And his love-songs still woo and melt the youths and maids; the farm-work, the country holiday, the fishing cobble, are still his debt-sidential office with so little sense of humor ors to-day. And as he was thus the poet of poor anxious, cheerful, working humanity, so he had the language of low life. He grew up in a rural district, speaking a patois unintelligible to all but natives, and he has made that Lowland Scotch a Doric dialect of fame. It is the only example in history of a language made classic by the genius of a single man. But, more than this, he had that secret of genius to draw from the bottom of society the strength of its speech, and astonish the ears of the polite with these artless words, better than art, and filtered of all offence through his beauty. It seemed odious to Luther that the devil should have all the best tunes; he would bring them into the churches; and Burns knew how to take from fairs and gypsies, blacksmiths and drovers, the speech of the market and street, and clothe it with melody. But I am detaining you too long. The memory of Burns, I am afraid heaven and earth have taken too good care of it to leave us anything to say. The west winds are murmuring it. Open the windows behind you, and hearken for the incoming tide, what the waves say of it. The doves perching always on the eaves of the stone chapel opposite may know something about it. Every home in broad Scotland keeps his fame bright. The memory of Burns, - every man's and boy's and girl's head carries snatches of his PROBABLY no man has ever filled the Pre and wit as Mr. Hayes. On one occasion a Nearly every AN ANCIENT RIDDLE. A GREAT many years ago, a prominent merchant in Taunton promised to an eccentric old woman named Lucy King, living in the neighboring town of Berkley, a desirable prize, if, taking her subject from the Bible, she would compose a riddle which he could not guess. She won the prize with the following: Adam, God made out of dust, My body God did make complete, But without arms or legs or feet; My ways and acts he did control, But to my body gave no soul. A living being I became, And Adam gave to me my name; I did my Maker's law obey, For purpose wise, which God did see, A soul from me my God did claim, For when from me the soul had fled, I labor hard by day, by night; No right nor wrong can I conceive; The Scriptures I cannot believe; Although my name therein is found, They are to me an empty sound. No fear of death doth trouble me; Now when these lines you slowly read, The following is the solution of the above riddle, God made the "whale" without a soul, BOOKS FOR THE BLIND. BY BISHOP CLARK. SOME of our readers have probably never seen any of the books printed for the use of the blind, and not one of them could use these books as the blind do, and learn anything from them. Take an ordinary embossed card, and try to find out by feeling the pasteboard what are the figures with which it is stamped, and then you can tell whether you could decipher the raised letters by passing the tips of your fingers along the page. It is difficult for us to distinguish by the touch a small circle from a square, and in feeling a leaf, which is as intelligible to the blind as the columns of the "Ledger" are to the present reader, all that we can perceive is a little roughness on the surface. The blind who are well trained read with their fingers as readily as we do with our eyes; but, for obvious reasons, the range of literature that becomes accessible to this unfortunate class is very limited. There are not more than one hundred and twenty books in existence printed with raised letters. They are much more costly than ordinary books. You can buy a common Bible for fifty cents, while the price of a Bible for the blind is twenty-five dollars. There can be no remunerative market for the sale of such books; the number of blind people who read is not very large, and few of them can afford to buy such expensive volumes. What has been done in this department is a work of charity, and how small a space it covers, compared with the stores of knowledge provided for the community at large! There are about one hundred volumes on the shelves of the Perkins Institution for the Blind in South Boston, while there are three hundred and ninety thousand on the walls of one of the public libraries in the same city. a Just imagine your own reading for a lifetime to be confined to the few volumes that occupy a couple of shelves in your library, without ever being able to read a newspaper or a periodical of any sort at all. All that the good offices of the benevolent have thus far been able to do is to give the blind a slight taste of a few of our best and most popular authors, a little mouthful of grass from the green pastures of literature, cup or two of water from the fountain of which we drink till we are gorged. A fund of one hundred thousand dollars has been nearly completed, for the most part in Boston and the vicinity, the income of which will enable the blind to be furnished with ten or twelve new books every year, and to place sets of these books in the public libraries of all the great cities in the Union, for the free use of such as can read them. What an addition this will be to the stock of human happiness! And who would not like to do something in such a cause? When we consider from how many things the blind are excluded, from everything which comes to us through the eye, the sight of friends, and all the beauties of nature and all the treasures of art, what a blessing a new book must be, which they can take with them into their quiet room, and even into bed with them, to while away the hours of the night, and there open, literally with their own fingers, the door of some new, strange chamber in the domain of science, or history, or fiction, or poetry, or philosophy, or religion! They need to pay no gas-bills, and even the electric light is of no concern to them. This is one of the compensations of their condition, and, strangely enough, they are usually a light-hearted and merry class. One who has never seen at all, of course can have no adequate conception of what he loses by his blindness. It is a wonderful and mysterious thing to see Laura Bridgman, who has no communication whatever with the outer world except by the sense of touch, come forward, quivering with excitement, and turn over the leaves of the Bible until she finds the chapter that she wants, and then, with the fingers of one hand moving deliberately over the page, silently communicate the words of the text with her other hand to the attendant by a rapid series of touches, which only the initiated can comprehend. The life of this woman is stranger than any fiction that ever was written. The question was first to be solved, whether, in the dark and silent chambers of her soul, which no ray of light or wave of sound could penetrate, - chambers sealed up and closed, there was any capacity of intelligence, any ability to apprehend anything in the outside world, if communication could possibly be opened. No wonder that Dr. Howe, the apostle of the blind, was filled with holy exultation when, after long and patient experiment, he caught the first response from that still, dark chamber, and found that there was a key by which it could be unlocked. The appliances for the education of the blind are not confined to books. They are also provided with embossed maps for the study of geography, which is one of their favorite pursuits. These maps are dissected, so that the pupil can remove any one of the |