Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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REV. DR. TALMAGE. THE BROOKLYN DIVINE'S SI N r\ t v crnwnv 1/?1X OJUAkiiAvr^ Subject: 4* What Books Shall We Read? What Pictures Look At?" Text : "Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieees of silver."?Acts six, 19. Paul had been stirring up Ephesus with some lively sermons about the sins of that place. Among the more important results was the fact that the citizens brought out their bad books, and in a public place made a bonfire of them. I see the people coming out with their arms full of Epnesian literature, and tossing it into the flames. I hear an economist standing by and saying: "Stop this waste. Here are seven thousand five hundred dollar's worth of books?do you propofe to burn them all up? If you don't want to read them yourselves, sell them, and let somebody else "read them." "No," said the people, "if these books are not good for us, thev are not good for anybody else aud we shall stand and watch until the last leaf has turned to ashes. They have done us a world of harm, and they shall never do others harm." Hear the flames crackle and roar! Well, my friends, one of the wants of the cities of this country is a great bonfire or Dan i books and newspapers. 1\ e have enough fuel to make a blaze -00 feet high. Many of the publishing houses would do well to throw into the blaze their entire stock of goods. Bring forth the insufferable trash.and put it into the tire, and let it be known, in the presence of God, and angels, and men, that you are going to rid your homes of the overtopping and underlying curse of profligate literature. The printing press is the mightiest agency on earth for good and for evil. The minister of the Gospel, standing in a pulpit, has a responsible position; but I do not think it is as responsible as the position of an editor or a publisher. At what distant point of time, at what far out cycle of eternity, will ceaso the influence of a Henry J. Raymond, or a Horace Greeley, or a James Gordon Bennett, or a Watson AV ebb, or an Erastus Brooks, or a Thomas Kinsella' Take the simple statistics that our New York dailies now have a circulation of about eight hundred and fifty thousand per day, and add to it the fact that three of our weekly periodicals have an aggregate circulation of about one million, and then cipher, if y \ can, how far up, and how far down,and h~.. far out, reach the influences of the American printing press. Great God! what is to be the issue of all this? I believe the Lord intends the printing press to be the means for the world's rescue and evangelization, and I think that the great last battle of the world will not be fought with swords and guns, but with types ana presses?a purified and gospel literature triumphing over, trampling down and crushing out forever that which is depraved. The only way to over- i come unclean literature is by "scattering abroad that which is healthful. May God snftpd the cylinders of an honest, intelligent, aggressive, Christian printing press. T have to tell you this morning that the ! greatest blessing that ever came to this nation ! is that of an elevated literature, and the great- I est scourge has been that of unclean literature. I, This last has its victims in all occupations and departments. It has helped to fill insane asy- j lums, and penitentiaries, and almshouses, and dens of shame. The bodies of this infection J lie in the hospitals ana in the graves, while their souls are being tossed over into a lost ' eternity, an avalanche of horror and despair! 1 Hie London plague was nothing to it. That counted its victims by thousands, but this 1 modern pest has already shovelled its millions ] into the charnel-housa "of the morally dead. ! The longest rail-train that ever ran over the ] Erie or Hudson tracks was not long enough ' or large enough to carry tho beastliness and the putrefaction which have been gathered ' up in bad books and newspapers of this land I in the last twenty years. Now, it is amid such circumstances that I ! put, this morning, a question of overmaster- j ing importance to you and your families. 1 What books and newspapers shall we read? 1 You see I group them together. A news- 1 paper is only a book in a swifter and more j portable shape, and the same rules which will | apply to book reading will apply to news puper reading. What shall we read? Shall 1 our minds be the receptacle of everything 1 that an author has a mind to write? Shafl ' 1 here be no distinction between the tree of 1 life and the tree of death? Shall we stoop ' down and drink out of the trough which the , wickedness of men has filled with pollution J and shame? Shall we mire in impurity, and chase fantastic will-o-the-wisps across the 1 swamps, when we might walk in the bloom- ' ing gardens of God? O no! For the sake of our present and everlasting welfare we must J make an intelligent and Christian choice. ' Standing, as we do, chin deep in fictitious j literature, the first question that many of the ] young people are asking me is: "Shall we read novels?^ I reply: There are novels ! that are pure, good, Christian, elevatmg to the heart and ennobling to the life. But I J have still further to say that I believe that ! ninety-nine out of the one hundred novels in ] this day are baleful find destructive to the last degree. A pure work of fiction is history and poetry combined. It is a history of things around us, with the licences and the assumed names of poetry. The world can ! never pay the debt which it owes ] to such fictitious writers as Hawthorne and McKenzie, and Landon and Hunt, and Arthur and Marion Harland, and others J whose names are familiar to all. The follies of high life were never better exposed than by ' Miss Edgeworth. The memories of the past ( were never more faithfully emoaimea tnan < in the writings of Walter" Scott. Cooper's < novels are healthfully redolent with the J breath of the seaweed, and the air of the American forest. Charles Kingsley has j smitten the morbidity of the world, and led a j great many to appreciate the poetry of sound health, strong muscles, and fresh air. Thack- ' eray did a grand work in caricaturing the pre- ' tenders to gentility and high blood. Dickens < has built his own monument in his books, ( which are an everlasting plea for the poor, < and the anathema of injustice. Now, I say, I books like these, read at right times, and read 1 in right proportion with other books, cannot J help but be ennobling and purifying; but alas for the loathsome ^nd impure literature 1 that has come upon this country in the shape < of novel3, like a freshet overflowingall the 1 bank3 of decency and common sense! They are j coining from some of the most celebrated pub- > USQlUg flOUbG) ui ure cuuubrjr. ? ucj arc ivmiug with recommendation of some of our religions newspapers. They lie on your centre table 1 to curse your children, and blast with their 1 infernal fires generations unborn. You find i these books in the desk of the school miss, in ' the trunk of the young man, in the steamboat J cabin, on the table of the hotel reception r<?om. You see a light in your child's room ] late at night. You suddenly go in and say: ' "What are you doingT* "I am reading." "What are you readingf "A book." You look at the book: it is a bad book. ''Where ] did you get it T' "I borrowed it." Alas, i there are always those abroad who would | like to loan your son or daughter 0 bad book! Every where, everywhere an unclean literature, l" charge upon it the destruction of ten thousand immortal souls, and I bid you this moraine wake up to the magnitude of the theme. I shall take all the world's literature?good novels and bad, travels true hictarips faithful and incorrect, feizends beautiful and monstrous, all tracts, all chronicles, all epilogues, all family, city, State and national libraries?and pile them up in a pyramid of literature, and then I shall brinj* to bear upon it some grand, glorious, infallible, unmistakable Christian principles. God help me to speak with reference to my last account, and God help you to listen. I charge you, in the first place, to stand aloof from all books that give false pictures of human life. Life is neither a tragedy nor a farce. Men are not all eithor knaves or heroes. Women are neither angels nor furies. And yet, if you depended upon much of the literature of the day, you would get the idea that life, instead of being something earnest, something practical, is a fitful and fantastic and extravagant thing. How poorly prepared are that young man and women for .v- tfwinvwho scent last night CUO UUWCO VI vv t wading through brilliant passages descriptive of magnificent knavery and wickedncss! The man will be looking all day long for his heroine, in the tin shop, by the forge, in the factory, in the counting-room, and he will not find her, and he will be dissatisfied. A man who gives himself up to the indiscriminate reading of novels will be nerveless, inane and a nuisance. He will be fit neither for the store, nor the shop, nor the field. A woman who gives hei'self up to the indiscriminate reading of novels will be unfitted for the duties of wife, mother, sister, daughter. There she is, hair disheveled, countenance vacant, cheeks pale, hands trembling, bursting into tears at midnight over the fate of some unfortunate lover; in the day-time. when she o?ght to be busy, staring by the half-hour at nothing; biting her finger nails into the quick. The carpet, that was plain before, will be plainer after having wandered \ through a romance all night long in tesselated halls of castles. And vour industrious com panion will be more unattractive than ever, now that yon have walked in the romance through parks with plumed princesses, or lounged in the arbor with the polished desperado. Oh, these confirmed novel readers! They are unfitted for this life, which is a tremendous discipline. They know not how to go through the furnaces of trial through which thoy must pass, and they are unfitted for a world where everything we gain we achieve by hard, long-continuing and exhaustive work. Again: abstain from all those books which, | while they have some good things about them, have also an admixture of evil. You have road booKa that had two elements in them? the good and the bad. Which stuck to vou? Theoad! The heart of most people is like a sieve, which lets the small particles of gold fall through, but keeps the great cinders. Once in a while there is a mind like a loadstone, which, plunged amid steel and brass filings, gathers up the steel and repels the brass. But it is generally just the opposite. If you attempt to plunge through a hedge of burrs to get one blackberry, you will get "more burrs than blackberries. * You cannot afford to read a bad book, however good you are. You say: "The influence is insignificant." I tell you that the scratch of a pin has sometimes produced the lock-jaw. Alas, if through curiosity, as many do, you pry into an evil book, your curiosity is as dangerous as that of the man who would take a torch into a gunpowder r*ill merely to see whether it would blow up or not. In a menagerie iD FI0W X OrK, a man pub Ui9 ai m Uiavugu vuv bars of a black leopard's cage. The animal's hide looked so sleek,and bright,and beautiful. He just stroked it once. The monster seized him, and he drew forth a hand torn, and mangled, and bleeding. 0, touch not evil,even with the faintest stroke. Though it may be glossy and beautiful, touch it not, lest you pull forth your soul torn and bleeding under the clutch of the black leopard. "But," you say, "how can I find out whether a book is good or bad without reading it?"' There is always something suspicious about a bad book I never knew an exception?something suspicious in the index or style of illustration. This venomous reptile almost always carries a warning ;-attle. Again: I charge you to stand off from all those books which corrupt the imagination and inflame the passions. I do not refer now to that kind of a book which the villain has 1 under his coat waiting for the school to get out, and then, looking both ways to see that ;here is no policeman around the block, offers Jhe book to your son on his way home. 1 do aot speak of that kind of literature, but that i which evades the law and comes out in polished ; style,and with acute plot souncft the tocsin that rouses up all the baser passions of the soul. To-day under the nostrils of this land, there is a fetid, reeking, unwashed literature, enough to poison all the fountains of public virtue, ana smite your sons and daughters as with the wing of a destroying angel, and it is 1 time that the ministers of the Gospel blew J the trumpet and rallied the forces of right- i nnncnuss nil ?rmwl to the teeth, in this EXeat , battle against a depraved literature. Again: abstain from those books which are apologetic' of crime. It is a sad thing that some of the best and most beautiful Dook- ! bindery, and some of the finest rhetoric, have ; been brought to make sin attractive. Vice is a horrible thing any how. It is born in shame, and it dies howling in the darkness. In this ! world it is scourged with a whip of scorpions, j but afterwards the thunders of God's wrath pursue it across a boundless desert, beating it with ruin and woe. When you come to paint sarnality, do not paint it as looking from be- ' hind embroidered curtains, or through lattice i 5f royal seraglio, but as writhing in the \ agonies of a city hospital. , Cursed be the books that try to make impurity decent, and crime attractive, and ' hypocrisy noble! Cursed be the books that swarm with libertines and desperadoes, who y make the brain of the young people whirl with villainy! Ye authors who write them, ye publishers who print them, ye booksellers 1 who distribute them, shall be cut to pieces, if < not by an aroused community, then at last ] by the hail of Divine vengeance, which shall j sweep to the lowest pit of perdition all ye murderers of souls. I tell you, though you 1 tnay escape in this world, you will be < ground at last under the hoof of eternal s :alamities, and you will be chained to the 1 rock, and you will have the vultures of de- " >pair clawing at your soul, and those whom you have destroyed will come around to tor- < ment you, and to pour hotter coals of fury upon your head, and rejoice eternally in the ( jutciy of your pain and the howl of your J damnation. "God shall wound the hairy scalp t ?f him that goeth on in his trespasses." ? The clock strikes midnight. A fair form j bends over a romance. The eyes flash Are. . The breath is quick and irregular. Occasion- . ally the color dashes into the cheek, and then 1 [lies out. The hands tremble as though a 1 guardian spirit were trying to shake the j leadly book out of the grasp. Hot tears fall. ( She laughs with a shrill voice that drops dead , at its own sound. The sweat on her brow is 1 Lhe spray dashed up from the river of death, t The clock strikes k'four, "and the rosy dawn a soon after begins to look through the lattice l upon the pale form that looks like a detained . spectre or the night. Soon, in a madhouse, she will mistake her ringlets for curling serpents, and thrust her white hand through the s bars of the prison and smite her head, rub- i t>ing it back as though to push the scalp from . the skull, shrieking: ''My brain! my brain!" 1 Oh, stand off from that! Why will you go t jounding your way amid the reefs and warn- j ing buoys, when there is such a vast ocean in ( which you may voyage, all sail set? There is one other thing I shall say this 1 moraine before I leave you, whether you I want to hear it or not. That is, that I con- r >i(ler the lascivious pictorial literature of the E lay as most tremendous for ruin. There is no , >ne who can like good pictures better than 1 Jo. The quickest and most condensed way 1 5f impressing the public mind is by picture, e What the painter does by his brush for a few c favorites, the engraver does by his knife c for the million. What the author accomp- ? lishes by fifty pages, the artist does by a Sash. The best part of a painting that costs ;en thousand dollars you may buj for -ten ?nts. Fine paintings belong to the aristocracy of art. Engravings belong to the ieinocracy of art. You do well to gather 1 ;ood pictures in your homes. Spread them J aefore your children, after the tea-hour is j D&st, and the evening circle is gathered. , throw them on the invalid's couch. Strew ~ ihem through the rail-train to cheer the trav- * jler on his journey. Tack them on the wall f the nursery. Gather them in albums and c portfolios. God speed the good pictures on their way with ministries ot knowledge and ? mercy! But what shall I say of the prostitution of t this art to purposes of iniquity ? These deathwarrants of tne soul are at every street cor- c ner. They smite the vision of the young man with pollution. Many a young man buying a f1 ?opy has bought his eternal discomfiture, t There may be enough poison in one bad T picture to poison one soul, and that t soul may poison ten, and ten fifty, } and the fifty hundreds, and the hundreds thousands, until nothing but the measuring ? line of eternity can tell the height, and F depth, and ghastliness, and horror of the c great undoing. The work of death that the r wicked author does in a whole book the bad ^ engraver may do on a half side of a pictorial. Under the guise of pure mirth, the young c man buys one of these sheets. He unrolls it before his comrades amid roars of laugh- rJ ter, but long after the paper is gone the j result may perhaps be seen in the blasted _ imagination of those who saw it. The queen of death holds a banquet every night, and these periodicals are the printed invitation to her guests. Alas that the fair brow of American art should bo blotched with this plague-spot, and that philanthropists, bother- s mg themselves about smaller evils, should lift ^ up no united and vehement voice against this t great calamity. ' Young man! buy not this moral strychnine ? for your soul! Pick not up this nest of coiled 1 addere for your pocket! Patronize no news ( stand that keeps them! Have your room bright , ?- *.? A K..?. ? | 1 witu KUUU Oii^taviuga, uuv ivyi iuc.-c uuv_ivu4? pictorials have not one wall, not one bureau, ' not one pocket. A man is no better than the 1 p'ctures he loves to look at. If vour eyes j are not pure, your heart cannot be. At a news stand one can guess the character of the man by the kind of pictorial he pur- 1 chases. When the devil fails to get a man to read a bad book,he sometimes succeeds in getting him to look at a bad picture. When Satan goes a-tishing he doss not care whether it is a long line or a short line, if he only draws his victim in. Beware of lascivious pictorials young man; in the name of Almight God' I charge you. If I have this morning successfully laid down any principles by which you may judge in regard to books and newspapers then I have done something which I (hall not be ashamed of on the day which shall try every man's work, of what sort it is. Cherish good books and newspapers. Beware of the bad ones. One column may save your soul; oue paragraph may ruin it. | Benjamin Franklin said that the reading of j I "Cotton Mather's Essay on Dmng Good" molded his entire life. The assassin of Lord Russell declared that he was led into crime by reading one vivid romance. The consecrated John An gel 1 James, than whom England never produced a better man, declared in his old days that he had never yet got over the evil effects of having for fifteen minutes once read a bad book. But I need not go so far off. I could come near home, and tell you of something that occurred in my college days. I could tell you of a comrade who was great hearted, noble, and generous. He was studying for an honorable profession: but he had an infidel book in his trunk, and he said to me one dav: "De Witt, would you like to read it?" I answered: "Yes, I would." I took the book and read it only for a few minutes. I was really startled with what I saw there, and I handed the book back to him and said: "You had better destroy that book." No, he kept it. He read it. He re-read it. After a while he gave up religion as a myth. He nave up God as a nonenity. He gave up the Bible as a fable. He gave up the Church of Christ as a useless institution. He gave up good morals as being unnecessarily stringent. I have heard of him but twice in many years. The time before the last I heard of him, he was a confirmed inebriate. The last time I heard of him, he was coming out of an Insane asylum?in body, mind and soul an awful wreck. I believe that one infidel book killed him for two worlds. Go home to-day, and look through your library, and then, having looked through your library, look on the stand where you keep your pictorials and newspapers, and apply ifce Christian principles I have laid down this morning. If there is anything in your home that cannot stand the test, do not give it away, for it might spoil an immortal soul; do not sell it, for the money you get would be the price of blood; but rather ldndle a fire on your kitchen hearth, or in your back yard, and then drop the poison in it, and keep stirring the blaze until from preface to appendix there shall not be a single paragraph left, and the bonfire in Brooklyn shall be as consuming as that one in the streets of Ephesus. POPULAR SCIENCE. Rccent experiments seem to establish the fact that the germs of ordinary infectious diseases Cannot withstand an exposure to day heat of 230 degrees Farenheit, or an exposure of five minutes to boiling water or steam at 212 degrees. Owing to the increased electrical intensity of the atmosphere, which is induced by the continual evolution of steam and smoke, Dr. Andries estimates that the danger from lightning is from three to five times greater than it was fifty years ago. Carbonic acid, produced by the action of vinegar on marble, is supposed to have been used as an anesthetic by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks. M. Ch. Ozsnam reports to the Paris Biologieal Society that anassthesia induced by carbonic acid is very complete, may last a long time, and?the gas, of course, being mixed with the air?is without danger. A health journal accounts for the strange sensations experienced by some persons upon looking down from great heights, by the confused condition of the mind produced by the new situation in which they find themselves. It is the unusual surroundings that disturb the faculties. People accustomed to great elevations do not experience any morbid sensations. The diameter of locomotive driving [Vheels has been sreatlv increased to iiro luce augmented speed. The largest yet loted are for a mammoth engine on one >f the French roads. This locomotive ias six coupled wheels 8$ feet in diame;er, and the tender and cars are to have wheels of the same dimensions, the calculation being that with such a train a ipeed of about seventy-eight miles an lour can be obtained. The cars will be swung inside, and between .several pairs )f wheels. "Wood oil is made on a large scale in Sweden from the refuse of timber cut:ings and forest clearings, and from itumps and roots; and, although itcanlot well be burned in common lamps oil iccountof the heavy proportion of carbon t contains, it furnishes a satisfactory ight in lamps especially made for it, ind in its natural state is said to be the :heapest of illuminating oils. Thirty actories produce about 40,000 liters of he oil daily; turpentine, creosote, acetic tcid, charcoal, coal tar oils and other iseful substances are also obtained from he same materials. i The absolute dimensions of a globular tar cluster have been studied by Mr. r. E. Gore, of the Liverpool Astronomcal Society. These clusters consist of housands of minute stars, possibly movng about a common centre of gravity. )ne of the most remarkable of hese objects is thirteen Messier, which doctor thinks is about equal to a first !i. 3 _ -A. TT_A. TT V .11 uagmiuue siar. let xierscneu esuaated that it is made up of 14,000 stars. Lssuming the total mass a3 equal to wicc the sun's, the average diameter of ach of these components must be 45,218 niles, and each star in this wonderful ;roup may be separated from the next by , distance of 9,000 miles. A Cloak or Gold Feathers. At the coronation of King Kalakua in 883, writes a correspondent from Honoulu, he wore the royal mantle of Kamelameha I., one of the most superb em>lcms of royality ever worn by king or ;aiser. As may be supposed, it is careully kept at the palace. It is a semiircular cloak, about four feet in length, overing an area of twenty-five square cet when spread out, and it is maae of he small golden-hued feathers of the O-o. rhese feathers, each about the size of me's little finger nail are fastened to a , fine network of fibre, made fr&m the ?ark of the olona, overlaying each other. Phm-o nro at lpftst s 000 of these feathers iscd in the cloak, there are but two aken from each bird, which has to be nared in the dense woods, the feathers >lueked and the bird released; it was a rime ro kill them. The birds are by no neans abundant, necessarily the value of he cloak is very great, and the keeping >f it an endless task. The mantle is vorn only by the reigning sovereign, rhere arc shorter capes and cloaks worn >y Alies or chiefs, their length being egulated by the rank of the wearer. General Harrison and the Farmer. General Harrison, during bis month's iojourn at the White House, made himself very popular, says Ben: Perley Poore. He arose every morning with the sun, took a long walk, often returning through the market. On one of these oc ?asions he purchased a new milch cow from a neighboring farmer, and requested him to drive it to the President's house. The general was there to attend to the animal, and invited the farmer to take some refreshment, procured a bowl of hot coffee, ham and eggs, and continued conversation with him about farming. The farmer, having finished his breakfast, remarked to the General: ".You have bought my cow and given liie $-2 more than I asked, and a good breakfast besides, but if it wouldn't be too much trouble I would like to have a look of the President before I go." "I am the President," replied the General. The farmer at first looked incredulous, having taken his hospitable friend for tho steward, but, convinced of his mistake, with much frankness observed: "Well, General, J voted against you at the election, but I didn't know you then." RELIGIOUS READING. A Teacher's Prayer. Up to me sweet childhood looketh, Heart, and mind, and soul awake, Teach me of thy ways, oh, Father, For swoet childhood sake. In their young hearta, soft and tender, Guide ray hands good seeds to sow. That its blossoming may praise Thee, Wberesoe'er they go. Give to me a cheerful spirit, That my little flock may see It is good and pleasant service? To be taught of Thee. Father, order all my footsteps. So direct my daily way, That in following me the children May not go astray. Let Thy holy counsel leal me; Let Thy light before me 3hine, That they may not stumble over Word or deed of mine. Draw us hand in hand to Je3us, For His word's sake?unforget? "Let the little ones come to me And forbid them not." Prayer for th?< Stranger. A young lady from one the British provinces lately came to Boston seeking employment. In a church she attended, the pastor's prayer had some fervent petitions for the strs.nser. Her heart was greatly affected upon ail allusion 80 interesting to herself. She felt she waa eared for, though unknown to the preacher, and though far from her own home. She must attend that church again, under the influence of such an attraction. At her next attendance a sermon about the Prodigal Son, gave her impressions speedily resulting in her conversion and union with the church. She has returned to her distant home, rejoicing in such a blessed result of her visit to that city, and never to forget the pastor whose prayer for the stranger had an issue of which he had not dreamed, and which will give ne?* stimulus to the fervor of his interest in behalf of strangers and visitors there from dis-j tant lands. Cannot other preachcrs see their own duty and privilege in the fact above related? '-I was a stranger, and TTO f Aa1? W n in 1J ju ivua JJXC iU, A Prayer. A lady, who has used the following old and beautiful prayer during many years of happy married life, feels that were its spirit in the minds of those who enter the relation of husband aad wife there would be less work for divorce courts. "Lord, bless and preserve that dear person whom thou has chosen to be my husband;, let his life be long and blessed, comfortable and holy, and let mo also become a great blessing and a eomfort unto him, a sharer in all his sorrows, a meet helper in all his accidents and changes in the world; make me amiable forever in his eyes, and forever dear to him. Unite his heart to me in the dearest love and holiness, and mine to him in all sweetnes?, charity and compliance; keep me from all ungentleness and discontentedness and unreason ableness of passion ana numor, ana make mc humble and obedient, useful and observant, that we may delight in each other according to thy blessed word, and both of us may rejoice in thee, having our portion in the love .vid service of God forever. Amen." Whit to Trtcli th? llefttlten. If a live heathen wants to know what has become of his dead ancestors, let prompt reply ' e: "I cannot nay more than that the judge of all the earth will do right and that there never can be In this world or the next, any just cause for complaining of God's dealings with any human soul," and there stop. If a distressed Pagan mother wants to know what has become of her dead child, let the preciouB words of Christ be quoted, who said: ''Of such is the kingdom of heaven." No man, preacher or layman, We want no new machinery. We want workmen as missionaries who are not ashamed or afraid to teach as Christ taught,and who will not insist on teach? ing some other way.?[Independent. Perhaps a little straightforward preaching and teaching of the command of Christ to his disciples, to go . into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, on the part of both preachers and theological seminarians, leaving all inferences about the future state of the heathen to take care of themselves, would serve to increase tne nuraoer 01 missionary students and the amount of missionary contributions as well. The most successful soldiers are those wh:> at home or abroad, can safely go further in either case. The unrevealed ways of God in the future world are past finding out. We say let the American Board travel in the paths of revealed truth. Let them ask the help of men to enter the open fields of the world in order to preach the gospel to every creature, leaving all their speculations about the dead and future probation behind them, obey orders without asking questions, and the most successful propagandists of Christianity have been those who preached the facts of the gospel ana did not split hairs ab ut questions that no human being knows anything about. ?[Philadelphia Times. Aigument may silence an objector, but scarcely ever wins the heart. It is the exhibition of divine love that melts. The darkness of night is scattered impe ceptibly and noiselessly by the rising sun.?|W. Cochrane. Ullt 01 U4 ) samples OI W1LIC CAUU11QCU in Paris last month, 450 were declared injurious. The report, of course, only refered to the presence of deleterious foreign ingredients. How many wine drinkers have any conception of the nasty and deadly concoctions they are using in a vain attempt to use something which "will not injure." ' The saloon," says the Toledo Blade, "is a political factor of dire jpdrtent to the nation." ?^ i TEMPERANCE. To Take It Is Folljr. Strong Drink is a sower Of malice and strife, A poison that cankers The fountains of life. Strong Drink's a deceiver, As thousands have found; He tells me that pleasure With him shall abound. Strong Drink is a jailer; Ah! has he not bound Ten thousand poor drur.kards Like slaves to the ground? '< ?S. Knowles, in Temperance Banner. "A Lous Step Forward In Maine." The large number of indictments 1 againat liquor sellers found by the grand j jury at >;he present term of court speaks of an a^ akened public sentiment against j liquor itelling, and increased efficiency ] ii.- i. li.'a I ! uu ilie pare ui piiuiiu uuiuuua ill luc tuforcemeat of the law. We think the ' opponents of prohibitory laws, who dc- ^ clare that public sentiment has weakened 1 in regard to the enforcement of the laws i and the promotion of temperance forget with what great difficulty indictments were obtained against liquor sellers when the first prohibitory law was enacted, and 1 deceive themselves in regard to the pro- ! gress of public opinion upon this matter. ] In the early days of prohibition very | few liquor indictments were found by < grand juries. County attorneys would 1 not give the law a faithful support. In ^ many c:ises they instructed grand juries , decidedly against it. Sheriffs and muni- , cipal officers were- opposed to enforce- < ment, 01 so slow to act for fear of offending the liquorselling interest that their efforts were of no avail.. But as time has gone j on, juries, officers, and public have been passing through an educational process, < so that officers now enforce the law im- 1 partially and faithfully as they do any ^ other law, grand juries will indict according to the evidence of guilt pres^nted, and the public will not only sustain officers in doing their duty, but demand its faithful performance. There has been a long step forward in Maine in regard to the enforcement of the prohibitory liquor laws during the last thirty years. Whatever liquor dealers may say to the countrary, the consumption of intoxicating liquors in Maine has vastly decreased during that time, and public j opinion has as certainly gone forward in g favor of measures for the suppression of a the liquor traffic. The prohibitory prih t ciple is- engrafted upon the constitution jj of the State by the will and act of the people, there to remain as long as the f State stands. The large list of indict- v ments found in Kennebec County at the 0 present term is significant of the people's * wishes and demands for the strict en- j. forcement of the laws for the suppression i of drinking shops, and vigorous work ? against those who are engaged in the il- . legal traffic. The friends of temperance are goiigshoulder to shoulder against the a traffic, which is evil and nothing but evil, a and they will drive it into closer quarters * than it has ever yet occupied. We trust * the law will be executed with a firm'and impartial hand, so that no guilty man may be allowed to escapc. Let the tern- r perancc laws be enforced as faithfully as y other laws are. If men will transgress o the law s against dram-selling, of which D they cannot be ignorant, let them suffer v the penalty. They have nobody to blame but themselves for whatever punishment 1 may be meted out to them, for they knew ^ from the commencement that their busi- ^ ness was illegal and that they were liable n to prosecution and punishment.?Augui- n ta (Me.) Journal. t e "The Foe of Good Government. ^ The saloon has few friends?none to 0 be proud of. There is no body, whose gl presence is not a menace to the commu- o nity, who would not like to see the saloon e go, and go to stay. It has been a P law-breaker. It has been a place that has ^ thrived either on the weakness or the vice n of humanity. It has not given value re- S ceived. It has been the rendezvous of C; the criminal, the friend of no one but ; si the poor-house and the prison. If all j this was not enough to condemn it and & to secure sentence of banishment, then ti let it be remembered that the saloon has not the decency of conscious indecency. It thrusts itself forward, and, a law- sj breaker itself, seeks to dictate legislation. The foe of good government, it brought its stench and its ill-gotten pelf into politics, and actually commanded t< all parties to do obedience to it. It 81 forced the issue. In its foolhardiness it r( n left the choice between its supremacy or n extinction. If it had possessed the mod- h esty even of half common sense, it might E have lingered in Iowa for some years yet. ^ It was as impudent as Vile, and now it w has got it in the neck, and good enough o four it. Even its victims are glad to hear b 11 i _ e ii _ _ l _i l 'it. . ^ me aoor 01 me saioon sju snut wnu a ' c vigorous bang. Those, too, who served it in fear, now that there is nothing to d fear, laugh at its calamity. The friends f< of the saloon?who are they, anyhow?? ^ Sioux City (la.) Journal. England's Crime. J3 The following is an extract from an e address recently delivered by Archdeacon ^ Facrar in Prince's Hall, London: t< "The days were when this drink traffic, o tl with lower and weaker nations, was *' nothing but au error; but now that we ^ know the result of it?now that we have st flagrant proof of the havoc it has caused 1 among them, it has ceased to lie an error, and it has bccome*a crime. I venture to express the feeling of this great meeting, and say that, as regards the continuance of the drink traffic, with these lower and weaker and more passionately cxcited and more easily tempted raccs?in the muno of Scripture, in the name of morality. in the name of suffcrin? nations, in the name of a merciful and compassionate Gad, we denounce it as a crime." Of 119 graduates of Delaware College, Delaware, Ohio, ninety-seven are Prohibitionists. "" 1T7. 7 ' ? * ^ A ' " - v , / THE HOME DOCTOR. flow to Core Warts. Place the thumb upon the wart, and press it against the bone. Move the warfc back and forth upon the bone until the roots Decome irritated or sore, wnen me wart will disappear. I have had quite a number upon my hands, and have got rid of all of them in the above manner.? Scientific American. * The Be9t Time to Bathe. It is best to bathe just before going to bed, as any danger of catching cold is thus avoided, and the complexios is improved by keeping warm for several hours after leaving the bath. A couple of pounds of bran put into a thin bag and then in the bath tub is excellent for softening the skin. It should be left to soak in a small quantity of water several hours before being used. The internal aids to a clear complexion are most of them well known, and the present season is the best for a thorough cleansing and purifying of the blood. The old-fashioned remedy of sulphur and molasses is considered among the best. Charcoal J .J ? . 3 1_ A !J puwuereu anu taKcn wuu water is saui to be excellent, but. is most difficult to take. A strictly vegetable and fruit diet is followed by many for one or two weeks. ?Ltndon Lancet. * Medical Uses of Common Salt. The power of the soda used in cooking to relieve the pain of burns is now extensively known. Its usefulness is enhanced by its being so common as to be usually within reach. Somewhat akin to this is the efficacy of table salt in certain forms sf inflammation. It is a remedy that 5nds a place in nearly all countries and households. But the very fact that these articles are 30 familiar in domestic use makes it difficult to regard them as powerful remeiies. It would be quite otherwise if thej were rare, and could be obtained only of j the druggist. It may not be amiss, therefore, to refer to what is marvelous in their chemical composition. The base, or fundamental element, in ;ach is the same,?a most wonderful 1 netal, which burns with an intense flame 1 when heated to a temperature twenty- 1 ;wo degrees less than that of boiling i water. This metal is sodium. Combine t in the proper proportion with carbonic 1 icid,?the gas thrown off from burning 1 :oal,?and "soda," or, more properly, jicarDonare 01 soaa, is proaucea. .Lei i t combine with chlorine, which forms, | n chemical union with lime, one of our nost powerful disinfectants, and we have he familiar salt of our tables. It should be impressed on the minds ol >ur readers that there is the highest nedical authority for the statement that here is nothing better than common salt or any ordinary inflammation of the hroat, mouth, or nasal passages. Disolve a dessert spoonful in a coffee cup, ,nd gargle the solution, or snuff it up he nose until it comes out" into the back nouth. Repeat two or three times a [ay until cured. Dr. Thackery, of Philadelphia, has ound that salt is effective in the most iolent attacks of erysipelas, and, moreiver, leaves no unsightly scars behind, le uses a saturated solution that is as trongas it can be made, and simply keeps he parts covered with a cloth wet with t. At the same time he cools the system eith a dose of Epsom salts, mixed with emon juicc, and orders a light farinaeous diet. As erysipelas is sudden in. its attacks, ,nd so speedy in its action, those located .t a distance from doctors, would do well o make a special note of this?Youth?t lompanion. . An Astonished Secretary. A story is told in the Washington corespondence of the - Baltimore Sun of < oung lady, the daughter of a dead armj j fficer, who. to assist in supporting hei . lother and sister, applied foran appointlent in the Treasury Department. Th? writer says: John Sherman was then secretary, "he courageous little girl called upon the lecretary and stated her case. She said he was willing to do almost anything tat would enable her to provide for hei lother. The Secretary said he had othing for her to do, but assured het tiat he would cheerfully assist her whefnver an opportunity presented itself. The :ttle girl insisted that there was plenty f work around the department which ught to be done, and she expressed herjlf willing to turn her hand to any grade f employment. She became so persist* at that the Secretary was at a loss for a retext to get rid of her. She surveyed im from head to foot, and observing tiat his boots were not well shlned, relarked with much earnestness: "Mr. herman, I think there is something I an do tor you, if you will permit me, nd that is to give your boots a first-class g bine. Mv case is more desperate than ou imagine, and I will accept a position ^ 3 departmental bootblack." The Secre- j iry was so astonished that it was several r ;conds before he recovered sufficiently j ) direct his clerk to have the young lady ppointed to a $900 clerkship. She has j ince married and is doing well. j. ?? a Killing Robbers In Mexico. s While the robbers were ransacking tho a jwn a dozea men ran to the shore, cut * mall holes in the boats in which the c obbers came, and plugged them with ? md. The boats were launched and the larauders set out on their return voyage, c ighly elated at the successful raid. * ?efore going a mile, however, the water J effan to soften the clay and the huge * )g dug-outs began to fill. Every effort s ras made to reach the shore, but the t penings increased rapidly and soon the 9 oats were full of water and the occupants * 'ere obliged to jump overboard aud * ling to the sides of their submerged rafts to keep from drowning. About * aylight, a company of 100 men was 1 >rmed and set out in boats to the spot 1 rhere the lialf-drowned men were still I anging to their crafts. Some, however, 8 ad lost their hold and had sunk to the 8 ottom, while the others were so T xhausted that they were unable to make f ny resistance. The fishermen attacked * iicm and soon not a robber was left to * jll the tale of their defeat. The bodies ^ f the dead men sank tt) the bottom of 8 lie lake, where they remained for days. 0 laving dispatched the marauders, the 0 oats were towed ashore and all of the . tolen property recovered.?rittdurQ 11 "tines. 2 A Tragedy of the Times. | His occiput was shattered, ,. And his frontal lob? was battered, Z And his brains were badly scattered n On the ground; P His back was dislocated, And his elbows both mismated, {< And his flesh was desiccat.d ' All around. He was punished for what reason! n Was it arson, murder, treason? f. No; once more has come the season Of baseball. f e was from no cannon firerl, ut by rival nines was hired And?poor fellow?he umpired, h That was all. p -Tid-Bits. J V.; .^^24".' /j;"-: ' .X* NATAL CADETS/ ; ' admiral porter describe# * the annapolis academy. ' how it was established?what i# r$ required of would-be papilg-? t) r? r\ea CllituK ouja iui vuiucrs in the Navy, Etc. It would be tedious, says Admiral David Porter, in Youth's Companion, to enumerate the many efforts made by naval officers to obtain an appropriation from Congress for the establishment of s naval school; but the parsimony which ruled the national Legislature prevented their success, and until 1845, nothing of d consequence was effected in the direction of a higher education for those who were to command our ships and squadrons. But a new era dawned upon the navy with the appointmentof Mr. George Bancroft as Secretary of the Navy. Mr. Bancroft was a man of learning, who thoroughly appreciated the value of education to a body of officers who were expected to properly represent their country abroad in more tnan.one capacity. Mr. Bancroft one day asked an officer J of the navy what he could best do to . ' make his administration of naval affairs remembered. ''Establish a Naval Academy, sir," was the answer, "and the navy will remember you forever." "It shall bo done," said the Secretary-; and aoon afterward, with the simple means then at the disposal of the Navy Department, including a number of competent naval instructors, the academy was established, on the 10th of October, 1845, at "Fort Severn," its present site. ^ i Fort Severn was an old army post established by the Government in 1808, at a time when Annapolis was considered a point of military importance. The grounds and buildings were transferred by the War to the Navy Department^ .r~-/ The officers1 quarters, storehouses, etc.,. were utilized for the accommodation of the midshipmen and their instructors^ and other buildings added from time to as they were required, and as the necessary funds could be procured from Congress. At this day the Academy has assumed, jo far as the appliances for education aro concerned, an equality with West Point, the course of study being equally scientific, though varied to suit the require- t ments of the naval profession. Great efforts are made by many young gentlemen, from the age of fourteen up to the age of eighteen, to obtain the appointment of cadet at the Naval Academy. Those who visit the place- aro jtruck by the air of comfort and good order that pervades every department. The large building for the accommodfr-. lion of the cadets, with its commodious iloaninn QTioptmonts r?p(>nt5nn.rnom9 And "JT"' 1 1 . spacious dining-hall. with its well-spread board, all look very tempting to the average youth, by comparison with the attractions of the boarding-schooL Then comes a course of worrying parents and friends to obtain an appoint-. neat at this admirable institution, where ? cadet receives a salary of five hundred lollars a year besides his education, and :he prospect, in the ftiture, of traveling ibout the world in Government vessels free of expense, and obtaining that prececal knowledge which is not to be ob;ained in books. But now comes the question: What cind of boy does the Government want to iducate for the position of an officer? It a certainly not one who enters the navy nercly to obtain a life position and amuse limself in traveling, although such moires may be natural to youth; bufthe Government is a stern master, with no ympathy for anything outside the strict ine of duty. The Naval Academy was established " n order that the cadets should obtain, . luring their four years' course, the professional and general information neceslary to enable the Government to utilize j :heir services, particularly in-time of ivar. To succeed in the navy a man must t>e a worker, a thinker and a student, rhe elements of navigation learned from K>me old merchant captain in years gone 1 J _ .i. t Jj WOUm nui/ UUSlYCr 1UI llic uavai VUAVV4 )f to-day, and although, like his preiecessors, merely "food for gunppwder," ^ le will have the satisfaction of dyinar with, his head filled with calculus, ana ;horoughIy imbued with those beautiful levices for the destruction of life and property. There is no institution where so many mbjects bearing on the naval profession ire studied as at the Annapolis Academy, mding in the fourth year of the course vith the higher branches of mathematics, laval architecture and construction,' rnval tactics, ordnance, steam, fortifica;ion, drawing, international law, and a rariety of practical exercises and detail tudies. A professor from Harvard University, vho was recently a member of the Annual ioard of Examiners at Annapolis, prolounced the Academy course to be better earned, considering the variety of subects studied, than that at Cambridge. 3ut these were not ordinary boys whom he professor commended; they were exnmrvloa nf thfi "survival of the fittC8t," elections from the fourth, third, second tnd first classes, weeded out from course o course, until but a fraction of the original number remained in the Academy. It may be thought that the acadcmie :ourse is unnecessarily severe, and that he Government cxacts too much in tha vay of theoretical study from the cadets; >ut if ten only in every hundred who tart in the race reach the highest honors, hat is a reason why the Government hould aim at a high standard, for it is >etter to get ten accomplished scholars han a larger number of indifferent ones. There is a reason for everything, and it s certain that those who reach tne winling post, in a majority of instances, owe heir success to the fact that they were >roperly prepared when they entered the icaaemy; that they were of robust contitution, and active habits; that they rere steady, and methodical, and careul to conform to the rules and regalaions established for the government of he institution; and, to crown all, exlibited that adaptability for the naval crvice which counts so much with the fficers who are the practical instructors f the cadets. When the Goveinment has succeeded a adding an officer with these high acuirements to the navy, it is a subject or congratulation,.although the cost in loncy for each graduate is, at least, ~~^ i ?of ill turn ana ever/ gntuumvu^ ...... .... cars to serve at sea before passing his nal examination, which establishes his osition on the navy register. The position of an officer in the navy ? accessible to any brave boy, having the ecessary physical and mental qualificaions, who, after securing his appointletit, will look the ordeal sqnarely in the ace, and make up his mind to meet it. ??j Among the things cheapened by disoncst tricks is '-skimmed" oil of pep?rmint, by which is meant the oil d?? rived of its menthol.