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REV. DR. TALMAGE. THK UKUUKLXfl mvinjCiS ove%DAY SERMON. :Subject: "Holding the Rope."? (Preached at Martha's Vineyard.) Text: "Through a window in a basket tvas I let down by the wall."?II Cor. xi., 33. Sermons on Paul in jail, Paul on Mars Hill, Paul in shipwreck, Paid before the Sanhedrim, , Paul before Felix are plentiful, but in my text we have Paul in a basket. Damascus is a city of white and glistening architecture, sometimes called "the eye of the East," sometimes called "pearl surrounded by emeralds," at one time distinguished for swords of the best material, called Damascus blades, and upholstery of richest fabric called damasks. A horseman by the name of Saul, riding toward this city, had been thrown from the saddle. The horse had dropped under a flash from the sky, which at the same time was so bright it blinded the rider for many days, and, 1 think, so permanently injured his eyesight that this defect of vision became the thorn in the flesh he afterw ard speaks of. He started for Damascus to butcher Christians, but after that hard fall from bis horse he was a changed man and preached Christ in Damascus till the city was shaken to its foundation. The Mayor gives authority for his arrest, And the popular cry is "Kill him! hill him!" The city is surrounded by a high wall and the gates are watched by the police lest the Cicilian preacher escape. Many of the houses were built on the wall,and their balconies projected clear over and hovered above the gardens outside. It was customary to lower caskets out of these balconies and pull up fruits and flowers from the gardens. To this day visitors at the monastery at Mount Sinai are lifted and let down in baskets. Detectives prowled around from house to house looking for Paul, but his friends hid him, now in one place, now in another. He is no coward, as fifty incidents in his life demonstrates. But he feels his work is not done yet, and so he evades assassinaC4 T? fKa fAQITI. LIULl. xs luau yi uiuuu uu u vuw ing mob shout at one house door. " Is that fanatic here ?" the police shout at another house door. Sometimes on the street incognito he passes through a crowd of clenched li3ts ana sometimes he secretes himself on the housetops. At last the infuriated populace get on sure track of him. They have positive evidence that he is in the house of one of the Christians, the balcony of whose home reaches over the wall. Here he is! Here he is!" The vociferation and blasphemy and howling of the pursuers are at the front door. They break in. "Fetch out that gospelizer, and let us bang his head on the city gate. Where is he!" I The emergency was terrible. Providentially there was a good stout basket in the house. [ Paul's friends fasten a rope to the basket. Paul steps into it The basset is lif te 1 to the edge of the balcony on the wall, and then while Paul holds on to the rope with both hands, his friends lower away, carefully and cautiously, slowly but surely, further "down and further down, until the basket strikes the earth and the apostle steps out, and afoot and alone starts on that famous missionary tour, the story of which has astonished earth and heaven. Appropriate entry in Paul's diary of travels: "Through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall." Observe, first, on what a slender tenure great results hang. The ropemaker who twisted that cord fastened to that lowering basket never knew how much would depend upon the strength of it How if it had been broken and the apostle's life had been dashed out? What would have become of the Christian church? All that magnificent missionary work in Pamphilia, Cappadocia, Galatia, Macedonia would never have been accomplished. All his writings that make up so indispensable and enchanting a part of the New Testament would never have been written. The story of resurrection would never have been so gloriously told as he told it. That example of heroic and triumphant endurance at Philippi, in the Mediterranean Euroclydon, under flagellation and at his beheading, would not have kindled the courage of ten thousand martyrdoms. But that rope holding that basket, how much depended on it! So, again and again, great results have hung on what seemed slender circumstances. Did ever ship of many thousand tons crossing the sea have such important passenger as had once a boat of leaves from taffrail to stern, only three or four feet, the vessel made waterproof by a coat of bitumen, and floating on the Nile with the infant lawgiver of the Jews on board? What if some crocodile should crunch it? What if some of the cattle wading in for a drink should sink it? Vessels of war sometimes carry forty guns looking through the port holes, ready to open battle. But that tiny craft on the ]Silo seems to be armed with all the guns of thunder that bombarded Sinai at the lawgiving. On how fragile craft sailed how much historical im' nnrtiinMi The parsonage at Epworth, England, is on fire in the night, and the father rusned through the hallway for the rescue of his children. Seven children are out and safe on the ground, but one remains in the consuming building. That one wakes, and finding his bed on fire and the building crnmbling, comes to the window, and two peasants make a ladder of their bodies, one peasant standing on the shoulder of the other, and down the human ladder the boy dscends?John Wesley. If you would know how much depended on that ladder of psasants, ask the millions of Methodists on both sides of the sea. Ask their mission stations all around the world. Ask their hundreds of thousands already ascended to join their founder, who would have perished but far the living stairs of peasants' shoulders. An English ship stopped at Pitcairn Island and right in the midst of surroundcannibalism and squalor the passengers discovered a Christian colony of churches and schools and beautiful homes and highest style of religion and civilization. For fiftyyears no m ssionary and no Christian influence had landed there. Why this oasis of light amid a desert of heathendom? Sixty years before a ship had met disaster and one of the sailors, unable to save anything else went to his trunk and took out a Bible which his mother had placed there and swam ashore, the Bible held in his teeth. The book was read on all sides until the rough and vicious population were evangelized, and a church was started and an enlightened commonwealth established, and the world's History nas no more oriiuaut pa^e man mau which tells of the transformation of a nation by one book. It did not seem of much importance whether the sailor continued to hold the book in his teeth or let it fall in the breakers, but upon what small circumstance depended what mighty results! Practical inference: There are no insignificances in our lives. The minutest thing is part of a magnitude. Infinity is made up of infinitesimals. Great things an aggregation of small things. Bethlehem manger pulling on a star in the eastern sky. One book in a drenched sailor's mouth the evangelization of a multitude. One boat of papyrus on the Nile freighted with events for all ages. The fate of Christendom in a basket let down from a window 011 the wall. What you do, do well. If you make a rope make it strong and true, for you know not how much may depend 011 your workmanship. If you fashion a boat let it be waterproof, lor you know not who may sail in it. If {ou put a Bible in the trunk of your boy as e goes from home, let it be heard in your prayers, for it may have a mission as far reaching as the book which the sailor carried in bis teetti to ttie ntcairn oeacn. ? ue plainest man's life is an island between two eternities?eternity past rippling against his shoulders, eternity to come touching his brow. The casual, the accidental, that which merely happened so, are parts of a great plan, and the rope that lets the fugitive apostle fl-wui the Damascus wall is the cable that holds to its mooring the ship of the church in the northeast storm of the centuries. Again, notice unrecognized and unrecorded services. Who spun that rope! Who tied it to the basket ? Who steadied the illustrious preacher as he stepped into u ? Who relaxed not a muscle of the arm ?r dismissed an anxious look from his face until the basket touched tho ground and discharged its magnificsnt cargo ? Not one of their names has come to us, l?ut there was no worK aone mat- uay iu ^ in all the earth compared with the importance of their work. "What if they had in the agitation tied a knot that could slip ? What if the sound of the mob at the door had led them to say: " Paul must take care of himself, and we "will take care of ourselves?1' No, no! They held the rope, and in doing so did more for the Chris- J tian church than any thousand of us will ?ver accomplish. But God knows and has made eternal record of their undertaking, j And they know. How exultant they must I have felt when they read his letters to the Romans, to the Corinthians, to the Galatians, ' to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, to Cbe Collossians, to the Thessalonians, to Timothy, to Titus, to Philemon, to the Hebrews, and when they heard how he walked out of prison with the earthquake unlocking the door for him, and took command of the Alexandrian corn ship when the sailors were nearly scared to death, and prea. hed a sermon thrit nearly shook Felix off his judgment seat. I hear the men and women who helped him down throuzh the window and over tha wall talking in private over the matter, and saying? ''How glad I am that we effected that rescue! In coming times other's may get the glory of Paul's work, but no one shall rob us of the satisfaction of knowing that we held the rope. Once for thirty-six hours we expected everj* moment to go to the bottom of the o.'ean. The waves struck through the skyj lights and rushed down into the hold of the ship and hissed against the boilers. It was an j awful time; but, by the blessing of God and the faithfulness of the men in charge, we came out of the cyclone and we arrived at home. Each one before leaving the ship thanked Captain Andrews. I do not think there was a man or woman that went off I that ship without thanking Captain Andrews, j and when years after I heard of his death I was impelled to write a letter of condoi lenco to his family in Liverpool. Evi erybody recognized the goodness, the cour! age, the kindness of Captain Andrews; but j it occurs to me now that we never thanked the engineer. He stood away down in the | darkness amid the hissing furnaces doing his | whole duty, ivosody tnanKea cne engineer, but God recognized liis heroism and his continuance and his fidelity, and there will bo just as high reward for the engineer who worked out of sight as for the captain who ! stood on the bridge of the ship in the midst j of the howling temre;t. There are said to be about 69,000 ministers of religion in this country. About 50,000 I warrant came from early homes which had I to struggle for the necessaries of life. The sons of rich bankers and merchants generally become bankers and merchants. The most of those who become ministers are the sons of | those who had terrific struggle to get their everyday bread. The collegiate and theologij cal education of that son took every luxury I from the parental table for eight years. The other children were more scantily appareled. The sou at college every little wnile got a I bundle from home. In it were the socks that mother had knit, sitting up late at night, her sight not as good as once it was. And there also were some ' delicacies from the sister's hand for the voracious appetite of a hungry student. The father swung the heavy cradle through the wheat, the sweat rolling from his chin bedewing every step of the way, and then sitting down under the cherry tree at noon thinking to himself: "I am fearfully tired,but it will pay if I can once see that boy through college, and if I can know that he will be preaching the Gospel after I am dead." The younger children* want to know why they can't nave this and that as others do, and the mother says: "Be patient, my children, until your brother graduates, and then you shall have more luxuries; but we must see that boy through." The years go by, and the son has been ordained ana is preaching the glorious Gospel, and a great revival comes, and souls by scores and hundreds accept the Gospel from the lips of that young preacher, and father and mother, quite old now, are visiting the son at that villago parsonage, and at the close of a Sabbath of mighty blessing father and mother retire to their room, the son lighting the way and asking them if he can do anything to make them more comfortable, saying if they want anything in the night just to knock on the walL And then, all alone, father and mother talk oyer the gracious influences of the day and say: "Well, it was worth all we went through to educate that boy. It was a hard pull, but we held on till the work was done. The world may not know it, but, mother, we held the rope, didn't we*" And the voice, tremulous with joyful emotion, responds: 4"Yes, father, we held the ropa. I feel my work is done. Now, Lor J, lett st Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation. ''Pshaw!" says the father. "I never felt so much like living in my life as now. I want to S3e what that fellow is going on tu uu, ue iius uegun so wen. Something occurs to me quite personal. I was the youngest of a large family of children. My parents were neither rich nor poor; four of the sons wanted collegiate education, and four obtained it, but not without great home straggle. We never heard the old ueople say once that they were denying themselves to effect this, but I remember now th it my parents always looked tired. I don't think they ever got rested until they lay down in the Somerville cemetery. Mother would sit down in the evening and say: "Well, I don't kuow what makes me feel fo tired!" Father would fall immediate'y to sleep, seated by the evening stand overcome with the day's fatigues. One of the four brothers, after preaching the gospel for about fifty years, entered upon his heavenly rest. Another of the four is on the other side of the earth, a missionary of the cross. Two of us are in this land in the home ministry, and I think all of us are willing to acknowledge our obligations to the old folks at home. About twenty-one years ago the one, and about twenty-three years ago the other, put down the burdens of this life, but + bUCJ ana UU1U UI1C X O, men and women here assemblad, you brag sometimes how you have fought your way in the world, but I think there have been helpful influences that you have never fully acknowledged. Has there not been some influence in your early or present home that the world cannot see? Does there not reach to you from among the New England hills, or from western prairie, or from southern plantation, or from English or Scottish or Irish home a cord of influence that has kept you right when you would have gone astray, and which, after you had made a crooked track, recalled you? The rope may be as long as thirty years, or five hundred miles long, or three thousand miles long, but hands that went out of mortal sight long ago will hold the rope. You want a very swift horse, and you need to rowel him with sharpest spurs, and to let the reins lie loose upon the neck, and to give a shout to the racer, if you are going to ride out of reach of your mother's prayers. Why, a ship crossing the Atlantic in six days can't sail away from that. A sailor finds them on the lookout as he takes his place, and finds them on the mast as he climbs the ratlines to disentangle a rope in the tempest, and finds them swinging on the hammock when he turns in. Why not be frank and acknowledge it?the most of us would long ago have been dashed to pieces had not gracious and loving hands steadily, lovingly and mightly held the rope. But there must como a time when we shall find out who these Damascenes were who lowered Paul in the basket, and greet them and all thosa who have rendered to God and the world unrecognized and unrecorded services. That is going to be one of tho glad excitements of heaven, the hunting up and picking out of those who did great good on earth and got no credit for it. Here the church has Deen going on for nineteen centuries. and yet the world has not recognized the services or the people in taat Damascus balcony. Charles G. Finney said to a dying Christian : ' Give my love to St. Paul when you meet him." When you and I meet him, as we will, I shall ask him to introduce me to those people who got him out of the ' Damascene peril. \ We go into long sermons to prove that we win be able to recognize people in heaven, when there is one reason we fail to present, and that isbett;r than all?God will intro- , duce us. We shall have them all pointed out. j You would not be guilty of the impoliteness i of having friends in your parlor not introduced, and celestial politeness will demand that we be made acquainted with all the heavenly household. vVhat rehearsal of old times and recital of stirring reminiscences! If others fail to give introduction, God will take us through, and before our first twenty-four hours in heaven?if it were calculated by earthly timepieces?have passed, we shall meet and talk with more heavenly celebrities than in our entire mortal state we met with earthly celebrities. Many who made great noise of usefulness will sit on the last seat by the front door of the heavenly temple, while right up within arm's reach of the heavenly throne will be many who, though they could not preach themselves or do great exploits for God, Vinlrl fV?r> rnra UC?Ci baoicoo HViu VMW ** '1 v* Come, let us go right up and accost thos;> on ttiis circle of heavenly thrones. Surely they must have killed in battle a million men. burely they must have been buried with all the cathedrals sounding a dirge and all the towers of all the cities tolling the national grief. Who art thou, mighty one of heaven? "I lived by choice the unmarried daughter in an humble home that I might take care of my parents in their old age. and I endured without complaint all their querulousness and administered to all their wants for twenty years." Let us pass on round the circle of thrones. "Who art thou, mighty one of heaven? "I was for thirty years a Christian invalid, and suffered all the while, occasionally writing a | note of sympathy for those worse off than I, and was general confident of all those who had trouble, and once in a while I was strong enough to make a garment for that poor family in the back lane." Pass on to another throne. Who art thou, mighty one of heaven? "I was the mother who raised a whole family of children for God, and they are out in the world Christian merchants, Christian mechanics, Christian wives, and I have had full reward of all my toil." Let us pass on in the circles of thrones. "I had a Sabbathschool class, and they were always on my God. and I am waiting for their arrival." But who art thou, the mighty one of heaven on this other throne. "In time of bitter persecution I owned a house in Damascus, a house on the wall. A man who preached Christ was hounded from street to street and I hid him from the assassins, and when I found them breaking in my house and I could no j longer keap him safely, I advised him to flee i for his life, and a basket was let down over I the wall with the maltreated man in it and I j was one who helped hold the rope." And I ! said: "Is that all?" And he answered: ' That is all." And while I was lost in amazement I heard a strong voice that sounded as though it might once have been hoarse from many exposures and triumphant as though it might have belonged to one of the martyrs, and it said: "Not many mighty, not many noble are called, but God nath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, and base things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea and thing3 which are not to bring to naught things which are, that no flesh should glory in His presence." And I looked to see from whence ohc voice come, and lot it was the very one who had said: "Through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall." Henceforth-think of nothing as insignificant. A little thing may decide your all. A Cunarder put out from England for New York. It was well equipped, out in putting nn n sf.nvn in t-.hfi nilnf. hr>T n nnil wns ririvpn too near the compass. You know how* that nail would affect the compass. The ship's officer, deceived by that distracted compass, put the ship 200 miles off her course, and suddenly the man on the lookout cried: "Land ho!" and the ship wa,s halted within a few yards of her demolition on Nantucket shoals. A sixpenny nail came near wrecking a Cunarder. Small ropes hold mighty destinies. A minister seated in Boston at his table, lacking a word puts his hand bihind his head and tilts back his chair to think, and the ceiling falls and crushes the table and would have crushed him. A minister in Jamaica, at night by the light of an insect, called the candle fly, is kept from stepping over a precipice a hundred feet. F. W. Robertson, the celebrated English- clergyman, said that he entered the ministry from a train of circumstances started by the barking of a dog. Had the wind blown one way on a certain day, the Spanish Inquisition would have been established in England; but it blew the other way, and that dropped the accursed institution with 75,000 tons of shipping to the bottom oi . the sea, or flung the splintered logs on the rocks. Nothing unimportant in your life or mine. Three noughts placed on the right side of the figure one make a thousand, and six noughts on the right side of the figure one million, and our nothingness placed on the right sid? may be augmentation illimitable. All th? ages of time and eternity a floe ted by the basket let down from a Damascus balcony. FACTS i'OK THIS LLIUVLS. The Vedic hymns are an old Hindostanee collection of songs dating back probably 4,000 years. In Laredo, Texas, they raise onions weighing two and one-half pounds and measuring twenty inches in circumference. A curfew ordinance at Tombstone, Arizona, requires every one under eighteen years of age to go home at the ringing of a bell at 8 :i>0 p. M. Egypt declined with the rise of Greece; in fact, she never recovered from the effects of the atrocious Persian invasion under Cambyses, 52-5 B. C. The first auction ever held was in Great Britain, in 1700, when Elishur, a Governor of Fort George, in the East Indies, publicly sold the goods he had brought home to the highest bidder. mi *1 i-U ~ J mere was receuuy uucanucu ui nutn.souville, 111., while excavations were being made for the asylum for the insane, an apple which is believed to have been buried fourteen years. The apple was in good condition considering its age. In the strawberry regions of New Jersey a cigar box is nailed on a tree close to the roadside in front of every farmhouse. It is placed there to receive the latest quotations for fruit. These quotations are telegraphed from the leading cities three times a day, and are distributed by messengers mounted on bicycle. The fruit grower determines by the quotations whether he will ship his day's picking. The First Balloon. This narrow belt of level ground at Avignon between the foot of the wall and the brink of the Rhone witnessed 105 years ago a very strange and memorable spectacle, writes a correspondent of the New York Times. One fine morning in 1782, just about the time when many of the Frenchmen who had been fighting for American independence were beginning to straggle home again, there was a great excitement in Avignon. Through the river gate the townspeople came pouring by hundreds and by thousands to crowd around a group of local officials and scientific experts who were standing on the bank beside a large silken bag, which was heaving and bulging in a curious way as if it were gradually inflated with air. The better informed among the crowd eagerly announced to their neighbors that the two men who were so busvwith this basrof silk?"two crazy fellows named Montgolfier"?had undertaken to send it up iuto the air as au experiment, having beeu foolish enough to assert the possibility of making similar bags of larger si/.c to navigate the sky just as ships navigate the sea, carrying with them a number of men fully equipped with all necessary stores and implements. The general laugh which greeted the thought of such an extravagant absurdity lud scarcely died away when the unbelievers were confounded to see the silken case (which the "two crazy fellows" had fully inflated by this time) give one final heave and then sail slowly upward into the air, f)as>ing over the town at a hight of several uindred feet. The first balloon had been launched into space. Ice Lenses. The London correspondent of T.e Moniteur de la Photographic writes to* that journal that in the middle of the winter which has just elapsed a student had made a lense of ice. with which he lit r *1 V.rt tllG pipCS 01 SUII1U U1 LUC aivuicia uu vuv Serpentine by means of the solar ray, an experiment, he says, which was first performed in the Polar region by Dr. Scoresby, to the great astonishment of the sailors, for they could not understand why the ice did not freeze the beams of the sun. We may remark that Professor Tyndall at times would set fire, at the Royal Institution, to a little heap of gunpowder with rays from the clectric arc concentrated upon the powder by means of a lens of ice. His explanation was that,although the ice absorbs rays of j certain wave lengths, and is gradually melted thereby, other waves it does not absorb, and these latter produce the heating effect at the focus of the lens. It is wholly a question of the relative motions of the molecules of frozen water and the motions of the waves of light; when there is discord between the two, the discordant waves pass through the ice without absorption.?British Journal of Photography. MAUNA LOA. A TRIP TO THF FAMOUS HAWAIIAN VOLCANO. Views of the Subterranean ITnQnenchable Fires?A Cease less Tide of Fiery Waves Fifty Feet High. A writer for the Boston Herald describes a visit which he paid to Manna I Loa, the celebrated volcano in the Sandwich Islands. The journey to the crater was made from Hilo on horseback and took two days. Taking up the writer's account of the second day's trip, we quote as follows: For another day we endured the discomforts of the saddle, and exposed our well-burned noses to the scorching sun, galloping over the rough lava plains with a rattle of hoofs and jingling of Mexican spurs. Most of the way on this last day, however, was a steady ascent through a forest of large ferns. As we approach the active fires of the volcano the face of the country looks older aud less volcanic than that more distant. The last ten miles are over a level grassy plain 4,000 feet above the the soa, full of low bushes and ferns. The guide points to the column of smoke rolling up from the top of Mauna Loa, and exclaims, "Kilauea," and we begin to feel excitement at this evidence of the subterranean, unquenchable fires, which have had so much to do with the formation of the whole group of the Sandwich Tsllinils Our ia communicated to our horses through the spur, and they break into a gallop which soon brings us to thc-edgeof the crater, and at the same time to the dooryard of a small house caHcd the "Volcano Hotel," | standing in a green and level expanse of lawn, with pretty flower beds and a hedge of roses blooming bountifully and fragrantly iu sweet and smiling contrast to the mouth of the infernal regions so close at hand. Riding through several little clouds and jets of steam issuing from hidden crevices among the bushes, we approach the crater's edge and look eagerly over into the pit below. "We are unon thn ni'lnrp nf n rvrnn!r>i/><? Qflft -x? o rvv'i"v"' feet high, surrounding a pit or sunken hole with an irregular circurafercnce of about nine and a width of about four miles. The. bottom appears to be a floor of black, dead cinder, smooth for the greater part, but near the opposite side swelling up into a tapering hill or cone with a broken, ragged top, from which pour the rolling clouds of smoke which we saw on our way here. In the morning, before beginning the ascent, we have time to stroll about in search of sulphur crystals, or, if so inclined. to take a sulphur bath. The descent into the crater is much facilitated by a terraced formation of the sides of the pit, but it is still a steep and difficult path, even more noticeable on returning. When at 1a?4. ?.-v - 1. 11-- K-i.il J iV - iaoi> * C IC'UUIl U1U UULlUILi WU LLI1U. IUU floor, which from above looked smooth, to be a rough and broken mass of lavablocks, or a brittle cinder which crunches under our feet like a frozen crust of j snow, through which the foot every now j and then breaks, sinking from 6 to 28 J inches to a harder surface beneath. Great, cracks yawn on every side, many of them difficult to leap across, from which issue puffs of steam or smoke. In one place the floor for a large s'pace has 3unk some 200 feet, breaking off abrubtly from the rest, leaving a dangerous and ugly chasm. After about three miles of walking in a circuitous route, we - reach and climb the hiil forming the present crater, within which the forces of j the volcano are most actively at work, j and from which the thick clouds of j smoke come. Here the crusts are very j brittle, and it is impossible to avoid fre- i quently breaking into hot and steaming | holes. Near the toD of the hill are some acres covered with a carpet of natural, y)un glass, or fibrous obsidian, four or five inches thick, and the fine needle-like points of the broker) fibres are very ] troublesome to tnosc unfortunate enough to have ou low shoes. Nwiring the top, ' we hear a sound like the dashing of I waves, and cautiously creeping as near as ; we dare to the brittle and crumbling j edge, we look down upon, a boiling lake j of molten stone or lava, about 150 feet i below us, and half a mile wide. The heat is so intense we cannot look for more than a very few moments at ij. time with-1 out screening the face. It is a ffery sea of j melted lava, whose billows,, dirivcn by i some unknown force, continually roll across to the opposite side and dash against the perpendicular walls of the cliff with the roar and action of breakers, and toss their golden spray 50 feet in the air in drops of liquid fire of a brilliant yellow, changing gradually into a glowing orange;, blood red, i and finally having coolcd and hardened ; into globules of dark stone, fall back again like a spatteriug rain into- the sea of fire. This ceaseless tide of fiery waves is continually beating on these cliffs, and has kindled the lower part of them into a glowing incandescence. At intervals there is an increased commotion in the centre of the lake, a sudden increase ; mnseouution, wnicn swells up tneuquia | mass into angry, boiling an<i seething i waves 30 or 40 feet above the general level, and bursting upward tbrows up a tremendous shower of fiery, golden drops to the huight of 200- feet above the lake, and far higher than where we stand, awestruck at the magnificent spectacle. This shower of glittering jewels passes like all the others through the various changes of color, from yellow to orange, red and dull red, until it agains falls back dull bits of hardening stone into the lake, to be there ;igain melted and tossed upward j in the ceaseless round of volcanic action. The fiery sea itself as well is constantly changing its hues and appearance, prei? J ! / 1 i.. seating new ana vaneu iorm:i 01 ueauiy antl splendor, at which we gaze as long and as well as our scorched eyes will permit, with a never ending wonder and admiration, when at last night fell and the short tropical twilight turned quickly into darkness, the glow of the boiling cauldron, the flashing of the waves and the glitter of theskowersof golden spray, and the changing hues of the falling globules only gained in intensity, brilliancy and weird strangeness, and it was with great reluctance and regret that we at last turned our faces toward the rugged homeward journey. The beauty of the spectacle is perhaps even more remarkable and impressive than its mysterious and awful j grandeur, and the lovely coloring of the lake, the clills, the showers of spray, in their many variations impress r>?n no VMltnll flip mlmIH1< if?ll lit- <1in wonderful working of those tremendous forces which had so much to do with the formation of these islands and perhaps of the whole earth, but of which we know so little. The way back out of these jaws of hell is excessively fatiguing,and at night dangerous, and if we had realized this we ahculd have brought blaukets with us and passed the night at the crater; but, having set out, we pushed oa, aad. -with very grcnt labor and many narrow escape! from dangerous boles and crevices, we reached the hotel at midnight, panting and utterly exhausted. But after a good sleep for the rest of the night we set oat in the morning for Hilo, bidding an et ernal adieu to the fires of Kilauea. Cuba as It Is. The island has more fine harbors than any other country of its size, and it is no wonder that the buccaneers of the Spanish main, selected it as the center of their piratical enterprises. It has two hundred and sixty rivers and plenty of fresh water springs. It never snows in Cuba, though the ice sometimes forms upon the mouutains. The babies can go naked here the year round, and a9 for the stocking trade of Havana, its customers arc confined to the higher classes. Neither stockings nor suspenders are used bv the laborers, and I doubt whether there are one thousand pairs of suspenders worn by the one million five hundred thousand people who make up that island's population. They use instead a belt-strap, and the majority of the workingmen of the island confine their apparel to an undershirt and trowsers. The better class of men dress in white duck, with Panama hats. The lower class of '^mcn wear few underclothes, and a calico wrapper and a pair of heelless slippers are a wardrobe. There are no carpets on the floors nor plaster on ceilings. Iron bars take the place of glass windows, and there is not a chimney nor a cooking stove in Havana. There are no barns, and the horses are washed in the harbors instead of being curried. There are no bricks used in the sidewalks, and the average sidewalk is three feet wide and of stone. The building stone used is a porous one, and this is covcred with stucco. Havana has parks, but there is 110 grass in them, and as for shade, it can be got only by going to the mountains. The policemen carry swords and guns, and the offices of all kinds are filled by Spaniards. There are no mattresses ou the Cuban beds, and as for feather pillows, there are not feathers enough used here to make a wad for the earache. There are few china pitchers used in tr .3 i.1. _ 1 _ r .tiavana, ana-me urmKingmug is 01 porous clay, with a hole at the top, out of which the water is poured into the mouth in a trickling stream. Red brick tiles take the place of shingles and the tops of the houses are used in the evenings for sitting rooms. The gardens of Havana are inside the houses, instead of be' hind them. The Cuban takes oranges, bread and ! butter and coffee for breakfast. He j pares his oranges as we do apples, and ! you find plates of pared oranges before ! you on the table when you sit down to j the morning meal. The way to eat these oranges is to drive a fork into them, ! plant your teeth firmly into the luscious fruit and suck the juice. The Cuban breakfast is taken on rising, and there is another breakfast about 9 or 10 o'clock. This is more like the American meal, and | the whole city knocks off for it. Passing i along the street at this time you may see i families at their meals through the open I windows and doors, and an hour or two 1 later me wnoie town seems 10 oe uiKing a siesta. Dinner is eaten between 5 and ( 6 o'clock, and the stores keep open un- , til about 9 o'clock in the evening.? lime Journal ? Varioii9 Kinds of Cork-Screws. j One would hardly think that more than ] three or four varieties were required, but there are about forty on the market. J They include the ring handle, steel wire iK-rews for demijhons and large bottles; irhe double-Ting, handily-encased pocket screw; the folding screw and the broad wire-handle screw. Some time ago an ice-pick and a cigar-box opener wasmade with a screw , concealed in the steel tube handle. The tube can be slipped off and the ice pick forms the handle of the screw. Another novelty has a brush ia the handle, so that the colored waiter is not obliged to run his fingers around the * inside of the neck of a wine bottle to remove the particles of cork and dust. For champagne bottles a screw is made J with a Waicle in one end of the handle to- j cut the twiae around the cork. Another t handle contains both the knife and brush ? on the handle. The power corkscrew is 1 an ingenious arrangement which saves J i:hc knees and arms from a tussel with j! ati obstinate and fractious cork.^ A cone j of steel fits over the neck of the bottle, e and the screw draws the cork while the 1 cone presses-on> the'bottle. In addition J to his corkscrew patents, a Newark man v amused lnmseit t>y twisting up wire into c almost every conceivable shape, thereby r supplying the five-cent counters with novelties and himself with a comfortable jj income, in additioo to that previously v made by his ingenious faculties. The v spiral thumb screw, which can be pushed a into a board and easily removed, after * serving as a temporary hat rack, is one of r his inventions}. It is only a piece of a twisted wire; Spiral paper hooks, wall 1 hooks, hat and coat racks, spiral picture 8 nailSj spiral carpcft tacks and stair but- ? tons, card suspenders and holders, bill 6 files, soap holders, pickle forks, toasting li and vegetable forks and shoe -button / hooks are his inventions, and are manu- " factured in Newark.?New York Mail p and Express. ii The Cat anil the Iron Pot. ? There was once a cat who had a strong; b pull with the cook, and for this reason a lived in the delusion that she was run- ? ning the whole kitchen. o And old iron pot which had incurred r the ill-will of this cat was peacefully | n resting ou the floor after its morning; j labors, when the cat approached and insolently* demanded that the pot should not sing on the stove while her catship> 0 was taking her morning nap. "I sing over my work because I Like f, it," said the pot, "and I shall not stop S for such a Ia?y, selfish, yawning creature as you." ! t] This so enragtd the cat that she lifted G her paw and nulled the pot over; but it ? was half fillea with cold soup, and with a shriek of dismay the cat fled to the j melancholy solitudes of the cellar, and j, has ever since been trying to clean her- o self up. t Moral: Don't attempt to iujtire any- 6 body without first considering the consequences.?Judge. n A Blacksmith's Expedient. ti The other day a Philadelphia Call re- ^ porter saw a blacksmith examining an ax s from which he had been asked to remove a portion of the handle which had been 0 broken off close to the iron. The wood o could not be driven out, and as nails had v been driven in at the end it could not " be bored out. "What will you do?" ? asked the reporter. "I'll burn it out" b was the reply. "But, you'll injure the temper of the steel," suggested there- C porter. "Well, may be not," said the tsraith. Ho drove the cutting edge into the moist earth, and built a fire around ? the projecting part. The wood bocame n charred and was easily removed, while si the tempered part of the stained P HQ injury. ? J TEMPERANCE. The Fourth of July. God bless our rockbound coast, The land we love the most, Our native land; Land where our noble sires Lit freedom's beacon-fires And shook with bells the spires, A patriot band. And when they died 'twas well r Their starry mantle fell On heroes free; And to their colors true, The red, the white, and blue, The white light shining through On Liberty. 'Tis here our fathers sought The boon their valor bought With bleeding scars. Firm as the granite hills Were their unbending wills, And now sweet freedom fills Our flag with stars. Now let us break the chains And wash away the stains Without delay. Intemperance is a sin That strikes the heart within. A good day to begin Is Freedom's day. When the saloon is sealed, And broken hearts are healed, And speech is dumb That would," if uttered, be Filth and profanity, Then our glad eyes shall see God's kingdom come. ?George W. Bungay, in National Advocate. Save the Youth. The supreme demand and work of the present aay, says the Rev. L. F. Bickford in the Pioneer, is to save the yonth. Why let them grow up in dissipation, to ruin themselves and cast a blight over the lives of parents and friends, aud become a disgrace to the community? Why suffer them to become confirmed in evil habits, bound by the strong chain of appetite, and then, with agony ana teal's, and prayers try to rescue them, while the open saloon, unchecked, is continuing its deadly and ruinous work, and spreading its fiery devastations all over the land? Tne youth must bo taught reverence and respect for morals and religion. They must learn that these are their true safeguards,and that it is a noble thing to stand on the side of morality and religion against all forms of vice and evil. We must teach them the same with reference to the home: that home is a sacred citadel, ever to be guarded from the foul touch of that ruthless destroyer, the liquor traffic. If a man cannot protect his home.his name, his character, his children from defilement, temptation and vice, then public sentiment is at a low ebb, and law and government are meaningless things. Public sentiment depends upon the kind of teachers it has. Government depends upon the kind3 of hands it falls into. If we would have these become what they should be, we must see to it that the youth maintain a high respect for virtue, morality, religion and law. If we would save the youth, we must not only rescue aud protect them, but we must root out the cause of their ruin. And the majesty of law and the power of Government must be invoked "to do this. Law must be respected and obeyed. A nation of lawbreaker'would ba the greatest way-mark of sin and folly ever set upon the pathway of nations, as they march on to their destiny. To demand of Government to take cognizance of the moral welfare of the community is the right of the people, and when they speak demanding certain enactments it should mean something. When they express their wish for the enactment of certain laws to protect that which is dearest to them? their homes, their sons, and the holy Sabbath?these laws must be made to mean everything they say. And the liquor power, mighty as it is in money and influence, must not be permitted to stay the execution nor continue a violator of the law. The fact is, sven under the present imperfect laws against liniinr.callinc morn than half the linuor traffic is in violation of law. It is the great law breaker of the land, the outlaw of outlaws. Let the people make it a complete outlaw, and make it feel that it is amendable to law, and it will have to bow to the will of the people. The only remedy by which to save the jrouth, to save the hom?r to save the nation, is complete and uncompromising constitu;ional Prohibition of the liquor traffic. As Christians we recognize that our religion leaches us to be true to the highest interests )f our fellow-men both in their private and National capacity. There is before us to be drought out the greatest triumph of our Christian civilization, and w must keep it a Christian civilization. I mean the triumph >f the people over the heart-desolating, liomelestroying, youth-ruining, man-slaying, iquor-tratlic; and this Christian nineteenth rentury of light shall not close until it be Lone. Prohibition Prohibits fn Maine. The National Temperance Advocate says : Articles have recently appeared* in the newspapers purporting to be written by prolibitionists from Maine, attempting to snow ihat prohibition is a failure, is not enforced, ind not a finger raised for its enforcement. Chese articles are freely copied into the liquor iresft over the country, and in Texas and Ceruieseee are scattered by tho- hundred mousaua to aeieac tne amenumeuc uc vu States No one pretends that all illegal sales ire entirely suppressed, but the law as a vhole, outside two or three cities, is a pernanent and wonderful success. We sent iiese articles to Hon. Nelson Dingley, Jr., vho imperfectly familiar with the workings if the law, and an entirely trustworthy witless in the case. He says.: " The letter is a most gross perversion of hefactsv As a matter of fact thela.wwas lever better enforced than it is now, as a. ehole?the- exceptions being a few cities vhere the foreign element is very large. The intendments to the law adopted by the last legislature are aiding us wonderfully." The Lewiston (Me.) Journal saysc '"The nore the Maine rumseller looks over the .mended prohibitory law of Maine the less le is inclined to overlook it. It has the real ;rip to it- Our Rockland special gives the ommenfc of an Eastern Maine rumseller who ouldi stand the fires of the old law but who urrendered to Prima facie. We congratuate himoo his surrender. There is- prima acie evidence that he has abandoned a aighty mean business. Let him now start a eal cold-water mineral spring and go in icace-! " The attempt to evade the law byimportag 'original packages' of grog is also fraught Fith peril. The Augusta and Bar Harbor uinsel!?rs who attempt thu3 to sell mav yet e amenable to the law; there is some doubt .bout their rizht to do thus even under judi ial decisions; but it is settled that they canal; seH packages of less than a dozen bottles r less than fourteen gallons. The fact is, the rog sbope in Maine are pretty well cor.erecL" Temperance News and! Notea. Since prohibition went into effect over :;,00o liles of railroads have been built in the State f Kansas. The Second International Temperance Conjrence will be held at Zurich, Switzerland, ieptember 9 and 10. Mr. C. S. Salmon states ? the Scotsman bat two of the four races inhabitating the raboon district, Africa, are rapidly dying ut because of the abouiiuaJbla driuk supplied aem. A speaker at a great temperance meeting in leading, England,said that if each teetotaller i? the United Kingdom were to secure anther and the process were annually repeated, lie entire population would become teetotains in four years. What a rebuke to this nation, receiving lillicnsof dollars annually from its revenue n liquors, is conveyed by the Queen of Madaascar, when she says, in a recent proclama- j ion: "I cannot consent, as your Queen, to ike a single penny of revenue from that I'hieh destroys the seals and bodies of my ubjects."?Congrerjationalist. Dr. Prudden says that an ordinary grass f water may contain hundreds of thousands f bacteria, but nobody should quit drinking /ater oa that account and take up with the ther thing. A bushel of bacteria in his tomaeh will play far less havoc with a man's atnral history than ever so small a snake in is boot.?Wushimjlon Critic. Philip A. Nolan, General Secretary of the ;. T. A. Union, gives a list of eleven new Inions admitted to the national body since ie issue of the previous " bulletin." Thes? ggegate 568 members, and they make the j dtal number of local Unions 9!M. If these j ew Unions show a fair average of memberbip, the total would reach over 50,000. The led^e is "total abstinence for the indi-iflimlmanv of the members a<l<i to this; 'au<i prohibitioa for tire State." ' .. RELIGIOUS READING! ? Recompense. We are quit* aura That Ha will giv# them back?bright, par* and beautif ul? We know He will but keep Our own and Hia until we fall asleetx We know He does not mean To break the strands reaching between. The Here and There, He does not mean?though Heaven bo fairTo change the spirits entertaining, there, that they forget The eyes upraised and wet, The lips toosiill for prayer, The mute despair. He will not take The spirits whioh He gave, and make The glorified so new That they are lost to me and you. I do believe '33 They will receive . . Us?you and me?and be so glai To meet us that when most I would grow sad I just begin to think about that gladness, And the day When they shall tell us all about the way That they have learned to goHeaven's pathways show. My lo3t, my own, and I Shall have so much to see together by* _ and-by, ' I do not believe that just the same sweet face, But glorified is waiting in the place Where we shall meet if only I Am counted worthy in that by and by. I do believe that Ood will give a sweet surprise To tear-stained, saddened eyes, And that His Heaven will be Most glad, most tided through with 'jay for you and me, As we have suffered most. God never made, Bpirit for spirit, answering shade for shade, And placed them side by side. So wrought in one, though separate, mystl* fled, And meant to break The quivering thread between. When we shall wake, I am quite sure, wo will be very glad That for a little while we were so sad. --George Klingle* A. Family Bible. A missionary writes from Tinnevelly, British India: *'Passing up the main street of Palamcotta, we noticed the neat houses of the native Christians; over the door of one were the words, 'Welcome: Peace be with you all.' We accepted the general invitation and entered the house and saw a resnectable. hannv family. On the tabic was the family Bible, in which we noticed several slips of paper as markers. We were told one marked the portion for family prayer; another was the husband's mark for private reading, another the wife's, ar\? another the children's. It was a family Bible indeed!" One Summer Morntnff. The following extract from a private ' letter will have a special interest to the friends of "Irenoeus" and Mark Hopkins. This morning early as I sat at my window, I saw some one coming up tbe porch steps of our cottage. Knowing that the servants were not yet up, I spoke, and our neighbor, Mr. C , said, "I have brought you some roses witb the dew on tbem, and I will leave them at the door." I thanked him and spoke of the still beauty of the earlr dav"Yes," he answered, "but it will be * sad day for Williamstown, for just now, at sunrise, Dr. Mark Hopkins passed away." For the hour that followed, I sat looking across the waving fields, with only tbe song of birds on the breeze, to that hom; from which a great a good man had gone to join the company of kindred spirits I thought of that other summer day, just two years ago, when "Irensus" went home from these New England hills, and of how he was loved and honored here, and I tried to picture the loveliness of the dear country that can surpass such & scene as this, where one arter another of the fathers who have led us pass on, and meet out ol our sight. Just then the-chapel bell rang sweetly the call to morning prayer, and I joined the number that were silently gathering from every part of the village. After all were seated, the president entered, followed by the senior class in their gowns and caps significant of their having completed their course of study. President Carter opened the service by saying that it was his sad duty to announce to the college the death of Dr. Hopkins, and in a few sentences he touched a'.l hearts by his own deep feel? ing and evident loss. "In a sense," he said, it seems as if the starngth of the hills had gone from us, but the influence of the life we have cherished has gone into all the world and will linger here as a stimulus and benediction forever; and to this Senior Class who have had his instruction to the very close of his life it will be a memorable season.'* There will be much said and written, about the death of Dr. Hopkins, but nothing mo<e heartful or touching will be offered to. his memory than that early v morning service. TLe students with loving hands had already dra|>ed the desk of the chapel in black, and as with bowed heads they joined in prayer, few eyes were dry, and then they rose, and their voicea rang out in a glorious hymn of praise. Human things must be known in order to be loved; divine things loved ia rder to> be known. The Drink Evil ia France. The French Senate recently discussed th0 report of the Committee en Consumption or Spirits. M. Claude said that the Commute? Had come to the conclusion that the drinking of spirits in France had. reached such a height as to be a social darker. Alcohol was essentially a dutiable article, and it behoved the State to preveut its.excessive consumption, at the same time securing the utmost profit to the treasury by ti^suppression of adulteration and other frauds. M. Rouier approved tha Committee's rvport He said the Government; would prosecute fraud wherever discovered, aud that the revenue collectors would be instructed to take vigorous action against imposition. , A mean temperature?Ten degree* oelow zero. A