Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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THE SHEKELS AND THE CUP. ' * THANKSGIVING LIXES. Our grateful songs in rapture rise. For blessings from propitious skies; For golden harvests gathered here, Where plenty's purple banner flies Unchallenged through the circling year. For bread the toiler need not lack, If at the plow he looks not back-, And winr.ows from the seed the tares. He'll find the shekels in his sack. As Jacob's anxious sons found theirs. Large is the loaf the harvest brings, Feast for a continent of kings. Are we not sovereigns lifted up? Our nation's (as the youngest born), Like Benjamin's filled sack of corn, Contains the shekels and the cup! Summer ou rapid wings has fled, Leaves that were green are turning red, The cheerful swallows southward soar; But He who gives us daily bread Has filled our basket and our stora. From teeming fields bronzed labor tilled Our vaults and bins and barns are filled, And we have learned to toil and trust. The rain, in plenteous showers distilled, Fell on the just and the unjust. ?George IF. Bungay. A THANKSGIVING PIG. BY ISABEL nOLMES MASON'. ? r*>i .LIVE stood at the kitchen table getting 1 Thanksgiving dinner 11 UQder way, while Lolly m handed her things from t^ic c-O'Gti bumming meanwhile in an undertone: "Four-and twenty blackbirds bak* in' in a pie." The racing pell-mell overhead might have sounded like colts let loose but for girlish shouts and laughter. 'Goodness, what a noise!"'Olive said, as Lolly handed her the box of summer savory. ''Dan will be torn to pieces tml/ipc fume imnn fViPm " "He said the letter I brought him was from his best girl and they're tryin' to get it away from him," explained Lolly. Olive was preparing her stuffing with keen housewifely instinct as to relative quantities of "seasons" required. The creature to be stuffed stood on all fours on a table. Not a commonplacc turkey but a piuk-nosed little pig was to grace the occasion of her nephew Dan's unexpected return home after "sailing the seas over" seven years without a word to his relatives. "Won't piggy roast a lovely brown!" Lolly said, as she watched the stuffing ; disappear. "Yes, Dan will have a Thanksgiving feast this year," assented Olive. The racket overhead increased. "If they could always keep heart-whole," Olive thought with a little sigh. "But wc get our growth through suffering, I suppose." A concealed regret, which had a fashion of working to the surface on festive occasions, was uppermost just now. But she was a blithe, cheery little woman with a talent for battling off dull thoughts, and so she laughed and said lightly: "Those girls make me think I am young again, Lolly." As she spoke her eye wandered across the brown meadow to the Ellcmvood | homestead aud then beyond it to the i white house on fhe hill among the | larches, where Squire Ashton lived,whom her friends wondered she did not marry. I What was she waiting for? She was thirty-six now, fair and comely in comparison with some of the faded married women around her who had been her schoolmates, but it would not always be so tine to live alone ou the old homestead as she had douc since her father's death. Offers of marriage would not come to her door always. Her own view of the matter had begun to coincide with 4V.?4- /\f V*ai? f??ion/lo A elif An troc Uiai \Jl liCi lliguv.10. kJVjlllL V ^UbVU M UJ a widower of fifty, of kindly, noble nature, whom she liked cordially. He had wooed her two years, until now she was losing patience with her own indecision. Why was she hesitating? To be sute his presence never quickened her even pulses, but why should she expect the tumultuous expression of an earlier love? She had been on the border of saying "yes" to his pleading at the very mo. * ?:*i, Ill w Li 1 UUU O dUUiUiUUS VV11U IUC old-fashioned knocker on the front door had brought her out from the parlor in a hurry, to be caught in the arms of her roving nephew in a regular sailor "hug." "Wait until Thanksgiving," she had said to Squire Ashton, removing her de cision a week ahead. Meantime, the six girls were chasing Dan round under the brown cobwebhung rafters, he holding the letters aloft. "Catch him! Head him off there!" they shouted. Presently Dan, big, brown and full of true sailor jollity, changed from defensive to aggressive tactics. He set Be6S on top of the spider-legged bureau in a bed of dust, tied Clara by the waist to a tall, four-posted bedstead with his handkerchief ard seized a pair of old quilting frames to defend himself against Sue and Kate. Ilis free motions with the "belaying pins" brought a swinging shelf of books to the floor, aud "Robinson Crusoe," "Gulliver's Travels," "Paradise Lost" and other classics sprawled amid a heap of dog-eared echoolbooks in the dust. "I sec a letter slipping out from Robinson Crusoe!" Bess cried from her perch. Sue picked it up and turned it over. "Why, it's addressed to Miss Olive Blossom and it's never been opened !" she exclaimed. "It looks awful old ani yellow." Finn nvamiimrl if tVimi nmrmnrp.'l flip handwriting with that ou his own letter. "The same, or I'm a landlubber," he ill uttered. "Likely it's an old love letter,'7 Clara suggested from her bedpost. 'And she never yoi it. just as happens iu story-books," added Kate. "Let us j-.ut it under her diuner plate." ".No! no!" was Sue's veto. "Give it to me. T have an idea. Quick. She's coming up." "Oh, it wa^ the bookcase. I thought some one was hurt,"' said Olive, entering as Sue dashed out past her. "Poor father! how he used to pore over these books," she continued as she stooped to pick them up. "lie had 'Paradise Lost' and 'Kobinson Crusoe' by heart, I believe." "Did he ever use them for letter boxes!" Bess called from the top of the bureau. "Nothing," said Bess as Sue came back with an unconscious face. She had been down in the kitchcn prospecting around the pink-nosed pig still on the table with stuffing incomplete, while Lolly, out of sight in the back porch, kept humming? Four and twenty blackbirds Bakin' in a pie. "I must hurry down,'* said Olive. "Pick up the books, wont you, girls, and don't loosen the rafters?" she called back from the stairs with a wholesome recollection of her own romping days. "What did you do with the letter?" they queried of Sue. "That's my business." "You might tell me," coaxed Dan. "You after leading us such a chase after your letter." "There's nothing in it," said Dan, tossing it toward her. She pulled the letter out of the envelope and read: Yours at lianJ. Thanks for information. Shall see you later. P. "No 'best girl' wrote that," said Bess. "Its from a man. "Not a duck nor a darling in it," added Sue in disgust; "but I'll tell you now what I did with the other letter just the same," and she whispered in his oar. After freeing the captives Dau went down stairs,three at a time,to the kitchen, the girls trooping after him as their lawful prey. There was a steam concert on the j kitchcu stove. Pudding, chickeD, squash : and crauberries, steaming, stewing, bubI bling, "gurgling" with a harmony of j souud truly inspiring. Lolly was heaping a glass dish with red and russet apples, Olive beating eggs and butter to a froth. "How is the pig?" inquired Bess. "Ready for a basting," ictured Olive. "Let me do it." Sue, spoon in hand, had opened the oven door. "Oh, oh! how nicc he is browning!" they all exclaimed. "He looks fit for a marriage feast," Dan commented, with a sidelong glance ; at Olive. "Do you want to furnish a bride?" inj quired Olive. "No a bridegroom," rejoined Dan, j concisely. j "Squire Ashton is only waiting," Sue : spoke up pertly. i "Hush," said Olive. "Sue, shut the | oven cloor and let the pig sizzle to its i heart's content." 1 __________________ ! ~L? 11\ idHKSiagsillS "here's tour love r ' "I could furnish a better bridegroom than Squire Ashton," Dan said, meaningly, with his -weather eye on Olive'3 face. "I wish you could head him off in someway," said Bess, inelegantly. "He wants to carry Aunt Olive to the house on the hill, and then good-bye to our fun." I "I'm not iu the white house on the hill yet," said Olive shortly. "I'll bet you never will be," declared 1 Dan, boldly. I "Here s the summer savory all turned ' out on the 4*blc," said Olive, unheeding ! his remark, as she sat down her bowl of ] froth. "Lolly, what have you done with the box?" "Never touched it," said Lolly. Dan was regarding Olive with a mixture of admiration and affection. I "I tell you what, girls, Aunt Olive is prettier than any of you," he said. "Squire Ashton thinks she is the pink ' of perfection," spoke up Sue. "Bother Squire Ashton!" Dan took a ; step toward Olive and kissed her cheek. "You were always my boy, weren't you, Dan?" Olive said fondly. "Always! You stood by me in many a scrape," returned Dan. "Aunt Olive," he continued, "if a chum, a particular friend of mine, should happen along ] about dinner time would you give him a welcome and a seat at the table?" "Certainly I should," she returned. "Your friend would be my friend, of course." . Dan gave her a queer, searching look. "Oh, that's it. The letter said, 'I'll see you later,' " commented Clara. | "I thought your letter was from your best girl," queried Olive. | "From ray best frieud," Dan corrected. I " I want you to like him. He's a big1 hearted fellow. Pulled me through a hard place when he wa3 an utter stran! ger to me. We got to be chum3 after, wards." "Then he is welcome on bis own ac1 count," sai<l Olive. "1 hope so," returned Dan. "Baste! It's time to baste!" cried Sue as the oven door swung open again. The girls were detailed to look after I the parlor and dining-room fires and to set the table. They set up a lively chat: tor, getting in each other's way continj uallv, but what would Thanksgiving be ' worth without u plcasaut hubbub all j rouud! You should have seen the table about 3 o'clock, broad and inviting, dinner 1 dishes with green turbaned groups uuder blue palm trues spread over the damask cloth, and blood-red beets, cranberry sauce and apples, making dishes of color all over it. Potatoes, changed from pink | to brown, stood on the platter, garnished crisp and toothsome. Dan's coming l'rieud did not appear, though a phcc was set for him. But | everything was done to a turn and it was voted they should sit down. Dan attacked the four-footed dainty j with carving tools, plates were pas-ed round and filled aud dinner went on swimmingly. I Olive felt uneasy. The moment of decision was drawing near. Her word oncc prissetl to Squire Ashton, there could be no backing out. She wished she ' might remove the day still further. And , yet if she was going to marry him, why delay? ' 'A young porker is better than a turkey ! any day," said Dan unctuously, j "Aunt Olive is in love,''said Sue, as she passed her plate down to Dan to be refilled. "She isn't eating a mouthful, Dan; scoop out some stuffing that is nice "What in thunder is wedged in here?" exclaimed Dan, as he proceeded to "scoop," and a small tin box fell from she porker upon the platter with a jingle. "The summer savory box,"saidOlive. "Whose trick was that? I might liava known?" i Pino on cnnrl flip linv tin On mv lllato." * "? ?r v tr / | interrupted Sue. Four and twenty boxes Baking in a pig, Bess chanted merrily. She wrenched the cover from the box and took out the letter she had hidden there. "Here's your love letter, Aunt Olive," she said, passing it up to the head of the table. Four and twenty love letters Browning in a porker, cried Clara. "We found it in Robinson Crusoe's clutches." explained Sue. With a puzzled face Olive slipped her knife through the browned envelope and took out the letter. They saw her face change as she glanced over it. This was the message that came to her from the past: Dear Olive?Must the unkind wor Is of last evening D3 our last ones.' x ttm nut tempered and you are proud, but if I could see you once again bafore I sail you might reverse your decision. If I may come this evening hang your red shawl from your chamber window as a signal. If I cannot Eart from you as a lover 1 shall never come ack again. Phiijp. The look in Olive's face as she read the message hushed the voluble tongues of the girls effectually. "A letter," she said to Dan with the ghest of a smile, "that I should have received ten years ago." "Perhaps it reached you in the nick of time after all," he suggested cheerily. Olive shook her her negatively. This was the word she had longed for after her quarrel with Philip Ellenwood long ago. She had been anxious to reverse her decision, but she was too proud to make the first venture. She had thought bitterly he did not care, and now here was his letter giving the lie to her doubt. She recalled the long, lonely tramp she had taken to battle down her feelings the day before he sailed. A messenger must have brought the note iu her absence, and her father had slipped it between tho pages of "Robinson Crusoe" H TVK?f o rr\ n r*\r nTrr if Ill LIU. At. IfJUUu <* i- ? was now. jBSh ETTER, AUNT OLIVE." Ia proportion as Olive became grave Dan grew hilarious, and with his eye on her face told sea yarns in such happy style that the girls giggled until their sides ached. The November evening closed in with a snow storm, and a lamp was brought before they got through with the nuts and raisins. -"I wonder what keeps?"Dan was beginning when the knocker sounded. ItTUV?/? if nArr " Vin finioho/l 1 UU1C Ills AO i-iw ? J uv UUiOU^U. "No, it is Squire Ashton's knock," said Bess with conviction, as she rose to open the door and show the Squire into the parlor. His arrival was a shock to Olive. The past had claimed her. The reading of the letter had made her heartsick. Dan watched her unquiet face with' much satisfaction as she arose from the table. He followed her to the parlor door. "Don't you promise to marry Squire Ashton," he whispered instinctively. "Mind, now, or you will be sorry." She looked puzzled. "Go on," said Dan, opening the parlor door for her. "I can trust you." The Squire stood before the open fire, holding out his hands to the blaze. He came toward her. "You will give me 'Yes1 at last," ho said persuasively. She could not meet his eloquent, expectant eyes. A great pity for him and for herself came over her. The old Love was yet alive. And yet why should she not hide in the shelter of this noble heart? Philip was far away?dead perhaps. The old, overpowering loneliness was sweepin rr nver hpr. "If you will accept respect and esteem for love?'' she began in a trembling voice. The knocker sounded a double rap, quick and imperative. Dan had opened the door. His voice and another sounded in the hallway. Through the half open door she could see Dan helping remove a snowy overcoat. His friend had come. Had Lolly kept the dinner hot? But the hospitable thought took sudden flight as she saw who it was that Dau was ushering in. Philip was before her, brown, matured, with the same imperious manner as of old, the same clear, flashing eyes. "Miss Blossom, my chum, Mr. Ellenwood," said Dan in high good humor. Their hands met; their eyes read each others hearts, as they stood in the firelight glow. Squire Ashton extended his hand. "So you have come back to us, Philip," he said, with a brave smile covering the pain in his heart. lie had seen in Olive's face the reason why he had failed to wiu her. "Yes, homesickness got the upper hand if me at last," returned Philip, cheerily. Olive followed the Squire into the I hallway. "I am very sorry." she began. "And I am glad for you," he said hastily. "I hope you will be very happy," and he gave her a brave, warm hand grasp. You may guess how they all gathered .nimrl fKn orroin Tvlllln Pllllm Jlffi his dinner. The finding of the letter was recounted, and Dan confessed that he and Philip had talked the matter all over before, and that he had been "prospecting" and reporting accordingly. First Turkey?"Why didn't you ask to be spared?" Second Turkey?"Oh, I -was too excited. I -quite lost my head0 in fart " ^___ REV. M. TALMAGE. THE BROOKLYN DIVINE'S SUN* DAY SEB310N. Subject: "The "Wonderful Distance Traversed by Christ." Text: "So I lifted up mine eyes the way toward, the north."?Ezekiel viii., 5. A 4- *" ? ? TVa?/\*V?VIAW affAKTIAAn n.b uuc u uivv;n. uu a i/cucuiuci ?** wiuwu, through Damascus gate, we are passing out of Jerusalem for a journey northward. Ho I for BetheJ, with its stairs, the bottom step of which was a stone pillow; and Jacob's well, with its immortal colloquy; and Nazareth, with its divine boy in His father's carpenter shop, and the most glorious lake that ever rippled or flashed? Bine Galilee, sweet Galilee, The lake where Jesas loved to be; and Damascus, with its crooked street called Straight, and a hundred places charged and surcharged with apostolic, evangelistic, prophetic, patriarchal, kingly and Christly reminiscences. In traveling along the roads of Palestine I am impressed, as I could not otherwise have been, with the fact that Christ for the most part went afoot. We find Him occasionally on a boat, and once riding in a triumphal procession, as it is sometimes called, although it seems to me that the hosanuas of the crowd could not have made a ride on a stubborn, unimpressive and funny creature like thai which pattered with Him into Jerusalem very much of a triumph. But we are made to undertand that generally He walked. How much that means only those know who have gone over the distance traversed bj Christ. We are accustomed to read that Bethany is two miles from Jerusalem. Well, any man in ordinary health can walk two miles with out latigue. out not more tnan one man out of a thousand can walk from Bethany to Jerusalem without exhaustion. It is ovei the Mount of Olives, and you must climb up among the rolling stones and descend where exertion is necessary to keep you from falling prostrate. I, who am accustomed tc walk fifteen or twenty miles without lassitude, tried part of this road over the Mount of Olives, and confess that I would not want to try it often, such demand does it make upon one's physical energies. Yet Christ walked it twice a day?in the morning from Bethany to Jerusalem, and in the evening from Jerusalem to Bethany. Likewise it seemed a small thing that Christ walked from Jerusalem to Nazareth. But it will take us four days of hard horseback riding, sometimes on a trot and sometimes on a gallop, to do it thi3 week. The way is mountainous in the extreme. To those who went up to the Tip Top house on Mount Washington before the railroad was laid I will say that this journey from Jerusalem to Nazareth is like seven such American journeys. So, all up and down and across and recrossing Palestine, Jesus walked. Ahab rode. David rode. Solomon rod9. Herod rode. Antony rode. But Jesus walked. With swollen ankles and sore muscles of the legs and bruised beel and stiff joints and panting lungs and faint head, along tho roads and where there were no roads at all Jesus walked. We tried to get a new horse other than that on which we had ridden on the journey to the Dead Sea, for he had faults which our close acquaintanceship had developed. But after some experimenting with other quadrupeds of that species, and finding that aU horses, like their riders, have faults, : we concluded to choosa a saddle on that beast whose faults we were most prepared to pity or resist. We rode down through the valley and then up on Mount Scopus and, as our dragoman tells us that this is the last opportunity we shall have of looking at Jerusalem, we turn our horse's head toward the city and take a long, sad and thrilling look at the religious capital of our planet. This is the most impressive view of the most tremendous city of all time. On and around this hill the arnues of the crusaders at the nm sight of the city threw themselves on their faces in worship. Here most of the besieging armies encamped the night before opening their volleys of death against Jerusalem. Our last look! Farewell, Mount Zion, Mount Moriah, Mount of Olives, Mount Calvary! Will we never see them again? Never. The world is so large and time is so short, and there are so many things we have never 6een at all, that we cannot afford to duplicate visits or see anything more than once. Farewell, yonder thrones of gray rock, and the three thousand years of architecture and battlefields. Farewell, sacred, sanguinary, triumphant, humiliated Jerusalem t Across this valley of the Kedron with my right hand I throw thee a kiss of valedictory. Our last look, like our first look, an agitation of body, mind and soul indescribable. And now, like Ezekiel in my tent, I lift tip inino eyes the way toward the north. Hear here was one of the worst tragedies of f Vi n o rrrto tv?onf Inno^ in flio VtiKlo A Vinmifn Vila luu uicuuivuou 1:1 vuw a/ivici a ui/o^iuu via eld man coming home at eventido from hi3 work in the fields finds two strangers, a husband and wife, proposing to lodge in tha street because no shelter is offered thera, and invites them to come and spend the night iu hi- home. During the night the ruffians of the neighborhood conspired together, and surrounded the house, and left the woman dead on the doorstep, and the husband, to rally in revenge the twelve tribes, cut the corpse of the woman into twelve parts and sent a twelfth of it to each tribe, and the fury of the nation was roused, and a peremptory demand was made for the surrender of tho assassins, and, the demand refused, in one dav twenty thousand people were left dead on ili9 field and the next day eighteen thousand. Wherever our horsa today plants Ms root m those ancient times *. corpse lay, and the roada were crossed by red rivulets of carnage. Now we pass on to where seven youths were put to death and their bodies gibbeted or hung in chains, not for anything they had themselves done, but as a reparation for what their father and grandfather, Saul, had done. Burial was denied these youths from May until November. Bizpab, the mother of two of these dead boys, appoints herself as sentinel to guard the seven corpses from beak of raven and tooth of wolf and paw of lion. She pitches a black tent on the rock close by the gibbets. Jtuzpan ny day sits on tne ground m front of her tent, and when a vulture begins to lower out of the noonday sky seeking its prey among tho gibbets Rizpah rises, her long hair flying in the wind, and swinging her arms wildly about shoos away the bird of prey until it retreats to i ts eyrie. At night she rests under the shadow of her tent, and sometimes falls into a drowsiness or half Bleep. But the step of a jackal among the dry leaves or tho panting of a hyena arouses lier, and with the fury of a maniac she rushes out upon the rock crying, "Away! Away!" and then, examining the gibbets to see that . they still keep their burden, returns again to her tent till some swooping wing from tho midnight sky or some growling monster on the rock again wakes her. A mother watching her dead children through Way, June, July, August, September and October! What a vigil! Painters have tried to put upon canvas the scene, and they succeeded in sketching the hawks in the 6ky and the panthers crawling out from the jungle, but they fail to give the wanness, , tne earnestness, tne supernatural courage, the infinite self sacrifice of Rizpah, the 1 mother. A mother in the quiet home watch- 1 ing by the casket of a dead child for one ' night exerts the artist to his utmost, but who is sufficient to put upon canvas u mother for ( six months of midnights guarding her whole ' family, dead and gibb?ted upon the mountains!"* Go home, Piizpnh! You must be awfully tired. You are sacrificing your reason and j four life for those whom you can never f bring back again to your bosom. As I say ' that from the darkest midnight of the cen- i tury Rizpah turns upon ms aud cries: "How dare you t?ll me to go home? I am a moth- y er. 1 am not tired. You might as well expect < i oi 1 to got tired as for a mot her to get tired. I cared for tiio-e boys whan they lay j on my breast in infancy, and I will not for- n sake them now that they are dead. Inter- i rupt me not. There stoops an eagle that I ] must drive back with my agonized cry. i There is a panther I must beat back with my f club!" Do you know what that scene by our.roadsifle in Palestine makes me think of? It is no unusual scene. Eight here in these three cities by the American seacoast thare are a thousand cases this moment worse than that. Mothers watching boys that the rum saloon, that annex of hell, has gibbeted in a living death. Boys hung in chains of evil habit they cannot break. The father may go to sleep after waiting until 12 o'clock at night for the ruined boy to coiaohome, and, giving it up, he may say: "ifotner, come to bed; there's no use sitting up any longer." But mother will not go to bea. It is 1 o'clock in the morning. It is half-past L It is 2 o'clock. It is half-past 2 when he comes staggering through tne hall. Do vou say that young man is yet alire? No; he is dead. Dead to his father's en ireaues. uuau to nis rnotaar s prayers, jjoau to the family altar where he was reared. Dead to all the noble ambitions that once inspired him. Twice dead. Only a corpse of what he once was. Gibbeted before God and man and angels and devils. Chained in a death that will not loosen Its cold grasp, mis father is asleep, his brothers are asleep, his sisters are asleep; but his mother is watching him, watcliiDg him in the night. After he has gone to bed and fallen into a drunken sleep, his mother will go up to his room and see that he is properly covered, and before she turns out the light will put a kiss upon his bloated lips. "Mother, why don't you go to bed?'' "Ah!" she says, "I cannot go to bed. I am Rizoah watching; the slainl" And what are the political parties or this country doing for such cases? They are taking care not to hurt the feelings of the jackals and buzzards that roost on the shelves of the grog shops and hoot atove the dead. I am often asked to what political party I belong and, I now declare my opinion of the political parties to-day. Each one is worse than the other and the only consolation in regard to them is that they have putrefied until they have no more power to rot. Oh, that comparatively tame scene upon which Rizpah looked I American mother bood and Americau wifehood tms moment i are looking upon seventy of tha slain, upon | seven hundred of the slain, upon seventy thousand of the slain. Woe! woe! woe! My only consolation on this subject is that foreign capitalists are buying up the American breweries. The Dresent owners see that the doom or tnat Dimness is coming as sureiy as that God is not dead. They are unloading upon foreign capitalists, and when we can get these breweries into tho hands of people living on the other side of the sea our political parties will cease to be afraid of the liquor traffic, and at their conventions nominating Presidential candidates will put in their platform a plank as big as the biggest plank of the bigge3t ocean steamer, saying: "Resolved unanimously that we always have been and always will be opposed to alcoholism." But I must spur on our Arab steed, and here we come in sight of Beeroth, said to ba the place where Joseph and Mary missed the boy Jesus on the way from Jerusalem to Nazareth, going home now from a great national festival. "Where is my child, Jesus?" says Mary. "Where is my child, Jesusl" says Joseph. Among tho thousands that are returning from Jerusalem they thought tnat certainly Jtie was waiting on in the crowd. They described Him, saying: "He is twelve years old, and of light complexion and blu9 eyes. A lost child!" Great excitement in all the crowd. Nothing so stirs folks as th9 new3 that a child is lost. I Bhall not forget the scene when, in a great maofino1 T w?iic nronf?lmitr and som9 UUUUUUi - " -w r- 0, one stepped on the platform and said that a child was lost. We went on with tha religious service, but all our minds were on the lost child. After a while a man brought on the platform a beautiful litt'.e tot that looked like a piece ef heaven drjpped down, aud said, "Here is that child."* And I forgot all that I was preaching about, and lifted the child to my shoulder and said, "Here i3 the lost child, and the mother will come and get her right away, or I will take her home and add her to my own brood 1" And some cried and some shonted, aud amid all that crowd I instautly detected the mother. Everybody had to get out of her way or be walked over. Hats were nothintr and shoulders were notb ing and hearls were nothing in her pathway, and I realized something of what must have been Mary's anxiety when she lost Jesus, and what her gladness when she found her boy in the temple of Jerusalem talking with those old ministers of religion, tihammai, liillel and Betirah. I bear down on you today with a mighty comfort. Mary and Joseph said: ''Where is our Jesu3?" ana you say: "Where in John! or where is Henry? or where is George?" Well, I should not wonder if you found him after awhile. -Where? In the same place where Joseph and Mary found thetr boy?in the temple. What do I mean by that? I mean you do your duty toward God and toward your child aud you will find him after a while in the kingdom of Christ). Will you say, "I do not have any way of influencing my child?" I answer you have the most tremendous liue of influence open right before you. As you write a letter, ana there are two or three routes by which it may go, but you want it to go the quickest route, and you put on it "via Southampton," or "via San Francisco," or "via Marseilles," put on your wishes about your child, "via the throne of God." How long will such a | good wish take to get to its destination! Not quite a3 long as the millionth part of a second. I will prove it. The promise is; "Before they call I will answer." That means at your first motion toward such prayerful exercise the blessing will coma, and if the prayer be made at 10 o'clock at night it will be answered five minutes before ten. "Before they call I will answer." Well, you say, I am clear discouraged about my son, and I am getting on in years, and I fear I will not live to see him converted. Perhaps not. Nevertheless I think you will find him in the ternule. the heavenly teaipie. There has not been an hour in heaven the last one huadred years when parents in glory had not had announced to them the salvation of children whom they left in this world profligate. We often have to say "Iforgot," but Go J has neveryetonca said "I forgot." It may be after the grass of thirty summers has greened the top of your grave that your son may be found in the earthly temple. It may be fifty years from now when some morning the towers are chiming the matins to the glorified in heaven that vou shall fiud him in the higher temple which has "no need of caudle or of sun, for the Lord God and the Lamb are the light thereof.'' Cheer up, Christian father and mother! Cheer up! Where Joseph and Alary found their boy you will find yours?in the temple. You see, God could not afford to do otherwise. One of the things He has positively promised in the Bible ia that He will answer earnest anil believing prayer. Failing to do that He would wreck His own throne, and the foundation of His palace would giv? way, and the bank of heaven would suspend payment, and the dark word, "repudiation," would be written across the sky, and the eternal government would be disbanded and God Himself would become an exile. Keep on with your prayer, and you will yet find your child in tne temple, either th9 temple here or the temple above. Out on tlis western prairies was a nappy but isolated home. Father, mother and child. By the sale of cattle quite a large sum of money was one night in that cabin, and tho father was away. A robber who had heard of the money one night looked in at the window, and the wife and mother of that home saw him and she was helpless. Her child by her side, she knalt down and prayed among other things for all prodigals who wera wandering up and down tho world. The robber hoard her prayer and was overwhelmed and entered the cabin and knelt beside her and began to pray. He had corn? to rob that house, but the" prayer of that woman for prodigals reminded him of his mother and her prayers before he became a vagabond, and from that hour he began a new life. Years after that woman was in a city in a sreat audience, and the orator who came on the platform and plead gloriously for "fghteousness and God was the man who nany years before had looked into the cabin )n the prairie as a robber. The speaker and ;he auditor immediately recognized each jther. After so long a time a mother's sravers answered. But we must hurry on, for the muleteers ind baggage men have been ordered to pitch >ur tents for tc-night at Bethel. It is already jetting so dark that we have to give up all dea of guiding the horses, and leave them to ;heir own sagacity. We ride down amid nud cabins and into ravines, where the lorses leap from depth to depth, rocks below ocks. rocks under rocks. Whoa! Whoa! iVe dismount in this place, memorable for nany things in Bible history, the two more >rominent a theological seminary, whereof cl 1 hey made ministers, and for Jacob's drea:u. ["he students of this Bethel Theological Semirnry were called "sons of the prophets." 3ere the young meu were fitted for tho ninistry, and those of us who ever had tho idvantaze of such institutions will everlastn?iy tie grawiui, ana in xne caienaar or >aints, which I read with especial affection, ire tho doctors of divinity who blessed rne I thank God that from these theological leminaries there is now coming forth a niaglificent crop of young ministers, who are mking the pulpits in all parts of the lan 1. I lail their coming, and tell these young >rothers to shake olf the somnolence of cen;uries, and get but from under the dusty ihelves of theological discussions which have 10 practical bearing on this age, which needs o get rid of its sins and have its sorrows iomforted. Many of our pulpits are dying if humdrum* People do not go to church because thay cannot endure the technicalities and profound explanations of nothing, and sermons about the "eternal generation of the son," and the difference between sublapsarianism and supra-lapsari&nism, and about who Melchisedec wasn't. There ought to be as much difference between the modes of presenting truth no v and in olden time as between a lightning express rail train and a canal boat. Years ago I went up to the door of a factory in New England. On the outside door I saw the words, "No admittance." I went in and came to another door over which were 4-4- I) rtP T tuo nviua, iiu auiuuiauuc. vt wiuw * went in, and came to the third door inscribed with the words, "No admittance." Having entered this I found the people inside making Eins, beautiful pins, useful pins, and nothing ut pins. So over the outside door of many of the churches has bsen practically written the words, "No admittance." Some have entered and have come to the inside door and found the words., "No admittance." But persisting, they have come inside and found us sounding out our little niceties of belief pointing out our little differences of theological sentiment?making pins! But most distinguished was Bethel for that famous dream which Jacob had, his head on a collection or stones. He had no trouble in this rocky region in finding a rocky pillow. There is hardly anything else but stone. Yet the people of those lands have a way of draw? ing their outer garment up over their head and face, and such a pillow I suppose Jacob had under his head. The plural was used in the Bible 6tory, and you find it was not a pillow of stone, but of stones, I suppose, so fViof if nna nrnva/l fn Ka tinftTTfln Ciirl* a OA Vltt I would turn over in the night and take another stoue, tor witb such a hard bolster he would often change in the night Well, that nizht God built in Jacob's dream a long, splendid ladder, the feet of it on either side of the tired pilgrim's pillow, and the top of it mortised in the sky. And bright immortals came out from the castles of amber and gold and put their shining feat on the shining rungs of the ladder, and they kept coming down and going up, a procession both ways. I suppose they had wings, for the Bible almost always reports them as having wings, but this was a ladder on which they usea hands and feet to encourage all those of us who have no wipgs to climb, and encouraging us to believe that if we will use what we have God will provide a way, and if we will employ the hand and foot He will furnish the ladder. Young man, do not wait for wings. Tho3e angels folded theirs to show you wings are not necessary. Let ali the people who have hard pillows?hard for sickness, or hard for poverty, or hard for persistence?know that a hard pillow is the landing place for angels. They seldom descend to pillows of eiderdown. They seldom build dreanu in the brain of the one who sleeps easy. * The greatest dream of all time was that of St. John, with his head on the rocks of Patmos, and in that vision he heard fcie seven trumpets sounded, and saw all the pomp of heaven in procession cherubic, seraphic, archangelic. The next most memorable and glorious dream was that of John Bun^an, his pillorr tiie coia scone or cne uoor 01 .Bedford jail, from which he saw the celestial city, and so many entering it he cried out in his dream, "I wish myself among them." The next most wonderful dream was that "Washington sleeping on the grounl at Valley Forge, his head on a white pillowcasa of snow, where he saw the vision of a nation emancipated. Columbus slept on a weaver's Eillow, but rose on tho ladder let down until e could see anew hemisphere. Demosthenes slept on a cutter's pillow, but on the ladder let down arose to see the mighty assemblages that were to be swayed by his oratory. Arkwriglxt slept on a barber's pillow, but went up the ladder till he could see all England quake with the factories ho set going. A kenside slept on a butcher's pillow, and took the ladder up till he saw other generations helped by his scholarship. John Ashwortu slept on a poor man's pillow, but took the ladder up until he could see his prayer3 and exertions bringin? thousands of the destitute in England to salvation and heaven. Nearly all those who are today great in merchandise, in statesmanship, in law. iu medicine, in art, in literature, were once at tho foot of the ladder, and In their boyhood had a pillow hard as Jacob's. They who are born at the top of the ladder are apt to spend their lives in coming down, while those who are at the foot, and their head on a bowlder, if they have the right kind of dream, are almost sure to rise. I notice that those angels, either in com- j ing down or going up on Jacob's ladder. tooK it rung Dy rung. x uey uiu wju icajj ?> tli9 bottom nor jump to the top. So you ara to rise. Faith aided to faith, good deed to good deed, industry to industry, consecration to consecration, until you reach the top, rung by rung. Gradual going up from a block of granite to a pillar of throne. That night at .Bethel I stood in front of my tent and looked up, and the heavens were full of ladders, first a ladder of clouds, then a ladder of stars, and all up and down the heavens were angels of beauty, angels of consolation, angeis of God, ascending and descending. "Surely, God is in this place,* said Jacob, "and I knew it not." But tonight God is in this placa and I know it. CURIOUS FACTS. The first gold coin was made B. C. 206. The Bible was translated into English in 1534. The first watches were made in Nuremberg in 1477. About 17,000 houses are added every year to London. In 1745 not a house in Maine had a pane of glass in it. A New Jersey factory has turned out a cheese weighing 4000 pounds. An Ohio man has just received $97 from an accident insurance policy on account of being kicked by a boy. At the Los Angeles (Cal.) fair, one of the curiosities was a cucumber seven feet long. It was coiled like a serpent. The finest grades of razors are so delicate that even the famous Damascus sword blades cannot equal them in texture. The noise of the artillery at Waterloo was heard at Crcil, 115 miles from the scene of the battle, and a'.so at Dover, England. Joseph Shower, a Denver (Col.) bootblack, is worth $25,000, He has a farm of 380 acres, a fat bank account and works fifteen hours a day at his trade. By section 35S7 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, the minor coin oJ the United States is legal tender for anj amount not exceeding twenty-five cents. A mounted second lieutenant receives a salary" of $1500 for the first five years, after which his pay is increased ten per L'cut. Unmounted second lieutenants receive $1400 per annum. Southwest of Suez a party of French surveyors have discovered the bed of an ancient canal running for miles in the direction of the Red Sea, which it seems to have connected with the basin of the Mediterranean. The Russian Czar has three sets of police to watch over him. The ordinary, or third sectiou police; the palace police, under the controller of the household; aud the private body police, whose chief ^ takes nis orders irora cne uzar in person. The mo3t famous pearl fisheries ia the world are near the coasts of Ceylon, Japan, Java and Sumatra, and in the Persian gulf, although pearls in limited quantities arc obtained in the streams of various countries. Ceylon however,* stands in the greatest riJcown for its pearl and pearl divers. In cutting a big cypress tree near Astor, Fla., a living alligator seven feet long was found therein. As the opening in the tree was not half large enough for the 'gator to get through, the presumption ia that it crawled in when quite young and lived on other animals and reptiles that sought refuge there. . I ? _~TEMPER1NCE~ SINCE PAPA DOESN'T DRUTK. My papa's awful happy now, and mamma's happy too, 'Cause papa drinks no more the way he used to do. And everything's so jolly now?t&in't like it used to be When papa never stayed at home with poor mamma and me. It made me feel so very bad to see my mamma cry. And though she'd smile I'd spy the tears a-hiding in her eye. But now she laughs just like we girls?it sounds so cute, I think? And sings such pretty songs?since papa doesn't drink. You ought to see (Sunday dress?it's every bit all new. It ain't made out of mamma's dress the way she used to do. And mamma's got a pretty cloak all trimmed \ with funny fur, And papa's got some nice new clothes and and goes to church with her. My papa says that Christmas-time will soon bejiere, And maybe good old Santa Claus will find our house this year. I hope he'll bring some candy and a dolly that can wink, He'll know where our home is, I'm sure? since papa doesn't drink. ?Chicago Herald. vrobAA x i?a 1 j i England has, it seems, lost "the Napoleon of Tract Distributors" by the death of Mr. Charles Watson, of Providence House, Halifax. The deceased gentleman is said to have been firmly convinced that the more temperance literature is scattered broadcast over the land the sooner will the voice of the people demand local opinion. Accordingly, he, for more than forty years, supplied gratuitously temperance trades and books. Ha once stated that in twelve months he had distributed nearly 5,000,000 tracts. PBOUD 07 THE KAHB. Lady Somerset, in a temperance address, said recently.- "I am proud to be called a f faddist, if by that we mean one who longs for the betterment of humanity, one who, seeing this sin and sorrow, longs to step in the bloodstained footprints of the Lord, who, having loved His own. loved them unto the end, the bitter end of death. If it means one who, inspired by that divine love, bring* healing for grievous wrong, the touch of pity to open blind eyes to see their error?the < strong hand to raise the fallen brother or the weak and erring sister.^ EVILS OF BEER DRIITKEfQ. "A whisky drinker will commit murder only under the direct excitement of liquor; a beer drinker is capable of doing it in oold blood. Long observation has assured us that a large proportion of murders, deliberately planned and executed without passion or malic% with no other motive than the ao- . tuisition of property or money,, often of trijng value, are perpetrated by beer drinker*. We believe, further,that tho hereditary evils of beer drinking exceed those proceeding from ardent spirits?first because the habit is constant and without paroxysmal interruptions, which admit of some recuperation: secondly, because beer drinking is practiced by both sexes more generally than the spirit ; drinking, and thirdly, because theanimalizing tendency of the habit is more uniform, and the vicious results are more generally transmitted."?Pacific Medical Journal. A HOLLANDER'S GOOD WOEK. Rev. Adama van Schel tenia has been the pioneer in temperance work in Holland and nas extended his labors to most of its" cities. He has raised money and built in Amsterdam the "William House," a substantial and handsome brick building of two stories, which is dedicated to temperance. The lower floor is mostly occupied with school rooms; the upper, with school rooms and an auditorium. Tne schools are free to the children of the poor. Careful religious instruction is given, and the system of scientific temperance edu cation is carried out. Diagrams and charts are used in abundance. Rev. van Schekema's work is for total abstinence, and he is himself upon that ground, but very few of his countrymen as yet conceive that any but drunkards and children can be benefited by this' practice. He is desirous to have the women's work brought into a vital union with the W, C. T. U. Although nearing his eightieth year He still writes much and translates many hymns and temperance songs, as well as prose. no excuse for intemperance. "The cry has been sounded, and parrotlike, repeated that '.Poverty makes drunkards of workingmen.' If there is any troth in the statement, then it is not to the credit of the man, or men, who wilfully adds crime to misfortune. I admit that the incentive to become saving and industrious is notsogreat where the earnings of labor are cut down to the lowest possible figure, but even then there is no excuse for intemperance. If I am In poverty it should be my aim to elevate myself, and it is a stern duty with me to avoid that which wi'l make me poorer. "Every sensible man know* that the liquor habit leads to degradation, disease, dirt death. Not oaly does poverty follow intemperance, but ill health and every other ill will assuredly follow in its wake. It is therefore unjust when we excuse the intemperance of a poor man to lay the blame of it to his poverty. We find drunkards everywhere, anJ, in proportion to their numbers, the wealthy have more victims to the liquor habit than the working people, so that it is not poverty that is to blame."?Terrence V. Powderly, woman's temperance palace. The foundation stone of the Woman's "World's Temperance Temple, which is destined" to be the trysting place of the temperance advocates of the world, and which, when completed, will be. next to the Auditorium, one of the largest and most imposing structures in Chicago, was formally laid on November 1st, with elaborate and appropriate ceremonies. This remarkable enterprise is the offspring of the Woman's Temperance Building AsSOCiatiOD, coiaposed of a large number of ' ' ? iir 1? Ok.M.h Jadies Belonging to me ??uuuus . - Temperance Union, and in sympathy with Miss Frances Willard and her policy. They ' have raised the necessary funds bv sale of stock to a total of $600,000. In addition to this they have securcd a loan of $500,000, for which bonds have been issued. But the holders of the stock are nnder obligations to sell it back to the association at any time within twelve years, and as it is estimated that the offices will bring in a net revenue of $250,000 per annum, it will be seen that before many years the temperanca movement will own the whole outfit," and in addition have a quarter of a million of dollars a year to spend in agitation. The site of the temple is La SaJl9 and Monroe streets, in the very heart of the Wall street of Chicago and almost under the shadow of th? Board of Trade. TEMPERANCE".VEWS AND NOTES. A prominent Nebraskan estimates that tha #nnual liquor bill of that State is ?24,000,000. J The largest local TV. C. T. Union in Illinois is that at Bloomington, which numbers 250 members. + According to Dr. Norman Kerr the two things to guard against in case of the approach of cholera are panic and alcohol. Iowa claims tho honor of being the first State to erect a Woman's Christian Temperance union cottage on its fair grounds. Indiana has followed her example, and now New York is to build. The British Woman's Temperance Association recently held a social meeting for nurses \Tnriav Rnnmi London. An address was made showing how nurses could promote temperanca and Christianity. The State banner of the Colorado Woman's Christian Temperance Union bears the text, "Oh, woman, great is thy faith, be it unto thee even as thou wilt," with blossoms of the golden rod, symbol of courage. Archbishop Reynolds, of Adelaide, Australia, has taken the total abstinence pledge I before a vast congregation, in order to give I an example to his people. This is an exam- I pie that the ministers of all denominations 8 might well follow. There are 200,000 women in the "Woman's^ Christian Temperance Union, 135,000 in the 1 King's Daughter.-!, 100,0W in ine ??omaua Relief Corps, and 35,000 in the Eastern Star, I an aggregate of nearly 500,000 banded to gether under various names for loyal service I to all manner of human need. X A call is issued by tho National Temper- I a nee Society for the tenth national conven- I tion to be held at Saratoga Springs in Jane, I 1891. All religious bodies, national and I State, and all national and State temperance a organization* are entitled to delegate*. Each I body may send seven delegates, of which the J providing officer and secretary shall be two. fl M