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???????i SHOW US WHAT YOU ARfci Do it now! Begin' Begin! You "Mean to." That won't take you far; If the thing is there and in you, Show us what you are! Future statesmen, preacher, poet, playwright, leader of the bar? You may, but we do not. know it. Show us what you are! Leave off dreaming, "if and "and'Mng, Gazinz at a distant star; The world's not waiting while you're standing; Show us what you are! V Set your lofty genius working; Take a task, to make or mar; r Fame nor wealth are won by shirking; ita Show us what you are! ! Tf you're abler, nobler, stronger Than the rest of us by far, ! Don't just think so any longer; Show us what you are! I - 11 /> j ?Jinnur hunury, m xteijuru aiuujuoik' || A GENUINE HERO. | A sky of opal and gold, a deepL trellised veranda, a novel, and a hamr: mock slung at the most comfortable of j angles. With these conditions, it was I scarcely strange that Halcyon Hartford hpf-wpfin dreamland f and the real world that June afternoon, 1 with the fleecy gold of her hair, all | guiltless of pin or comb, and the "bell & sleeves," falling enchantingly away from j her round, white arms, while one trim, EL ~ slippered foot hucg from the edge of the fcj? hammcck. "Halcyon! Halcyon! Where are you?" It was one of those exusperating voices :i- which, once having been sweet, had i now a certain vibrant jar to its tones, painfally akin to shrillness. H Halcyon frowned a little, and raised herself on one elbow. 4'0h, Aunt Hal, don't scream so! I K was just in such a half-way dream of de ?' 12 -L*. JI itlguu "Well, you should have answered, then!" Aunt Hal came out of the wide, shady hall with an effusive swing of her draperies, and seated herself in a bamboo chair, close to the head of the hammock. She was comically like her niece?at I.-,least, as like as a woman of eight-and(thirty could be like a maid of eighteen. There was the same yellow luxuriance of hair, but harsher, drier and more suggestive of dye; the same pink and white complexion, artifically heightened bv liauid pearl aod a carmine saucer; similar features, cruelly sharpened by the fr' inexorable hand of time, and teeth just , one degree too white and regular to be |v real. |v The white dress she wore was painfully trying, ard she was compelled to 4isc gold eye-glasses as she held up a letter to the view of the younger $T Halcyon. i "What has happened?" drowsily demanded the latter, lifting a pair of blue fcf .eyes, fringed with dark lashes." 'x i "The strangest thing!" ! * 'Another offer of marriage ?" hazarded * ' Halcjou,settling on the unlikeliest thing Jv" which could, in her opinion, possibly m happen t"How did you guess r wiin a ixme exultant cackle. "Exactly. The dear, foolish lad?aud he so much younger than II Why, he couldn't have been _onc-and-twenty when he went to Bombay, and I was at least thirty theu ?" v1 "Thirty-five, Aunt Hal," said ^ Halcyon, the merciless. Rs," - ? ."Was it as much as that? Well, he Ii?V seemed desperately in love then; though, i ?f course, 1 never took any notice of the ' child. But I suppose, in that country of blackamoors, one can't help thinking about ail the women one has known at home; and he has written me two or Kip *1 three letters?'' g&i "Hashe?" ! p Halcyon sat straight up in the ham& mock now. Her blue eyes shone inItently. The heat had brought a flush to (ber cheek, which all Aunt Hal's caimine I saucers could not rival. | "But I never told you!" giggled the elder beauty. "Because I remembered 5^. -that there was a sort of boy-and-girl affair between you and Chartley Blesson, I h jwhen you were in boarding school, and I thought maybe you would be nettled. 'And here's the proposal at' last?with 'bis photograph inclosed!" i "Let me see it!" said Halcyon. What a brave, good face it was? slightly older and sterner lined than she (had looked upon wheu the Avancanian 1^,. > : sailed away three years ago, but yet so Strong aau mauiy. ic laughed hysterically. ' "Shall you accept him?" said she. ! Aunt Hal nibbled coquettishly at the ?? edge of the envelope; the new false i: teeth gleamed in a smile. "I?think?I?shall'." "And you fourteen years older than is!" v,4'People don't think so much about k* such things as they used to do," reasoned Miss Hartford, the elder. "Eros is immortal, you know, dtar." flalcyoa sank back into the hajimock V. - and reopened her book. "You must do as you please, of course," said Bhe. "After that quotalion about Eros, I haven't a suggestion to offer." "Jealous, poor darling!" thought Aunt Hal, with a thrill of exultation. But she only said: "Well, of course one can't help those ^nnnoninrf rtno onrl VHllT tifTlP LUlUgs ua^/pvuiu^ ww vuv, MU?. j vw. will come soon, dear, never fear. ;j .. 4'It's a good thing," she added to herself, "that she don't know anything about dear old Judge Flostroy. There's a difference in age, if you please, and the old pet is so infatuated about me. / An old man's darling, or a young man's / slave?which?" " While Halcyon thought, on her side: "The silly goose! He has done it sow. He has been making love to Aunt ' Hal, under the impression that he was courting me. I thought, of course, he knew that ner name was the same as mine. Didn't she stand gcdmother to me at St. Chrysoline's, and give me a coral-and-bell3 and an embroidered rhristeniner robe? And now he has actually proposed to her! Well, if he is the man I take him to be, he'll stand by his colors, cost him what it may. A man who could walk up to the cannon's mouth at Bey-Idonna surely won't shrink even from Aunt Hal. And I'd ra-rather know that he was a true hero th-than have a poltroon for my husband!" And Halcyon turned her face toward the pillow, and cried great, sparkling tears like dewdrops. * * * ' "So you're back again, Lieutenant? Beg pardon?I'd orter'd said Colonel, I do suppose," said the old hack-driver at * the station, whom Chartley Blcsson had remembered ever since he was a child. | 'Well, I declare. I shouldn't hardly he? knowed ye! And come back to be married, eh?" Blesson bit his lips; but he laughed j carelessly. Jonas Hopper was a privij leged individual, like the court jesters of [ old. "How did you know, old man?" said he. j "Oh, I dunno! Miss Hartford, she's been gettin' ready to be married, this long time," said Jonas, hoisting the i 1 ? ? I Colonel s luggage on mts uawn. KJL bUO | wagon. ''And dressmakers and millin. ers they will talk, you know, though I'm told Miss Hal took great pains to hide it." "Did she?" (Aside: "The darling!") . "And aline woman she is, Colonel," officiously added Joua3, as he pushed in the last iron-clamped trunk. "A very ' fine woman, considerin' her age. I only wonder she ain't married before." Colonel Blesson opened his sleepy black eyes. "Why, who on earth are you talking about, man ?" said he. i "Why, Miss Hal Hartford, to-be! sure." i "Miss Halcyon or Miss Halliana?" "There ain't no Miss Halliana," said Jonas. "They're both the same name; but we calls the aunt Miss Hal and the i niece Miss Halcyon. My daughter she's j lady's-maid there; and I'd orter know, if any one does." I | "And which of them is it tuat is going to be married?" breathlessly queried Blesson. i I "Why, the old 'an, of course?Beg ' pardon!" hurriedly added Jones, 4'I 1 mem Miss Hal. Polly she tells me there's four-and-twenty different gounds ordered, let alone the jackets and parasols 1 and ten-button kid gloves lit to make ( your bair stand on end." i "And Miss Halcyon?the young 1-idy," 1 cried Blesson?"she is engaged too?" "Not as any one kEOws on," said | Jonas. "That all, Coionel? Got your i telescope bag? Then we'd better be j movin'." Colonel Blesson pondered seriously all i the way up to Hartford Cedars, oblivious ' - ' - ? x_ll_ ( of Joaas's incessant stream ui mm. ( Could it be possible? No, that was utter nonsense! And yet? He strained his eyes as they approached the house. Surely goldenhaired Halcyon would be there, smiling to welcome him! But no. In her place stood a middleaged charmer,well rouged and powdered, with hair gleaming meretriciously, and teeth just a size too large for the thin-lipped mouth. In one hand she held his love-breathing letter; in the other his photograph. And during that second his heart sank i like lead. j But he did not know?ah, how much j more difficult would it have been to bear j had he done so!?that Halcyon Hart- j ford's eyes were surreptitiously watching j L:? 4-k/* Vi rvr>c?r'a 11 r?Vln_rrnrl nnrlpfj i | 111LL! 11U1U kUC uvuvjtfuvtktw O***I casement beyond. "Dear Chaitley," the elderly damsel j twittered, "you are here at last." He set his teeth, drew one long breath, j and allowed her to slip a carrc3siog hand i through his arm and lead him into the j house, muttering some hoarse acknowl- ( edgu.ent of her coquettish smiles. (' "I've brought it on myself," he j ' thought. "And I must simply endure | \ j it. The woman isn't to blame?no, she 1 i is not to blame." I j "He is a hero," Halcyon thought? t I "yes, a hero." j ' ; And then she burst into a passion of | j j tears and ran up 3tairs to her own room, j "But now I've got you fairly here," i 1 lisped Aunt Hal, more determinedly i ' youthful than ever, "I'm really afraid, f dearest Chaitley, that there's a great I disappointment in store for you." ' "Eh?". ! The Colonel had sat down in a rather ! [ listless manner. Aunt Hal held on to < his hand, still all teeth and smiles. "And I may as well tell you at once," < said she, "that I'm already engaged to ! 1 I Jud<?e Flostrov. of the Superior Court. ! 1 I Of course, if I had known of your at- ! J tachraent in time, there's no saying?" "Oh, pray don't let me interfere with J any existing arrangements!" said Blesson, jumping eagerly up. "Perhaps, under the circumstauces, you will let me < have my photograph back?" Just then there came a ring at the j door below as the maid announced: i "Judge Flostroy, miss, if you please!" I 1 Before the slow and ponderous steps of | 1 the approaching visitor could reach the j , room, Aunt Hal had thrust the photo- j graph into Blesson's hand. She had had the little triumph, which was all she wanted. That little case of ! diamonds from Judge Flostroy had settled the question. "A-iiem-m-m!" sonorously cougaed i the luminary of the Superior Court. < Aunt Hal tripped smilingly forward. ' "Glad to see you, Judge!" she cooed. "This is my old playmate, Colonel j ~^ T ,1 I j .Blesson, just arrivea irom muia. i uurw j say, Chartley, you'll find Halcyon somewhere about the house." "Disposed of in short order," muttered Colonel Blesson. "Great heavens! what have I done to deserve such luck as this?" Two hours afterward the young lovers sat in the veranda, watching the evening star rise over the hills, while the Judge's basso profundo voice still rolled in the sitting room like distant thunder. "But wasn't it a narrow escape?" gasped Blesson, holding both Halcyon's hands in his. Would you really have married her, Chartley ?" "As a gentleman, Halcyon, there was no outlet of escape for me, under the | CircumBumuca. ' But would you really have married her?" ''Yes, I would!" with sternly-set teeth \ and knitted brows. "Then I'll marry you, Chartley," whispered Halcyon, "because you are a genuine hero. And because," with an arch glance, "I really think you need a wife to take charge of you." "After the episode of to-day," said Colonel Blesson, "I really think I do." , ?Saturday flight. < "As Long as Grass Grows." Nathaniel Ferguson, who died recently at Reading, Penn., was one of the principal owners of the Robesonia furnace. This is still working under an ore right purchased in 1793 from Peter Grub, and for a nominal sum this furnace. is allowed to take all the ore it can use "as long as grass grows and water runs." The property and rights are very valuable.?Philadelphia Record. A transaustralian railroad is being ' talked of in the colony. 3 '.'-T - ' | 'v. v v.'-.-.o . REV. M. TALMAGE THE BROOKLYN DIVINE'S SUN. DAY SERMON. Subject: ?The Plague of Crime." Text: uAll the waters that were in tht river were turned to blood."?Exodus vii., 20. Among all the Egyptian places none could have been worse than this. The Nile is the wealth of Egypt. Its fish the food, its waters the irrigation of garden and fields. Its condition decides the prosperity or the doom of the empire. What happens to the Nile happens to all Egypt. And now in the text that great river is incarnadined. It is a red gash across an empire. In poetic license we speak of wars which turn the rivers into blood. But my text is not a poetic license. It was a fact a great crimson, appalling condition described. The Nile rolling deep of blood. Can you imagine a more awful plague? The modern plague which nearest corresponds with that is the plague of crirn9 in all our cities. It halts not for bloodshed. It shrinks from no carnage. It bruises and cuts and strikes down and destroys. It revels in the blood of body and soul, this plague of crime rampant for ages, and never bolder or more rampant than now. The annual police reports of thes9 cities as I examine them are to me more suggestive than Dante's Ir.ferno, and all Christian people as well as reformers need to awaken to a present and tremendous duty. If you want this "Plague of Crime" to stop there are several kinds of persons you need to consider. First, the public criminals. You ought not to be surprised that these people ma!:e up a large portion in many communities. The vast majority of the criminals who take ship from Europe come into our own port. In 1809, of the forty-nine thousand people who were incarcerated in the prisons of the country thirty-two thousand were of foreign birth. Many of them were the very desperadoes o? society, oozing into the slums of our city, waiting for tin opportunity to riot and steal ind debauch, joining the large gang of American thugs and cut-throats. There are in this cluster of cities?New 5Tork, Jersey City and Brooklyn?four thousand people whose entire business in life is to commit suicide. That is as much their business as jurisprudence or medicine jr merchandise is your business. To it they bring all their energies of body, mind and ;oul, and they look upon the intervals which they spend in prison as so much unfortunate loss of time, just as you look upon an attack if influenza and rheumatism which fastens pou in the house for a few days. It is their lifetime business to pick pockets and blow ap safes and shoplift and ply the panel game, md they have as much pride of skill in their business as you have in yours when you upset the argument of an opposing counsel, or cure a gunshot fracture which other surgeons have given up, or foresee a turn in the market as you buy goods just before they go ip twenty per cent. It is their business to :ommit crime, and I do not suppose that >nce in a year the thought of the immorality itrikesthem. Added to these professional criminals, American and foreign, there are a large :lasa of men who are more or less industrious n crime. In one year the police in this cluster of cities arrested ten thousand people [or theft, and ten thousand for assault and mttery, and fifty thousand for intoxication. Drunkenness is responsible for much of the ;heft, since it confuses a man's ideas of jroperty, and he gets his hands on things ;hat do not belong to him> Rum is responsible for much of tne assault and battery, inspiring men to sudden bravery, which they Bust demonstrate tnougn it oe on tne race )f the next gentleman. Ten million dollars' worth of property stolen in this cluster of cities in one year! STou cannot, as good citizens, be independent >f that fact. It will touch your pocket, since [ have to give you the fact that these three :ities pay about eight million dollars' worth )f taxes a year to arraign, try and support ;he criminal population. You help to pay ;he board of every criminal, from the sneak ihief that enatches a spool of cotton up to ?me man who swamps a bank. More tnan ihat, it touches your heart in the moral dejreseion of the community. You might as veil think to stand in a closely confined oom where there are fifty people and yet lot ft-eathe the vitiated air, as to stand in i community where there is such a great 1 nultitude of the depraved without somewhat being contaminated. What is the fire hat burns your store down compared with ;he conflagration which consumes your norals? What is the theft of the gold and iilver from your money safe compared with ;he theft of year children's virtue? We are all ready to arraign criminals, SVe shout at the top of our voice, "Stop :hief!" and when the police get on the track ive come out, hatless and in our slippers, and issist in the arrest. We come around the sawling ruffian and hustle him off to justice, ind when he gets in prison what do we do for lim? With great gusto we put on the hand:uffs and the hopples; but what preparation ire we making for the day when the hand;ufl's and the hopples come off? Society eems to say to these criminals, "Villain, go n there and rot." when it ought to say, ''You are an offender against the law, but I we mean to give you an opportunity to re- | pent; we mean to help you. Here are Bibles | ind tracts and Christian influences. Christ i died for you. Look and live." Vast improvements have been made by introducing industries into the prison; but we want something more than hammers and shoe lasts to reclaim these people. Aye, we want more than sermons on the Sabbath day. Society must impress these men with the fact that it does net enjoy their suffering. and that it is attempting to reform and elevate them. The majority of criminals suppose that society has a grudge against them, and they in turn have a grudge against Eociety. They are harder in heart and more infuriate when they come out of jail than when they went in. Many of the people who go to prison go again and again and again. Some ye*rs ago, of fifteen hundred prisoners who during the year had been in Smg Sing, four hundred had been there before. In a house correction in the country, where during a certain reach of time there had been five thousand people, more than three Miousacd had been tnere before, So, in one ease tn'" prison, and in the other the house of rorrecfr^n, left them just as bad as they were t^foro \be secretary of one of the benevolent societies of New York says a lad fifteen years v* age had spent three years of his life in p. ison. and he .caid to the lad, "What have they done for you to make you better?" "W ell," replied the lad, "the first time I was brought up before the judge he said, 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself.' And theu 1 committed a crime again, and I was brought up before the same judge, and he said, 'You rascal!' And after a while I committed some other crime, and I was brought before the same judge, and he said, 'You ought to be hanged/ " That was all they had done for him in the way of reformatiou and salvation. "Oh,"jou say, "these people are incorrigible." i suppose mere i are hundreds of persons this day lying in the ' prison bunks who would leap up at the prospect of reformation if society would only aUow them a way into decency and respectability. "Oh," you say, "I have no patience with th&se rogues." I ask you in reply, how much better would you have been under the same circumstances? Suppose your mother i had been a blasphemer and your father a sot, and you had started life with a body stuffed with evil proclivities, and you had spent much of your time in a cellar amid obscenities and cursing, and if at ten years of age you had been compelled to go out and steal, battered and banged at night if you came in without any sqxrils, and suppose your early manhood and womanhood had been covered with rags and filth, and decent society had turned its back upon you, and left you to consort with vagabonds and wharf rats?how much better would you have been? I have no sympathy with that executive ciemaucv wuicu wouia let crime i run loo3e, or wtucu wouia sic m tag gatiery of a court room weeping because some hardhearted wretch is brought to justice; but I do say that the safety and life of the com- | ? tiAfanfiol inflnanr>oa in j LLiUUil/jr ucuiauu mu?o i^wuvw ? i behalf of public offenders. In some of the city prisons the air is like j that of the Black Hole of Calcutta. I have visited prisons where, as the air -swept through the wicket, it almost knocked me down. No sunlight. Young men'^hohad committed their first crime cnffWded in amonz old offenders. I saw in qfte prison a woman, with a child almost MJnd, who hat been arrested for the crime of/poverty, wh< was waiting until the slow ,[aw could tak< her to the almshouse, where she rightfulh belonged; but she was^jMfc in there witl her child amid the mos^HKdoned wretchei of the town. Many of thTMtfenders in thai prison selpt on the floor, wicT nothing buti /"* | \ \ :{ i ermin-oovered blanket over them. Those people crowded and wan and wasted and naif suffocated and infuriated. I said to the men, '"How do you stand it here?" "God knows," said one man, "we have to stand it." Oh, they will pay you when they get out. Where they burned down one house they will burn three. They will strike deeper the assassin's knife. Taey afe this minute plotting worse burglaries. borne of the city Jails are the best places I know of to manufacture footpads, vagabonds and cutthroats. Yale College is not so well calculated^ make scholars, nor Har,vard so well calculated to make scientists, nor Princeton so well calculated to make theologians, as many of our jails are calculated to make criminals. All that those men do not know of crime after they have been in that dungeon for some time. Satanio machination cannot toach them. In the insufferable stench and sickening surroundings of such places there is nothing but disease for the body, idiocy for the mind, and death for the soul. Stifled air and darkness and vermin never turned a thief into an honest man. We want men like John Howard and Si? William Blackstone and women like Elizabeth Fry to do for the prisons of the United States what those people did in other days for the prisons of England. I thank God for what Isaac T. Hopper and Dr. Wines and Mr. Harris and scores of others have done in the way of prison reform, but we want something more radical before will come the blessing of him who said, "I was in prison, and ye came unto me." Again, in your effort to arrest this plague of crime you need to consider untrustworthy officials. ''Woe unto thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes drink in the morning." It is a great calamity to a city when bad men get into publio authority. Why was it that in New York there was such unparalleled crime between and 1871? It was because the judges of police in that city at that time for the most partwera as corrupt as the vagabonds that came before them for trial. Those were the days of high carnival for election frauds, assassination and forgery. We bad all kinds of rings. There was one man during those years that got one hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars in one year for serving tne public. It is no compliment to public authority when we have in all the cities of the country, walking abroad, men and women notorious for criminality unwhipped ol justice, rney ore pointed out to you in the street day by day. There you find what are called the "fences," the men who stand between the thief and the honest man, sheltering the tbief, and at a great price handing over the goods to the owner to whom they belonged. Tbere you will And those who are called the "skinners," the men who hover around Wall street, with great sleight of hand in bonds and stocks. There you find the funeral thieves, the people who go and sit down and mourn with families and pick their pockets. And there you find the "confidence men," who borrow money of you because they have a dead child in the house and want to bury it, when they never had a house or family; or they want to go to England and get a large property there, and they want you to pay their way and they will send the money back by the very next mail. There are the "harbor thieves," the "shoplifters," the pickpockets," famous 11 over the cities. Hundreds of them with their faces in the Rogues' Gallery, yet doing nothing for the last five or ten years but defraud society and escape justice. When these people go unarrested and unpunished it is putting a high premium upon vicfe and saying to the young criminals of this country, "What a safe thing it is to be a great criminal!" Let the law swoop upon them. Let it be known in this country crime will have no quarter; that the detectives are after it; that the police club is being brandished; that the iron door of the prison is being opened; that the iudize is readv to call on the case. Too great leniency to criminals is too great severity to society. Again in yonr effort to arrest this plague of crime, you need to consider the idle population. Of course I do not refer to people who are getting old, or to the sick or to those who cannot get work, but I tell you to look out for those athletic men and women who will not work. When the French nobleman was asked why he kept busy when he had so large a property, he said, "I keep on engraving so I may not hang myself." I do not care who the man is, you cannot affo' d to be idle. It is from the idle classes that the criminal classes are made up. Character, like water, gets putrid if it stands still too long. Who can wonder that in this world, where there is so much to do, and all the hosts of eartL and heaven and hell are plunging into the conflict and angels are fly mg ana uoa is ai hu;?. auu wa uukci.-w 13 a-quake with the marching and counterimarching, that God lets His indignation fall upon a man who chooses idleness. I havi) watched these do-nothings who spend their time stroking their beard and retouching their toilet and criticising industrious poople, and pass their days and nights in barrooms and club houses, lounging and smoking and chewing and cardplaying. They are not only useless, but they are dangerous. How hard it i3 for them to while away the hours! Alas, for them! If they do not know how to while away an hour, what will they do when they have all eternity on their hands? These men for a while smoke the best cigars and wear tho best clothes and move in the highest spheres, but I have noticed that very soon they come down to the prison, the almshouse, or stop at the gallows. The police stations of this cluster of cities furnish annually between two and three hundred thousand lodgings. For the most pari) these two and three hundred thousand lodgings are furnished to able bodied men and women?people as able to work as you and I are. When they are received no longer at one police station because they are "repeaters" they go to some other station and so they keep moving around. They get their food at house doors, stealing what they can lay their hands on in the front basement while the servant is spreading the bread in the back basement. They will not work. Time and again, in the country districts, they have wanted hundreds and thousands of laborers. These men will not go. They do not want to work. I have tried them. I have set them to sawing wood in my cellar to see whether thev wanted to work. I of fared to pay them "well for it. I have heard the saw going for about three minutes, and then I went down, and lo! the wood, but no saw! They are the past of society, and they stand in the way of the Lord's poor who who ought to be helped, and must oe helped, and will be helped. While there are thousands of industrious men who cannot get any work, these men who do not want any work coma in and make that plea. I am in fc-vor of the restoration of the old fashioned whipping post for just this one class of men who will not work?sleeping at night at public expense in the station house; during the day getting their food at your doorstep. Imprisonment does not scare them. They would like it. Blackwell's Island or Sing fcjiug would be a comfortable home for tkern. They would have no objection to the almshouse, for they like thin soup, if thoy cannot get mock turtle. I proposs this for them: On one side of thern put some healthy work; on the other side put a rawhide, and let them take their choice. I like for that class of people the ecant bill of fare that Paul wrote out for the Thessalonian loafers, "If any work not neither should he eat." By what law of God or man is it right that you and I should toil day in and day out, until our hands are blistered and our arms ache and our brain gets numb, and then be called upon to support what in the United States are about two milfon loafers. They are a very dangerous da;*. Let the public authorities keep their eyes on them. A *ViQ ,ir>T*rvifinT /?laaq(>q T nlftOS " S"'"! "'"""6 ?' -r-~ ? r the oppressed poor. Poverty to a certain extent is chastening, but after that, when it! drives a man to the wall, and he hoars hi9 children cry in vain for bread, it sometimes makes him desperate. I think that there are thousands of honest men lacerated into vagabondism. There are men crushed under burdens for which they are not half paid. While there is no excuse for criminality, even in oppression, I state it as a simple fact that much 'of the scoundrelism of the community is consequent upon ill-treatment.jThere are many men and women battered 'and bruised and stung until the hour of de> Impair has oome, ana they atand with th* ferocity of a wild beast Which, pursued until 1 it can ran no longer, tarns round, foaming ] and bleeding, to light the hounds. _ ( There is a vast underground New Yortc and Brooklyn life that is appalling and shameful. It wallows and steams with putrefaction. You go down the stairs, which are wet and decayed with filth, and at the bot- ! totn you find the poor victims on the floor, I cold, sick, three-fourths dead, slinking into a j ' (till darker corner under th9 gleam of the < lantern of the police. There has not been a i breath of fresn air in that room for five j rears, literally. The broken sewer empties j I xs contents upon them, and they lie at night 1 1 in the swimming filth. There they are, men, women, children; block, whites; Mary Magdalen without her repentance, and Lazarus without his God. These are "the divee" into which the pickpockets and the thieves go. as well as a great many who would like a different life but cannot get it. These places are the sores of the city, which blW perpetual corruption. They are the underlying volcano that threatens us with a Caraccas earthquake. It rolls and roars and surges and heaves and rocks and blasphemes) and dies, and there are only two outlets for it?the police court and the Potter's field. In other words, they must either go to prison or to hell. Oh, you never saw It, you say. You never will see it until on the day when those staggering wretches shall come up in the light of the judgment throne, and while all hearts are being revealed, God will ask you what you did to help them. There is another layer of poverty and destitution not so squalid, but almost as helpless. You hear the incessant wailing for bread and clothes and fire. Their eyes are sunken. Their cheek bones stand out. Their hands are damp with slow consumption. Their flesh is puffed up with dropsies. Their breath is like that of the charnel house. They hear the roar of the wheels of fashion overhead and the gay laughter of men and maidens and wonder why God gave to others so much and to them so little. Borne of them LLLI L13L 1LIUU t?U lUilUOUt)' UiO LUAb KJL IUC JWW German girl who, when told in the midst of her wretchedness that God was good, said : "No; no good God. Just look at me. No good God." In thin cluster of cities whose ary of want I interpret there are said to be, as far as I can figure It up from the reports, about three hundred thousand honest poor who are dependent upon individual, city and (State charities. If all their voices could come up at once it would be a groan that would shake the foundations of the city and bring all earth and heaven to the rescue. But for the most part it suffers unexpressed. It sits in silence gnashing its teeth and sucking the blood of its own arteries waiting for the judgment day. Oh, I should not wonder if on that day it would be found out that some of ua had some things that belonged to them, some extra garment which might have made them comfortable in cold days; some bread thrust into the ash barrel that might have apoeased their hunger for a little while; some wasted candle or gas jet that might have kindled up their darkness; some fresco on the ceiling that would have given them a roof; some jewel which, brougnt to that orphan girl in time, might have Kept her from being crowded off the precipices to an unclean life; some New Testament that would have told fKam r\f TTim txrVirv ltr?o ma fn aoolr thftt. arhlnh was lost;." Oh, this wave of vagrancy and hunger and nakedness that dashes against our front door step I If the roofs of all the houses of destitution could be lifted so we could look down into them just as God looks, whose nerves Would be strong enough to stand it? And yet there they are. The fifty thousand sewing women in these three cities, some of them in hunger and cold, working night after night, until sometimes the blood spurts from noBtril and lips. How well their grief was voiced by that despairing woman who stood by her invalid husband and invalid child, and said to the city missionary: "I am down hearted. Ever7thine58 a train st us*, and then there are other things." "What other things?" said the city missionary. "Oh," she replied, "my sin." "What do you mean by that?" "Well," she said, "I never hear or see anything good. It's work from Monday morning till Saturday night, and then when Sunday comes I can't go out, and I walk the floor, aud it makes me tremble to think that I have got to meet God. Oh, sir, it's so hard for us. We have to work so, and then we have so much trouble, and then we are getting along so poorly; and see this, wee little thing growing weaker and weaker; and then to think we are not getting nearer to God, but floating away from Him. Oh, sir, I do wish I was ready to die." I should not wonder if they had a good deal better time than we in the future, ta make up for the fact that they had such a bad time here. It would be just like Jesus to say: "Come up and take the highest seats. You suffered wich Me on earth; now be glorified with Me in heaven." Oh, thou weeping One of Bethany 1 Oh, thou dying Ono of the cross 1 Have mercy on the starving, freezing, homeless poor of these great cities! I have preached this sermon for four or five practical reasons: Because I want you to know who are the uprooting classes of society. Because I want you to be more /linntHMtNafin/* in Trnim /iViorifioa ? Pqaq naa I iua\;i laxiiiauiu^ tu jwm vuativtwo. *#v.wu?v I want your hearts cpon with generosity, and your hands open with charity. Because I want you to be made the sworn friends of all city evangelization, and all newsboys' lodging houses, and all children's aid societies, and Dorcas societies, under the skillful manipulation of wives and mothers and sisters and daughters; let the spare garments of your wardrobes be fitted to the limbs of the wan and shivering. I should not wonder if that hat that you give should come back a jeweled corenet, or 5 that garment that you hand out from your wardrobe should mysteriously be whitened, and somehow wrought into the Saviour's own robe, so in the last day He would run His nana over it and say, "I was naked and ye clothed Me.'' That would be putting your garments to glorious uses. But more than that, I have preached the sermon because I thought in the contrast you would see how very kindly God had dealt with you, and I thought that thousands of you would go to your comfortable homes and sit at your well-filled tables and at the warm registers, and look at the round faces of your children, and that then you would burst in to tears at the review of God's * * -*-1 1 /5 MA goodness to you, ana uu you nuuw your room and lock the door and kneel down and say: "O Lord. I have been an ingrate; make me Thy child. O Iiord, there are so many hunjry and unclad and unsheltered to-day, I thank Thee that all my life Thou hast taken such good care of me. 0, Lord, there are so many sick and crippled children to-day, I thank Thee mine are well?some of them on earth, some of them in heaven. Thy goodness, O Lord, breaks me down. Take me once and forever. Sprinkled as I was many years ago at the altar, while my mother held me, now I consecrate my soul to Th je in a holier baptism of repenting tears. "For sinners, Lord, Thou cam'et to bleed. And I'm a sinner vile indeed: Lord, I believe Thy grace in free, O insgniiy that grace to me." Pert VTay to iTeiect uad torn. A well-known restaurant keeper was observed lost night to courteously return atcustomer an alleged silver dollar and advised him to go back to the man who palmed it off on to him. "How did you know so easily It was bad?" he was asked. "By the feel. If you keep your hands dry you need never take in a bad dollar in ten years. If very hot weather, when your thumb and fingers piespire, there is a little danger, for with wet fingers or a wet coin the shiny feel of a bad coin cannot be so easily detected. With paper money there is no difficulty and risk, but it is months since I got a bad bill left on my hands. The silk thread test is one of the very best, aod there is something in the texture that is very hard to beat. I once paid a big fee to learn how to tell bad money from good, but experience after all is the only reliable instructor.?St. Louis Star-Sayings. Awful SiauijhTer of Timber. An alarmed dealer in lumber tells the Paducah (Ky.) News that it will not be ten years before "the supply of logs will be a hard problem to solve." He says I the timber along the Tennessee and I r\ 1?~i ? A T>ITnxn Jo foef koi n rr /nif. nut l^ULilUUllaiiU IU*C13 !<*ow ~ v "The supply of everything is exhaust able. The slaughter of timber in Kentucky and Tennessee is something awful. 1 Our oalcf hickory, ash, gum, poplar and other valuable woods are rapidly following the track of the black walnut, which is now nearly extiuct as an article of commerce. Other trees will grow up in the place of those that arc destroyed in some sections, but it takes at least a full generation for any of the varieties to mature into merchantable timber, and some of them will require mora than a generation to do it. In other sections the young trees are being wasted in the imost shameful maimer." . eeligiousTeading. T.RT HIM SHARE ALL. Filled with anxiety And pressed witb heavy care I brought by load to God For Hira to bear. Tenderly He lifted The care that did annoy; Instead of mourning, gave The oil of joy. But, lo! the joy just given Began to fade away Like Jonah's gourd, a thing Of but a day. So to the Lord I went. And asked the reason why This joy that He bad given, So soon should die. Then, answering. He said. Thou broughtest Mc thy care But didst not bring the joy For Me to share." With tears of penitence, '^Aro-iup M T priori "Henceforth both cares and Joys "W'e will divide." ?[Louie H. K. Bilbrough, in London Christian. ffl SHOULD BB HOLT. Albert Barnes has well and forcibly said: ''A man who has been redeemed by the blood of the Son of God should be pure. He who is an heir of life should be holy. < He who is attended by ceKdtial beings, and who is soon?he knows not how soon?to be translated to heaven, should be holy. Are angels my attendants? Then I should walk worthy of my companionship. Am I so soon to go and" dwell with angels? Then I should be pure. Are these feet soon to tread the courts of heaven? Is this tongue soon to unite with heavenly beings in praising God? Are these eyes of mine so soon to look on the throne ef eternal glory, and on the ascendant Redeemer? Then these feet, and eves, and lips, should be pure and holy, and I'should be dead to the world, and live for heaven." THE SliCBKT 0? GOOD W0BK. Some years ago I was brought in contact with a colored man. He was nothing but a cobbler. He said himself he was not a decent shoe-maker, and I can testify to that from some experience of his work. But il not elegantly done, it was thoroughly done; and that was the point. He told me that when lie became too old and crippled to work in the field and house he took to cobbling. I said to him: "My friend, after this cobbling on earth is done, how about that other world? Haveyou any hope for a better world?" "Ah. master.'' suid he, "I am nothing, a? I told you, but a poor cobbler; but, I feel, when I sit here and work at my stool, that the good Master is looking at me, and when I take a stitch it is a stitch, and when I put on a heel-tap it is not paper, but good leather." It is not the work we do upon earth that make? tne wnoieoi me. out 11 is cue way m which we do that work?it is the motive. 'Thou God seest me "?[Christian al Work. ibust IN COD. i There is a rare story told of the Holy Bengel, whose monument is the Greek Testament. the result of a diligent comparing of all the ancient manuscript#, that not one grain of truth should be lost. He died in 1752. A friend on bis journey, lodging for one night in Bengel's house, knowing his Christian character well, wished to hear his evening prayer. Busied with his great work, Bengel sat up late, while his friend waited, weary though he wa?, till nearly midnight. At last Bengel kneeled beside bis chair, and with reverent tones he spoke to bis Lord. The dear ilaster. whose words he bad been pouring over, with heart always uplifted for the teachiug of the Holy Spirit, from ihe early morning until now, scarce asking time for refreshment, "esteeming the words of his mouth more than his necessary food," he knew was very near him. And thus he spake to him: "Lord Jesus, things are just the same between us," and laid himself to rest. At the first reading of this story, great as uroa t>it? rovprpnrp for ihe man of Goi\. I did not like it. The words seemed so brief, so unbefitting all a creature's need before his Creator God. that?shall I say it??th? y almost savored of irreverence. But as it "was often recurrinsr and turned over in thought, this impression passed awav. Like a passage of holy writ, it broadened, shone with a deeper,"truer, reverential meaning: and so, from scarce liking it, it has become a treasured thought, and oft-repeated urayer. Yes! it is one of God's thoughts; and how "precious are His thoughts unto His children, how great is the sum of them!" See you not? Here is the rock of God's unchangeableness. "I change not,'' be said to bis wanderers, "therefore ye are not consumed." You mav waver; I change not. You may wander; t am ever the same. You may forget: I will never forget thee. The unchanging God of the Old Testament is "Jesus CbrisUthe?ame yesterday, todav and forever," of the New. How blessed he who can thus calmly commit himself to one on whose uncbangeablen??a >11 "tin an norfopflr rpnnup thftt be will ever ,;be quiet from fear of evil;" who can feel that tnis unchangeable God is "his rock, his fortress and his deliverer, -his God," in whom h" can trust forever, and so "be kept in perfect peace because his mind is stayed on him.'*?[Christian Intelligencer. HOW TO BE IIAPPV. The pursuit of happiness as the chief end of being i3 sure to lead to disappointment. It is well for us to know that we are to be surrounded with evils which are inevitable in this ruined worid, and which shall mai the best estate. Sickness, pain, fear, losses, and hurtful mistakes which we have made. Then what we suffer by sympathy with our friends, and in the bereavement of them. AI90 in our social relations we must bear out part of the wrongs brought upon it by human imperfection or by wickcd intentions. There is no hiding-place where we can fly awry and be quite happy. Our ruined state and partial alleviations of it are indicated by the words which we use to express our estimate of the best conditions or human life?safety, rest, peace, hope, etc. They declare our danger, and our tOlJ, 311(1 our sirue, ana iuso i>ur c.xpitiauuu of deiiverance. It is the forecast of the zospcl written upon the pages if our lives, a token of redemption. It is 110 solution of the problem to say that the tone of our happiness must be in our own hearts. Our hearts are as much out of tune as the outward conditions of our lives. There is no reliab'e source of happiness to any one. One joy is in what wo escape, in the alleviations" of inevitable ills and the partial relief which comes with them. The delightful glow of a tire on the hearth is in proportion to the <larknes> and storm without. The shipwrecked mariner is happy if he has saved his compass, chronometer and quadrant. The family is happy before their burning dwelling if they ran clasp all their tiear ones saved from the flames. tv> ail flip ills of life some relief mav be looked for, some alleviation, or the end hoped for. It is not in vain to seek relief and to hope no ill. Many of the trilling ills of life may be escaped by having something to do, and" the greater sorrows may be alleviated. And he makes himself happv who makes others happy by useful labor. Yet in all the evils of this life and the partial alleviation of them the Christain may rejoice. Tribulations work patience and experience and hope. Al! things shall not only end well, but shall work together for good. That love of Christ which is the only fountain of ail happiness is unchangeable. The only true and enduring happiness is that which comes from belief in God's Word and trust in his promises. It is limited and imperfect, as our faiih is imperfect, but it is not tincerf*>!" It roatd mi fVio iinrhanarftable love Of God as revealed in Chrbi Jesu.?. X. R. Me tarried a sworn. I Bluater (to an opponent with -whom ! he had been holding an angTy discussion)?Be careful of your language to rue, six-! Opponent?What for? Bluater?I hold to the code. Bemember, I carried a sword during the war. | Opponent?Yes, I recollect. Yen carried it in a Kuiglits Templar procession.?Texas Siftings. TT - iiflAll A nnnniaa nf KanninABt I XXUf ?< Id a UI uww| I and perhaps the chief happiieas tb) world ^fiords.-- Samuel Jokraon. ' " '* * v. '"' . ^ "t* T?tj< V? ' I SABBATH SCHOOL , - 3?. - - V* *. ' I ?! INTERNATIONAL LESSON FOB ? MAY 3. Lesson Text: "Israel Often Reproved,1 Amos iv., 4-13? Golden Text: Proverbs xxlx,, 1~? ; Commentary. Araos was a prophet to Israel (the te? tribes) in the days or Uzziah, king of Jodah and Jeroboam, son of Joash, king of Israel And about the same time lived the prophett Isafah and Hosea (Amos 1., 1; Isa. 1., 1; Bos i., 1). Amos was called to bo a prophet whik . keeping sheep, and the chief place of hi) prophecy was Bethel (chap, vll., 10-15). Is reel's sin was that because prosperous thej were at ease and indifferent to toe claims &. God (vi., 1-ti): greedy of gain and oppflessint the poor flu, 6, 7; iv.. 11. J2; vuiJ, 4-8)i heeded not the voice of G6d in Judgment (iv.. 6-11), and despised the word of God (iL ' 4: v. 10; vii., 10-13). Yet He loved them and bore patiently with them, and entreated them, and kept before them the blessingBOf the sure covenants with Abraham and David. Read very carefully chapter ix, 11-15. 5. "Come to Bethel and trantereas; at Gilgal multiply transgression." Wftn all their sin they were outwardly very religious. At Bethel and at Gilgal they had many altarn Hosea says they were as plenty as neaps oi stones in the field (Hoe. xiL, 11: Amos Hi. 14). And at Bethel there wi^s a golden call which Jeroboam, son of Nebet, had se^ up, say in?. "Benold thy gods, O Israel" (King* xii., 38, 29). But there w?g only one attar Is ail the land where, since tne ounaing ot en* temple. God commanded sacrifice to be offered (Deut. xii., 10, 11; Ps. cxxxii.t 13), so that all sacrifices at Bethel or OUgei wtt simply transeression. 5. "And offers sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, for this liketh yoo, O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord God." Leaves is everywhere in the Scripture a symbol at evil. With the meal offering there was tobt neither leaven nor honev, and at .the Pass* over there was to be no leaven found in their houses (Lev. ii., 11: Ex. xiu lk 19}-- Th? A significance of leaven is seen in I Cor. vn 8. and in the Saviour's teaching in Matt. ' zvi., 6, 12;Luke xii., 1. (5. "And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in allvour places; yet have ye not returned unto Me. saith the Lord." (Observe in this verse and in verses &, 9, 10,11, the. five times repeated sad refrain: "Yet have ve not returned unto Me, saith the Lord." Thiashowi us the heart of God and His one great longing for, His erring people, that they in true penitence return to Him. T. "And also I have withholden the rain from you when there were yet three monthi to the'harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city." That He .would also .chasten them is recognized by Solomon in his prayer at the dedication ol tne temple (i iLings vrn., 35, 36). Who among us ever stops to con- ' sider tbat when it rains in one place and not in another God has anything to do with it, or that when In one place there is a drought and in another ni'ieh rain, it is the hand of the Lord that doeth this? And yet if we bolieve His word we must believe that "the balancings of the clouds are tin wondrous works of Sim Who is perfect in knowledge; who saith to the-snow. Be thou on th* earth; likewise to the small rain and the great rain of His strength." 8. "So two or three cities wandered into one city to drink water, but they were hot satisfied: yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord." They forsook God, th? fountain of living waters, and hewed them out of cisterns, broken cisterns, that could hold no water (Jer. ii., 18). They turned their backs upon Him who in the wilderness gave them water from the rock, who fed them daily with manna from heaven, to humble them and prove them, and makfl them to know that man is to live "upon the Lord, and not upon His gifts (Dent, viii.,' 8). 0. "I have smitten you with blasting and mildew.'' This also He had forewarned them of when He set before them the blessings and cursings which wonld surely follow obedience or disobedience (Deot. xxviii., 22) "When your gardens, and your vineyards, , and your fig trees, and your olive trees increased, the palmer worm devoured them." It appeared as if there might be a large harvest of fruit, but the worms prevented. ' 'Ye looked for much, and lor it came to little; and when you brought it home I did blow upon it. why? saith the Lord of Hosts: Be cause of Mine house that is waste and ye run every man into his own house" (Hag. i., 911). But does God control worms? In Jonab iv., 7, He prepared a worm to destroy Jonah's gourd, and in Joel iu, 25, He call# worms and caterpillars His great army, and says that He sends them. 10. "I have sent among you the pestilence > after the manner of Egypt." This, too, He had threatened (Dent, xxviii., *27-60), while v at the same time He had promised that if thev would diligently hajrken to His voice and do right in His sight tie wouia pur none of the diseases upon them which ,He had brought upon the Egyptians (Ex xv., 26; sxiii., 25: Deut. vii.. 15). 11. "I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomarrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked oat of the burning.'' In Zech. iii., 2, Jerusalem is called a brand plucked out of the fire, and' in Isa. i., 10, they are called rulers of Sodom and people of Gomorrah, while in Matt. xL, 24, Jesus says it will be mors tolerable in the day of judgment for Sodom than for disobedient Israel. By famine and sickness and war and bv direct judgment He pieaas wita tnem to return unto mm, out they reiuse. MSo all these things wurketh God oftentimes with man to bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of the living" (Job xxxiii., 29,30). Why ioes God chasten His people so muchf Just becauso they are His people (Amos iii., 2), and because He loves them too much io let them stay away from Him and lose His fellowship (Heb. xii., 7). . 12. "Therefore, thus will I do unto thee, n t.-roai anri Kwatika I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel." ~ The long account of love slighted, commands disoboyed, blessings abused, gifts transferred to other lovers, while all the time keeping up an outward profession of devotion, must some day be settled, and bow will Israel meet her God, whose most loving and persistent entreaties she has spurned? l'he only preparation is true penitence and consequent forgiveness followed by fruits meet for repentance. 13. "For. lo, He that formeth the mountains and createth the wind." He who loves us, and seeks us. and desires us to return to Him is the Creator of heaven and earth, and the former of our bodies and spirits. '-The only proper thing to do is to commit the keeping of our souls to Him in well doing as unto a faithful creator" (I Pet. iv., 19), remembering Isa. xl., 28-31. "The Lord, the God of Hosts, is His name." God is mentioned over eighty times in this pi-ophecy, under se* en different titles This one is used just e'ght times (iiL. 18; iv., IX!; v., 14, 15. 16, 27; vi., 8,14.) Jehovah, which signifies the one who was, is and shall ba, the righteous one, is found fifty times in th is book. He is righteous in an ais ways, uoiy in all His wo?ks (Ps. cxlv., 17). The God of Hosts reminds us of the hosts of angels who serve Him, and minister unto Him and Bin people, and the hosts of Israel and'of tlie saints.? Lesson Helper. A Ileal Mice Young Han. Friend?To be fraDk with you. I can't see how Mrs. Hardcash happened to consent to your marriage with her daughter. Mr. Slimpurse? She said I was the only young man who showed any consideration for a mother's feelings. You ?ap xvh?n thf? other fellows took he* daughter out riding, they seldom got her back until after dark; but when 1 took her, I always brought her hume promptly in an hour. "Humph! How was that?" "The other fellows had their own rigs. I hired mine."?York Weekly. rnonnT? .TuVHcfl. ""Why did vou shoot the plaintiffi dog?" ^Because he tried to bite me." "Even a dog ia entitled to a fcjr trial, Ton should only have tried to shoo* him. Twenty-five dollars."?Aviericar Grocer. \