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that her supremacy has sprung from her character rather than from her natural advantages; and in the formation of her character the English Bible has played a more important part than her Anglo-Saxon blood.

An Atlanta professor has found that at the end of 8,000 years Chicago will, by gradual subsidence, be beneath the waves. of Lake Michigan. The event is anticipated with great enthusiasm by the Chicagoans. We shall be "beautiful Venice, the bride of the sea." We shall slide down State Street in electric yachts. We shall go to singingschool of dark nights with a Ferguson jacklight to the fore of our canoes. Could not the Georgian give us the benefit of his science more expeditiously? Eight thousand years is a long time to wait. We are afraid that a good many of us will be dead before

that time.

There is not a better law in the ancient code, nor one which is less subject to modification than this: If a man will not work, neither shall he eat. Without it the race would be no better than a species of the lower animals. If a man will not work, he deserves to starve, and he ought, for the general good of society, to starve. The penalties for the violation of the divine laws are a part of the general divine benevolence. The pain of punishment makes for the pleasure of rewards, even for those who are punished. This cutting in to defeat the operation of beneficent penal laws is not benevolence; it is an erring sentimentality. If a man will not work except under the lash of famine, the discipline is what he needs; it will do him good.

It is not strange that China and Japan, both facing the terrors of the plague and the desolation of war, should turn to Europe for loans of money with which

to prosecute the contest. Bagehot has attempted to show that civilization progresses only by war, or, to use the figure of Lowell, "gets forward" on a powder-cart. This is a comforting thought for

Such as do build their faith upon The holy text of pike and gun, But that war is a punishment upon nations for their vices or their national sins seems more reasonable. The day seems yet far distant when nations shall not have war any more and live in universal peace and loving human brotherhood.

HERALD AND PRESBYTER.

"Getting out of the ruts" is simply abandoning one's habitual methods. If methods are bad, of course, change is good, but very often getting out of the ruts is getting off the track.

The latest siege of Jerusalem is by the liquor power. Application has been made and refused to establish a brewery within the sacred walls.

Mr. Stead's book stirred up the Chicago people, and they sent up a cry for Sunday rest. The City Council passed the vote for the relief of Sunday toilers, but the mayor, at the instance of the saloon-keepers, it is thought, vetoed the bill. The saloon-keeper is never overworked. He never has enough hours in which to make drunkards.

We recently heard one whose immense girth amounts to deformity, and whose dull eyes and scarlet complexion and odorous breath show how the deformity came, boast with profane emphasis that he was "a selfmade man." The assertion did him no

credit, and, as some one has remarked, it relieved the Almighty of a great responsibility. "God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions," among the worst of which is intoxicating drink.

"I fear that anticipation of unlooked-for ing amount of enterprise during the last windfalls of fortune, of success achieved fifty years. without toil, of fame got for the longing after it, of brides a few degrees above

When Judson came out of Andover

angels, and husbands in whom Apollo and Seminary he was called to be associate

cause.

Adonis are happily combined, are a not uncommon result of dwelling too long in congenial fiction. Nor do I at all doubt that a thousand instances of failure in professional life, of sudden and imprudent engagements, of ridiculous or ill-assorted marriages, may be ascribed to the same. At all events, this pernicious practice prolongs and intensifies the natural tendency to day-dreaming. Had it not been for this, the spell would have been broken the imaginative sleep-walkers awakened by the rude shocks and jogs of practical life. But the dream and the walk are often continued too long, and the unhappy somnambulist vanishes-over a precipice."

THE STANDARD.

Honesty is the best policy, but he who is honest only from policy is not really honest.

A great many who claim "the world owes them a living" forget that they owe the world anything.

The force of habit seems to be about the only "force" that some people are possessed of.

When the Trans-Siberian railroad is completed, it is said that a tour of the world can be made in forty days.

It is said that about two thirds of all the letters carried by the postal service of the world are written, sent to and read by English-speaking people.

More than half the newspapers of the world are printed in the English language. The Anglo-Saxon has exhibited an astonish

pastor of the largest church in Boston. Instead, he went to Burmah. That Boston church still has about a thousand members, but there are now thirty thousand Christian Burmese where there were none. Did that pay Judson?

Hard times develop character. Out of hardships come great men, great thoughts and noble deeds. Hard times make one class of men economical, energetic, selfreliant, hopeful, courageous and strong in the guidance of a gracious Providence; while the same conditions develop in another class of men distrust, cowardice, faithlessness, thriftlessness, lawlessness, crime and forgetfulness of God and all good.

SUNDAY-SCHOOL TIMES.

Temptations are resources, if we choose to make them such. We have but to resist them to acquire new strength in each resistance. We thus draw from them not only that which shields us against them, but that which adds new plentitude of power to character. If one counts his moral poverty by the temptations to which he has yielded, and his moral riches by those which he has resisted, he must remember that there is always the weak and unguarded point where the arch-thief of character is ready to break through and steal.

To love one's work is a prime requisite to success in it. If some form of work is not at first agreeable to him who is set to do it, yet more or less love for such work is within his reach if he determines to excel in it. "Let me shine your rubbers," said a barber's shop-boy. "I don't care enough

about my rubbers to have them shined up," answered the customer. "I won't charge you for it," continued the ambitious boy. "I just want the experience; very few of 'em does it, and that's why I want to take every chance I can." That boy wanted to excel. The sacrifice of the immediate nickel meant the opening of new possibilities. The man who builds a new niche in the structure of the world's thought or work is the man who is most likely to fill it. And this is the man who studies excellence rather than immediate profit.

There is a sense in which everyone must use himself as his own standard of measurement. Other persons are taller or shorter than he, others are stronger or weaker,

richer or poorer than he. richer or poorer than he. But the limit up to which this self-standard can be safely used is very soon reached. We look upon a neighbor's moral lapse as peculiarly evil, perhaps because that special form of sin is to us peculiarly obnoxious. We admit, in general terms, our own imperfections and sinful state, forgetting that some failing of ours may be peculiarly obnoxious to that same neighbor, and by the very rule which condemns him beyond palliation, we are ourselves condemned. Neither is justified in his wrong because each is condemned in the eyes of the other. But each ought to take to himself the lesson that the other is entitled to as much consideration for his abhorrence of evil and love of good as he himself is.

STORIES IN A NUTSHELL-FISHIN' JIMMY.

BY ANNIE TRUMBULL SLOSSON.

OIS real name was James Whitcher. He was a native of Franconia Valley, and had passed his whole life there. He had always fished; from

the days when a tiny, bare-legged urchin in ragged frock he had dropped his piece of string with its bent pin into the shallow brooklet, through early boyhood's season of roaming along Gale River, on into old age his life had apparently been one long day's fishing. He knew the forests and the waters. Knew familiarly the inmates of both these worlds. Much of his story he may himself tell.

"As I was tellin' ye," he said, "I allers loved fishin', an' knowed 'twas the best thing in the hull airth. I knowed it larnt ye more about creeters, an' yarbs, an' stuns,

an' water than books could tell ye. I knowed it made folks patienter, an' commonsenser, an' weatherwiser and cuter generally, gin 'em more fac'lty than all the school larnin' in creation. I knowed it was more fillin' than vittles, more rousin' than whisky, more soothin' than lodlum. I knowed it cooled ye off when ye was het, an' het ye when ye was cold. I knowed all that, o' course any fool knows it-but, will ye b'l'eve it? I was more'n twenty-one year old, a man growed, 'fore I foun' out why 'twas that way."

His father and mother were Christians, and they tried to bring Jimmy up in the way he should go. way he should go. He was taught to attend Sunday-school and church, to say his prayers at night. He was not remembered as a bad boy.

"I knowed about God, an' how he made me, an' made the airth an' everythin', an' once I got to thinkin' about that, an' I asked my father if God made the fishes. He said 'course he did, the sea an' all that in 'em is; but somehow that didn't seem to mean nothin' much to me, an' I lost my int'rist agin."

His whole life seemed to be associated with fishing. He read the Bible, seeking out especially those passages which referred to fishes, but he did not seem to glean much from it.

"But one day-it's more'n forty year ago now, but I rec'lect it same's 'twas yest'day, and I shall rec'lect it forty thousand year from now if I'm 'round, an' I guess I shall be-I heerd suthin' different. I was down in the village one Sunday; it wa'n't very good fishin', the streams was too full, an' I thought I'd jest look into the meetin'house 's I went by. 'Twas the ole Union meetin'-house, ye know, an' they hadn't got no reg'lar s'pply, an' ye never knowed what kind ye'd hear, so 'twas kind o' excitin'.

"Twas late, 'most 'leven o'clock, an' the sarm'n had begun. There was a strange man a-preachin', some one from over to the hotel. I never heerd his name, I never seed him from that day to this, but I knowed his face. Queer enough, I'd seed him a-fishin'. I never knowed he was a min'ster, he didn't look like one. He went about like a real fisherman, with ole clo'es an' an ole hat with hook stuck in it, an' big rubber boots, an' he fished, reely fished; I mean ketched 'em. I guess 'twas that made me list'n a leetle sharper'n us'al, for I never seed a fishin' min'ster afore."

So Fishin' Jimmy found himself at once interested in the man and in his discourse. "But there wa'n't no sarm'n; not what I'd been raised to think was the only true

kind. There wa'n't no heads, no fustlys nor sec'ndlys, nor fin'ly bruthrins, but the fust thing I knowed I was hearin' a story, an' 'twas a fishin' story. 'Twas about some one I hadn't the least idee then who 'twas, an' how much it all meant-some one that was dreffle fond o' fishin' an' fishermen; some one that sot everythin' by the water, an' useter go along by the lakes an' ponds, an' sail on 'em, an' talk with the men that was fishin'. An' how the fishermen all liked him, an' asked his 'dvice, an' done jest's he telled 'em about the likeliest places to fish, an' how they allers ketched more for mindin' him, an' how when he was a-preachin' he wouldn't go into a meetin'house an' talk to rich folks all slicked up, but he'd jest go out in a fishin'-boat, an' ask men to shove out a mite, an' he'd talk to the folks on shore-the fishin' folks an' their wives, an' the boys an' gals playin' on the shore. An' then, best o' everythin', he telled how when he was a-choosin' the men to go about with him an' help him, an' larn his ways, so's to come a'ter him, he fust o' all picked out the men he'd seen every day fishin', an' mebbe fished with hisself, for he knowed 'em, an' knowed he could trust 'em.

"An' then he telled us about the day when this preacher come along by the lake -a dreffle sightly place, this min'ster said; he seed it hisself when he was trav'lin' in them countries-an' come acrost two men he knowed well; they was brothers, an' they was fishin'. An' he jest asked 'em in his pleasant-spoken, friendly way-there wa'n't no sech drawin', takin', lovin' way with any o' 'em as this had, this min'ster said he jest asked 'em to come along with him, an' they lay down their poles an' lines an' everything an' jined him. An' then he come along a spell further, an' he sees two boys out with their ole father, an' they was

settin' in a boat fixin' up their tackle, an' he asked 'em if they'd jine him, too, an' jest dropped all their things, an' left the ole man with the boat an' the fish an' the bait an' follered the preacher. I don't tell it very good. I've read it an' read it sence that, but I want to make ye see how it sounded to me, how I took it, as the min'ster telled it that summer day in Francony meetin'. Ye see, I'd no idee who the story was about, the man put it so plain, in common kind o' talk, without any come-topasses an' whuffers an' thuffers, an' I never conceited it was a Bible narr'tive.

I

"An' so the fust thing I knowed I says to myself, 'That's the kind o' teacher I want. If I could jest foller him, too, through thick an' thin.' Well, I can't put the rest on it into talk very good; 'tain't jest the kind o' thing to speak on afore folks, even sech good friends as you. ain't the sort to go back on my wordfishermen ain't, ye know-an' what I'd said to myself afore I knowed who I was bindin' myself to I stuck to a'terwards, when I knowed all about him. For 'tain't for me to tell ye, who've got so much more larnin' than me, that there was a dreffle lot more to that story than the fishin' part. That lovin', givin' up, sufferin', dyin' part, ye know it all yerself, an' I can't kinder say much on it, 'cept when I'm jest by myself, or 'long o' him.

"That a'ternoon I took my ole Bible, that I hadn't read much sence I growed up, an' I went out into the wood 'long the river, an' 'stid o' fishin', I jest sot down an' read that hull story. Now, ye know it yerself by heart, an' ye've knowed it all yer born days, so ye can't begin to tell how new an' 'stonishin' 'twas to me, an' how findin' so much fishin' in it kinder helped me understan' an' b'l'eve it every mite, an' take it right hum to me to foller an' live up to,

'slong's I live an' breathe. Did ye ever think on it, reely? I tell ye, his r'liging's a fishin' r'liging all through. His friends was fishin' folks; his pulpit was a fishin'boat or the shore o' the lake; he loved the ponds an' streams, an' when his d'sciples went out fishin', if he didn't go hisself with 'em, he'd go a'ter 'em, walkin' on the water to cheer 'em up an' comfort 'em.

"An' he was allers 'round the water, for the story'll say, 'He came to the seashore,' or, 'He begun to teach by the seaside,' or agin, 'He entered into a boat,' an', 'He was in the stern of the boat, asleep.'

He fed

"An' he used fish in his mir'cles. that crowd o' folks on fish when they was hungry-bought 'em from a leetle chap on the shore. I've oft'n thought how dreffle tickled that boy must 'a' been to have him take them fish. take them fish. Mebbe they wa'n't nothin' but shiners, but the fust the leetle feller'd ever ketched, an' boys set a heap on their fust ketch. He was dreffle good to chil'en, ye know. An' who'd he come to a'ter he'd died an' rise agin? Why, he come down to the shore afore daylight, an' looked off over the pond to where his ole frien's was a-fishin'. Ye see, they'd gone out jest to quiet their minds an' keep up their sperrits -there's nothin' like fishin' for that, ye know, an' they'd been in a heap o' trubble.

"When they was settin' up the night afore, worryin', an' wond'rin', an' s'misin' what was goin' ter 'bcome on 'em without their Master, Peter'd got kinder desprit, an' he up an' says in his quick way, says he, 'Anyway, I'm goin' a-fishin'.' An' they all see the sense on it, any fisherman would, an' they says, says they, 'We'll go along, too.' But they didn't ketch anythin'! I suppose they couldn't fix their minds on it, an' everythin' went wrong like. But when mornin' come creepin' up over the mountings, fust thin' they knowed they see him

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