Decatur Democrat, Volume 35, Number 1, Decatur, Adams County, 27 March 1891 — Page 6

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a 'Xf/r//x ST* W/ / As *' / A •f/ /fl rw 7s£rTß9i ( l f* I C HE Sunday \^77 concluding I X. the Lenten Ml '®a| Z■■ F* Easter Sun v v tfl B** * day, when y JwXT, \i K compared yj\ with the rank -•■ - year, is like a general who ride- amid the plaudits of his army, the symbol of victory on his helm. -- As Mont Blanc rises among the’lesser Alps, piercing the clouds with its sheen •f , weird and mystic beauty, so towers this day above all othdr days, bearing on its front a significance more profound and a splendor more transcundent On Good Friday the shadow of dea'th, horizons wide, covered the heavens from view. So o'erclouded was the earth that grief and Foss w> re alone in sight. The life of the Nazarene, a life of se l {-sacrifice tor the people's sake, had ended in the martyr’s doom. He was born of a race that lias never ceased to excite the admiration of the historical critic. He fol-, lowed in the footsteps of- the earlier prophets, but was so much more farseeing and autocratic that His claim to .be the Son of God was acknowledged with hosannas when He entered Jerusalem in triumph. But. His career wa« abruptly brought to a close and His bo4y laid in the tomb. That grim tyrant, Death, who rules mortality with relentless sway, and drives young itnddld alike, disdaining all favoritism, into the gloom of tho Hereafter, had demande 1 and accepted His surrender. ‘From that Friday afternoon until the third morning thereafter, when the sun rose above tho hill-tops of the. Judean tand’scape. His disciples were broken-hearted, and the prophecy that He would iTse again was regarded a- the figment of an enthusiast’s fancy. They were drowned in the rising tde of their„ unsjpcakaHte disappointment and chagrin. The King had succumbed and apparently contradicted His own glowing, wonis of promise. There was nothing left but to return to their humble vocations and forget their hopes and dreams as best, they could. But the third morning came, Ind with it the most 'astonishing occurrence that •ver stirred the pulsp. The tomb was ! empty! Death had been robbed of his i vicXofyl, Grim Death, who claimed all. bad surrendered to a mightier than himself! With that, empty tomb in view, immortality .becamfe a radiant fact. Hearts |

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steed still in unutterable ama -•yGsrnnun-d to tears were, c rouched in brine. The doors of ano her world swinr-r wide bn their "olden i nges and a new and higher motive throbbed in the 1 osom of the race Since then a.-larger faith, like an an-, ehor. I as held ’ our vessel in the As Lowell sing-: And yli-ti hut kjie'akers to h«'var.t Th<\i>*icr (1 -ure'es are hurled. It wi i keep o: r lie.ad lo the t nip -st tv :th it-.gi ip On the base Os the world. Slut t : :er • are numb r'e»i other horizons whenthe. soul in its journey has passed line of time, wo. count # ail present joys as mere buds which sha 1 blfi-som and bear ripened fruit in some distant clime. If the resurrection be a falsehood, it is the most h,!e--ed untruth that was ever Touch-afed to man From that falsehood is fishioned by, the cyinning hafid of smiles and sorrows the manliest character, "ennobled by the loftiest aims wh ch philosophy can conoeiveer rhetoric portray. Ls the resurrection be a fact, the very mountains which crumble with the ages, are moved to envy of the high estate of humanity. The earth itself shall grow feeble with time, and fall at last into the air like a handful of dust, hut the spirit of man, •ndimmed by passing icons, shall live forever in the “house not made with hands.” f Easter Sunday, then, allows us the sacred privi egeof planting (lowers on the graves of dear ones: of submitting with calm resignation to the ordeal of separation; of gazing through hopeful tears into the infinite spaces of Clod’s universe in the nrm and immeasurable conviction that what seems the end is but the beginning, and that parting is only the prelude to reunion. The Large*t Eg ; in the World. How wou'd any of your readers, asks ' a writer for young folks in St. Nicholas Mujazlne, like an egg as big as a watermelon served for breakfast on Easter morning? You might have seen just •uch an egg if you had lived in Madagascar hundieda of years ago, when the Aepyornis lived. Why, you could have given an egg breakfast to seventy persons, and, at the

rate of two of our domestic hens’ eggs to each person, would have bad plenty. Just think of taking the contents of 140 of our liens' eggs and putting them into one eggshell! The bird that laid this enormous egg is kno.wn as the Aepyornis maximus, and it was the largest b id ever known to exist. It was a first cousin to the ostrich, although a much larger bird, towering above the tallest giraffeFrom the circumstances under which the first egg was found, it was hoped the bird might still be living, but only the incomplete skeleton of it and fragments of other- eggs were ever discovered. There is but one complete egg of this giant bird to be seen in the civilized world at present, and it is cracked in several places. It is in the possession of the French Government and is kept in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris HOW THE DATE FOR EASTER IS FIXED. ■r Some Facts About the Change from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar. In his ephemeris for 1739 Edmund Weaver notes that Easter Sunday occurred that year five weeks later than was intended by tho Council of Nice. IfeS JBL He also showed that during the ensuing fifty years the festival would deviate one week or more from its true place no less than forty-seven times. When about one-third of that time had expired, the error was rectified by skipping the days between the 2d and 14th of September, 1752. By that change England adopted the Gregorian calendar, which had been accepted by the Catholic Church in 1582. i The difference between the count in that i calendar and the Julian was then ten days. It was eleven days in the lastcentury, and is now twelve days. The word Easter is of Saxon origin, but the festival itself’ dates from the ■ Jewish Passover. (Our word Paschal

comes through the Greek Hebrew Pesa h 1 The Fassovi r*vas always < elebrated by the Jews on the 14th day of their month Nisan, and that month began, not at the time of actual new moon, but with the day .on the ./evening of which the moon was first seftp as a slender crescent after her first con\jpetion with the sun succeeding his passage through the vernal equinox. In the clear skies of Judea she was usually ' seen the next dav after conjunction, so 4 that their 14th corresponded to our 15th I day after the actual new moon, and was I tlm date of the full, the synodical perio I | being 59}. j days nearly. This occurred Friday in ihtf year A. D. 33, which wa-s the date of the crucifixion, Christ having bee 11 l orn thirty-seven years previously. The early Christian church in As a celebrated Easter the day of the Passover. The Western church in Europe adopted the. Sunday next following. The difference was extinguished by the Council of Nice, A. D. 325. which fixed the date for the first Sunday after the first full moon that succeeded March 21, with the proviso that if the-„full moon fell Sunday the Easter celebration should occur a week later. It was-sup-posed this settled the question for all time to come. But it was subsequently discovered that the Julian allowance of 365J4 days for the year was eleven minutes and twelve seconds too long, which caused the 21st of March to gradually travel away from the equinox. In 1582 the sun was on the line March 11, and in 1739 the crossing occurred at London a little after the midnight following March 9. The full moon occurred the 14th, and, according to the design of the Council of Nice, Easter • should have' been celebrated Sunday, 1 March 18. The next full moon fell April 12 of the calendar of that day in England, but Easter was celebrated till the 23d, an accumu'ating error in the 1 ecclesiastical count being responsible for r the last week of the delay. This little statement will enable the • reader to judge of the extent of con- • fusion in church reckoningsarising from a lack of precise knowledge of the mo- > tions of the sun and moon. Some may be Interested In pursuing the subject a ’ little further. The “mean” new moon Is • the eno that is reckoned by even now,

which may be as much as eleven hours earlier or later than the true, the difference being m stlv due to the elliptical form of the lunar orbit. But even the mean motion is an awkward thing to handle in a ca'endar intended to serve for use through a long course of centuries. The well-known Metonic cycle, corrected by latest computation, gives 6,939 days 16 hours 31 minutes as the time in which 235 lunations are performed. This is 1 hour 23 minutes less than 19 years of 365 1 4 days each' and 1 hour 56’ 4 ' minutes more than 19 average Gregorian years, the latter count dropping out three leap years in every four centuries. The latter small difference amounts to one complete lunation in about 7,000 years at the present rate. The error rea ly accumu atesa little less rapidly than that because of the change in the rate of the moon’s motion. Her synodic lunation is now performed in about nine-fourteenths of a second of time les- than 2,600 years ago. A study of the rule wid show that Easter Day may occur as early as March 22 and as late as April 25. These are tho limits, and the later one has served as the basis of an absurd prophecy which has been attributed to Nostradamus. It Jells (in French) that when St. George shall crucify the Lord, etc., that is, when April 23 falls on Gocid Friday, “the end of the world shall have come.” But that very coincidence befell in 1733. six or seven years ago, and several other times intermediately, while “the end is not yet.” The last line of the prophecy reads, “Le tin du monde arrivera, ” which is transla ed as above. But the last word except one is often pronounced as if written with a “t,” in which case the sound is identical with that of an old word signifying total or count. It is easy from this to guess that the meaning of tho speaker was then when Easter falls on ApriV2stho end of the count is reached, and the series for computing Easter begins over again. It is probable that many another oracular utterance which has come down to us through the ages as the embodiment of an error could be explained in an equally simple way if we only knew enough to be able to trace out the origin of the misconception. It will be observed that the Jewish calendar was an awkward affair. Its months all began with the day following the new moon. As twelve luirations are performed in elevon days less than a year it became, necessary to introduce an intercalary month (Ve-Adar. or second ,Adar) at least once in three years, so that the years wepe of lengths much more irregular than ours, which only differ by a single day. Not many people are aware that this extra day was not known as Feb. 29 until the accession of Charles 11.. nearly 230 years ago. Previous to that time the 23d of February had. been counted double in Jeap years—a fact which caused at one time a sore discussion on the point whether th.e Feast of St. Matthias ought to be celebrated on tho 24th or the 25th of that month. Happily for the world, it does uot now trouble itself badly about these little matters. They are small, inde d, in the present day, bht thety still dominate our time reckonings. The changes in the calendar that have been made from and including that by the Council of Ni< e were adopted simply with reference to what was hoped would prove a more satisfactory placing of the movable festivals of the church. Easter being the key to all. the rest. Outside of that arrangement, the importance of which grows less and less with each succeeding century, there is no good reason for preferring the Gregorian to the Julian calendar. Indeed, the latter is so much superior to the other for purposes of astronomical calculation that it has been seriously proposed to readopt it, making 1900 a leap year, and refusing to drop out centurial leap years for all time to come. A Crank’s Invention. I The St. Louis Globe-Democrat tells about a cranky invention of a Western . man who thought that horses are ' worked too hard. It was a carriage i which ran on four. very high wheels. The driver sat in front and the passengers on each side, like those on an Irish jaunting car. The was underneath the affair, and wiggled along with only his head sticking out like a turtle’s, The beauty of the arrangement was a four-foot belly-band that went underneath the horse, and when the concern started down hill the driver turned a crank and lifted the horse off the ground, and the whole business, horse and all, rolled on together till a level road was reached, when the crank was again turned, the horse lowered till his feet reached the ground, when business was resumed in the old way. The advantage of the invention was that it enabled the horse to ride down i hill: the disadvantage was that it could | not foresee and follow the windings of I a road. There is no knowing how I much might come of it, though, had it I not happened that the machine ran off ■ the track one day when going down a i winding hill, ran into a gulch, killed the horse, smashed tho whole contrivance to pieces, and huit the man so badly that when he got well he declined the construction of another. The Microbe's Lair. From time immemorial the doctors have told us that carpets in winter are indispensable if we do not wish to die of all sorts of undesirable diseases. But now it has been discovered that the carpet is the source of ills almost without number. It seems that it is the lair of the microbe. Its woollen jungles are simply swarming with fierce bacilli, whose tempers are irritated to the last degree by anything, such as brooms and boots, which disturb them. When disturbed they rush out in millions and attack every human being within their reach. The thing that especially infuriates them is dancing. Whenever a carpet is shaken by the feet of dancers the microbes attack the dancers with such ferocity that few of the latter escane without at least a fit of illness. This is the real reason why young women are t-o often taken ill with consumption or pneumonia after a ball. Their illness is due to the microbes of the carpet, and not, as was formerly supposed, to taking cold. It is clear that we must give up carpets, and as all kinds of woolen, cotton and linen cloth are inhabited by microbes prudent persons will either clothe themselves with skins or abandon clothing altogether. Indeed, the latter seems to be the only safe course.

| THE PLAGUE OF LIES. ; FIFTH SERMON IN THE SERIES ON THE CITY’S PLAGUES. Dr. Talmage Preaches a Forcible Discourse Which Will Apply Equally Well in Country and City — “He Shall Not Surely Die,” Satan Told Eve, and He Lied. “The Plague of Lies” was selected by Dr. Talmage for the subject of the fifth of his discourses on ‘‘The Plagues of These Tarce Cities.” His text was Genesis iii, 4, “Ye shall not surely die.” I That was a point blank lie. Satan told it to Eve to induce her to put her semicircle of white, beautiful teeth into a forbidden apricot or plum or peach or apple. He practically said to her, “Oh, Eve, just take a bite of this and you will be omnipotent and omniscient. You I shall be as gods.” Just,opposite was the j result. It was the first lie that was ever . told in our world. It opened the gale for all the falsehoods that have ever alighted on this planet. It introduced a plague that covers all nations, the plague of lies. Far worse than the plagues of Egypt, for they were on the banks of the Nile, but this on the banks of the Hudson, on the banks of the East River, on banks of the Ohio, and the Mississippi, and the Thames, and the Rhine, and the Tiber, and on both sides of all rivers. | The Egyptian plagues lasted only a few weeks, but for six thousand years has raged this plague of lies. There are a hundred ways of telling a lie. A man’s entire life nfay be a falsehood, while with his lips he may not once directly falsify. There are those who state what is positively untrue, but afterward say “may be’’ softly. These j departures from the truth are called “white lies;’’ but there Is really nd such thing as a white lie. The whitest lie that was ever told was as black as perdition. No inventory of public crimes will be sufficient that omits this gigantic abomination. There are men high in'church and. state actually useful, self-denying and honest in many things, who, upon certain subjects and in certain spheres, are not at all to be depended upon for veracity. Indeed, there are many men and women who have their notions of truthfulness so thoroughly perverted that they do not know when they are lying. With many it is a cultivated sin; with some it seems a natural infirmity. I IRmfo known people who seemed to have been born liars. The falsehoods of their lives extended from cradle to grave. Prevariations, misrepresentation and dishonesty of speech appeared in their first utterances, and were as natural to them as any of their infantile diseases, and were a sort of moral croup or spiritual scarlatina. But many have been placed in circumstances where this tendency .has day by day and hour by hour been called to larger development. They have gone from attainment to attainment, and from class to class until they Lave become regularly graduated liars. The air of the city is filled with falsehoods. They hang pendent from the chandeliers of our finest residences; they crowd the shelves of some of our merchant princes; they fill the sidewalk from curb-stone to brown stone facing; they cluster around the mechanic’s hammer, and blossom from the end of the merchant’s yard-stick, and sit in the doors of churches. Some call them “fiction.” Some .style them “fabrication.” You might say that they were subterfuge, disguised, delusion, romance, evasion, pretense, fable, deception, misrepresentation; but, as I am ignorant of anything to be gained by the hiding of a God defying outrage under a lexicographer’s blanket. I shall call them what my father taught me to call them—lies.

I shall divide them into agricultural, mercantile, mechanical, ecclesiastical and sqpial lies. First, then, I will spea-k of those that are more particularly agricultural. There is something in the perpetual presence of natural objects to make a man pure. The trees never issue “false stock.” Wheat fields are always honest. Rye and oats hover move out in the night, not paying for the place they have occupied. Corn shocks never make false assignments. Mountain brooks are always “current.” The gold on the grain is never counterfeit. The sunrise never flaunts in false colors. The dew sports only genuine diamonds. Taking farmers as a class, 1 believe they are truthful and fair in dealing and kind-hearted. But thp regions surrounding our cities do not always send this, sort of men to our markets. Day by day there creak through our streets and about the market houses farm wagons that have not an honest spoke in their wheel or a truthful rivet from tongue to tailboard. During the last few years there have been times when domestic economy has foundered on the farmer's firkin. Neit her high taxes, nor the high price of dry goods, nor the exorbitancy of labor, could excuse much that the city has witnessed in the behavior of the yeomanry. By the quiet firesides in Westchester and Orange counties I hope there may be seasons of deep reflection and hearty repentance. Rural districts are accustomed to rail at great cities as given up to fraud and. every form of unrighteousness, but our cities do not absorb all the abominations. Our citizens have learned the importance of not always trusting to the size and style of apples on the top of a farmer’s barrel as an indication of what may be found farther down. Many of our people are accustomed to watch and see how correctly a bushel of beets is measured, and there are not many honest milk cans. Deceptions do not all cluster round city halls. When our cities sit-down and weep over their sins, all the surrounding countries ought to come in and weep with them. There is often hostility on the part of producers against traders, as though the man who raises the corn was necessarily more honorable Jihan the grain dealer who pours it into his mammoth bin. There ought to be no sueh hostility. Yet producers often think it no wrong to snatch away from the trader; and they say to the bargain maker: “You get your money easy.” Do they pet it easy? Let those who in the quiet field and barn get their living exchange places with those who stand to-day amid the excitements of commercial life and see if they find it so easy. When the farmer goes to sleep with assurance that his corn and -barley will be growing all the night, moment by moment adding to his revenue, the merchant tries to go to sleep conscious that that moment his cargo may be broken on the rocks or damaged by the wave that sweeps clear across the hurricane deck, or that reckless speculators may that very hour be plotting some monetary revolution, or the burglars be prying open his safe, or his debtors fleeing the town, or his landlord raising the rent, or the fires the block that contains all his estate. Easy! Is it? God help the merchant! It is hard to have the palms of the hands blistered with outdoor work, but a more dreadful process when through mercantile anxieties the brain is consumed. In the next place we notice mercantile lies, those before the counter and behind the counter. I will not attempt to specify the different forms of commercial falsehood. There are merchants who excuse themselves for deviation from truthfulness because of what they call commercial .custom. In othor words.

the multiplication and universality es a sin turns it into a virtue. There have been large fortunes gathered where there was not one,/drop of unrequited toil in the wine; not one spark of bad temper flashing from the bronze bracket; not one drop of needle woman’s heart blood in the crimson plush, while there are other great establishments in which there is not one door knob, not one brick, not one trinket, not one thread ot lace but has upon it the mark of dishonor. What wonder if, some day, a hand of toil that had been wrung and worn out and blistered till tho skin came off should be placed against the elegant wall paper, leaving its mark of blood—four fingers and a thumb—or that some day, walking the halls, there should be a voice accosting the occupant, saying, “Six cents for making a shirt,” and, flying the room, another voice should say, “Twelve cents for an army blanket,” and the man should try to sleep at night, but ever an anon be aroused, until, getting up on one elbow, he should shriek out, “Who’s there?” One Sabbath night, in the vestibule of my church, after service, a woman fell in convulsions. The doctors said she needed medicine not so much as something to eat. As she began to revive in her delirium. she said gasping: “Eight cents! Eight cents! Eight cents! I wish I could pet it done; lam so tired! I wish I could get some sleep, bftt I must get it done! Eight cents! Eight cents!” We found afterward she was making garments tor eight cents apiece, and that she could make but three of them iu a day! Three times eight are twenty-four! Hear it, men and women who have comfortable homes!

Some of the-worst villians of the city are the employers of these women. They beat them down to the last penny, and try to cheat them out of that. The woman must deposit a dollar or two before she gets the garments to work on. When the work is done it is sharply inspected, the most insignificant flaws picked out, and the wages refused, and sometimes tho dollar deposited not given back. The Women’s Protective Union reports a case where one of these poor souls, finding a place where she could get more wage§, resolved to change employers,and went to get her pay for work done. The employer says, PI hear you are going to leave me.” “Yes,” she said, .“and lam come to get what you owe me.” He made no answer. She said, “Are you not going to pay me?” “Yes,” he said, “I will pay you,” kicked her down the stairs. There are thousands of fortunes made in"commercial spheres that are throughout righteous. God will let his favor rest upon every scroll, every pictured wall, every traceried window, and the joy that flashes from the lights, and showers from the music and dances in the children's quick feet, pattering through the hall, will utter the congratulation of men and the approval of God. A merchant can. to the last item.be thoroughly honest. There is never any need of falsehood. Yet how, many will, day by day, hour by hour, utter what they know to be wrong. You say that you are selling at less than cost. If so, than it is right to say it. But did that cost you less than what you ask for it? If not, then you have falsified. You say that that article cost you twenty-five dollars. Did it? If so, then all right. If it did not, then you have falsified. Suppose you are a purchaser. You are “beating down” the goods. You say that that article for which five dollars is charged is not more than four. Is it worth no more than four dollars? Then all right. If it be worth more, and for the sake of getting it for less than its value, you willfully depreciate it, you have falsified. You may call in a sharp trade. The recording angel writes it down on the ponderous tomes of eternity. “Mr. So-and-so, merchant on water street or in Eighth street or in State street, or Mrs. So-and-so, keeping house on Beacon street, or on Madison avenue, or Rittenhouse square, or Brooklyn Heights or Brooklyn Hill, told one falsehood.” You may consider it insignificant because relating to an insignificant purchase. You would despise the man who would falsify in regard to some great matter in which the citv or the whole country was concerned: but this is only a box of buttons, or a row of pins, or a case of needles. Be not deceived. The article purchased may be so small you can put it in your vest pocket, but the sin was than the Pyramids, and the echo of the dishonor will reverberate through all the mountains of eternity. In the next place 1 notice mechanical lies. There is no class of men who administer more to the welfare of the city than artisans. To their hand we must look for the building that shelters us, for the garments that clothe us, for the car that carries us. They wield a widespread influence. There is much derision of what is rallied “Muscular Christianity.” but in the latter day of the world's prosperity t think that the Christian will be muscular. We have a right to expect of those stalwart men of toil the highest possible integrity. Many of them answer all our expectations, and stand at the front of religious and philanthropic enterprises. But this class, like the others that I have named, has in it those who lack in the element of veracity. They cannot all be trusted. In times whej; the demand for labor is great it is impossible to meet the demands of the public, or do work with that promptness and perfection that would at other time-s be possible.

But there are mechanics whose word cannot bo trusted at any time. No man has a right to promise more work than he can do. There are mechanics who say they will come on Monday, but they do not come until Wednesday. You put work into their hands that they tell you shall be conflicted in ten days, but. it is thirty. There have been houses built of which it might be said that every nail driven, every foot of plastering put on, every yard of pipe laid, every shingle hammered, every brick mortared, could tell of falsehood connected therewith. There are men attempting to do ten or fifteen pieces of work who have not the .time or strength to do more than five or six pieces, but by promises never fulfilled keep all the undertakings within their own grasp. This is what they call . “nursing” the job. How much wrong to his soul and insult to God a mechanic would save if he promised only so much as he expected to be able to do. ’ , I next notice ecclesiastical lies—that is, falsehoods told for the purpose of advancing churches and sects, or for the purpose of depleting them. There is no use in asking many a Calvinist what an Arminian believes, for he willl be apt to tell you that the Arminian believes that a man can convert himself; or to ask the Arminian what the Calvinist believes, for he will tell you that the Calvinist believes that God made some men just to damn them. There is no need in asking a pa do-Baptist what a Baptist believes, foi; he will be apt to say that the Baptist believes immersion to be positively necessary to salvation. It is almost impossible for one denomination of Christians, without prejudice or misrepresentation, to state the sentiment of an opposing sect. If a man hates Presbyterians, and you ask him what Presbyterians believe, he will tell you that they .believe that there are infants in hell a span long! It is strange, also, how individual churches will sometimes make misstatements about other individual churches. It is especially so in regard to falsehoods told with reference to prosperous enterprises. As long as a church is feeble, and the singing is discordant, and the

minister, tbrongh the poverty of tho church, must go with a threadbare coat, and here and there a worshiper sits in the end of a pew, having all the seat to himself, religious sympathizers of other churches will say, “What a pity!” But let a great day of prosperity come, and even ministers of the Gospel, who ought to be rejoiced at the largeness and extent of the work, denounce and misrepresent and falsify, starting the suspicion in regard to themselves that the reason they de not like the corn is because it is not ground in their own mill. How long before we shall learn to be fair in our religious criticisms! The keenest jealousies on earth are church jealousies. The field,of Christian work is so large that there is no need that our hoe Randles hit.

Next I speak of society lies. This evil makes much of society insincere. You know not what to believe. When people ask you to come you do not know whether or not they want you to come. When they send their regards you do not know wnether it is an expression of their heart or an external civility. We have learned to take almost everything at a discount. Word is sent, “Not at home,” when they I are only too lazy to dress themselves. I They say, “The furnace has just gone out,” when in truth they have had no j fire in it all winter. They apologize for =the unusual barrenness of their table when they never live any better. They decry their most luxurious entertainments to win a shower of approval. They apologize for their appearapce, as though it were unusual, .when always at home they look just *sd. They would make you believe that some nice : sketch on the wall was the work of some master painter. “It was an heirloom, and once hung on the walls of a castle, and a duke gave it to their grandfather.” When the fact is that painting was made by a man “down east,” and baked so as to make it look old, and sold with others for ten dollars a dozen. People who will lie about nothing el<e will lie about a picture. On a small income we must make the world believe that we are affluent, and our life becomes a cheat, a counterfeit and a sham. What a round of insincerities many people run in order to win the favor of the world! Their life is a sham and their death an unspeakable sadness. Alas for the poor butterflies when the frost strikes them? Compare the life and death of such a one with that of some Christian aunt who was once a blessing to your household. r I do not know that she was ever offered.the hand in marriase. She lived single, that untrammeled she might be everybody’s blessing. Whenever the sick werejto be visited, or the poor to be provided with bread, she went with a blessing. She could pray or sing “Rock of Ages’’ for any sick pauper who asked her. As she got older there were days when she was a little sharp, but for the most part auntie was a sunbeam —just the-one for Christmas eve. She knew- better than any one else how to fix things. Her every prayer, as God heard it, w;as full of everbody who had trouble. The brightest things in all the house dropped from her fingers. She had peculiar notions, but the grandest notion she ever had was to make you happy. She dressed well—auntie always dressed well; but her highest adornment was that of a meek and quiet spirit, which, in the sight of God, is of great price. When she died you all gathered lovingly about her, and as you carried her otit to rest the Sunday-school class almost covered the collin with japonicas, and the poor people stood at the end of the alley with their aprons to their eyes, sobbing bitterly; and the man of thfe world said, with Solomon, “Her price was above rubies,” and Jesus, as unto the maiden in Judea commanded, “I say unto thee, arise!” But to mafiy, through insincerity, this life is a masquerade ball. At such entertainments gentlemen and ladies appear in the dress of kings or queens, mountain bandits or clowns, and at the I close of the dance throw off their disguises, so in this life all unclean passions | move in mask. the floor they I trip merrily. The lights sparkle along i> the wall or drop from the ceiling—a cohort of fire! The music charms The diamonds glitter. The feet bound. Gemmed hands ktretched out clasp i gemmed hiinds. Dancihg feet respond to I dancing feet. Gleaming brow bends to gleaming brow. On with the dance! Flash and rustle and laughter and immeas'ireahle merry making! But the languor of death comes over the limbs and blurs the sight. Lights lower! Floor hollow with sepulchral echo. Music saddens into a wail. Lights lower! The maskers can hardly now be seen. Flowers exqliaiige their frasrance for a sickening such as comes from garlands that have lain in vaults of cemeteries. Lights lower! Mists fill the room. Glasses rattle as though shaken by sullen thunder. Sighs seem caughj among the curtains. Scarf falls from the shoulder of beauty —a shroud! Lights lower! Over the slippery boards, in dance of death, glide jealousies, disappointment, lust, despair. Torn leaves and w ithered garlands only half hide the ulcered feet. The stench of smoking lamp wicks almost quenched. Choking damps. Chilliness. Feet still. Hands folded. Eyes shut. Voices hushed. Lights out! a

Floating Sp iu ths Eye. Many persons are troubled with such specks, called by the doctors “muscro, volitantes”—flitting flies. They pass across the vision while one is reading, or rise when the eve is turned quickly upwardj-to descend slowly again as the eye resinnes its ordinary position. They are always in motion. Notwithstanding their name of “flies,” they generally appear as minute beads, or strings of beads, or bits of thread, or transparent globules. When one attempts to hold them before his direct vision, they immediately float away. People who are subject to them often suffer from needless fears on their account. But such may be reassured by the following from Williams’ work on “The Eye,” its author being an eminent professor in Harvard University : “The former idea that these appearances are to be regarded as premonitions of amanroria” —loss of vision from paralysis of the retina—“is still so preserved as a tradition, that it is often very difficult to convince those who have become alarmed from perceiving them, even by the most positive assertion, that they have no important significance.” Most studious people observe them when their eyes are fatigued, -or they are suffering from indigestion. They are frequently quite troublesome to persons looking through a microscope, but they are then exceedingly distinct, and are interesting phenomena to examine, provided the mind is at rest about them. The opthalmoscope can detect no canse for them in the eye. Prof. Williams says; “That they are not the result of important structural change is evident from the fact that they vary from one time to another and in different circumstances, being seen, for instance, more numerously and distinctly after congestion from fatiguing use of the eyes, or when looking at a light surface, such as the ceiling, a cloudy sky, the page of albook, or the snow-covered ground.”— Youlh'u Coni' panton. « 1 . ”

/w\ Wk Copyright, 1890.

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