Decatur Democrat, Volume 38, Number 21, Decatur, Adams County, 10 August 1894 — Page 8

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Iw7 JSwaa ib ■[ /«/ fl ’ ll* W CHATTER XlX—Continued. .Unfashionable as was the season, Mrs. Walsingham was still in town. She had no rustic retreat of her own, and she was not in that charmed cirole, patrician or millionaire, which rejoices in country houses. Furthermore, she abhorred the beauties of Nature, and regarded winter residence In the country as an exile bleaker than [ Ovid’s banishment to chill and savage I Tomis. If she had been rich enough to have indulged her caprices, she would have gene ally begun the year in Paris, but she had an income which k just enabled her to live elegantly without any indulgence of caprices. This winter, too, she had peculiar reasons for staying in town, over and above all - other motives. She stayed in the snug littld house in Half-Moon street, there- * fore, and was “at home” on Saturday evenings just as if the season had been at its flood. The society with which she filled her miniature drawing-room was literary, musical, artistic, dramatic —just the most delightful society imaginable, with the faintest soupcon of Bohemianism. She had chosen Saturday evening because journalists who were free on no other night could drop in, and Mrs. Walsingham adored journalists. On this particular Saturday, three days after the scene in the summeri house, James Wyatt had made his appearance in the Half-Moon street draw-ing-room just when most people were J-oing away. He contrived to outstay hem all, though Mrs. Walsingham s manner was not so cordial as to invite him to linger. She yawned audibly behind the edge ofner lar je black fan when Mr. Wyatt took up his stand in front of the chimney-piece with the air of a man who is going to be a fix- » ture for the next hour. “Have you heard the news?” he asked, after a brief silence. “From Da venant? Yes, I am kept pretty well au courant.” “A sharp little thing, that Duport.” « TT »•

.t “Very." Silence again, during which Mrs. Walsingham surveys her violet velvet gown and admires the Venice point flounce which relieves it; somber hue. “Clara,” said James Wyatt, with a suddenness that startled the lady into i looking up at him, “I think I have performed my part of the bargain. When are you going to perform yours?” “I don't quite understand you.” “Oh, yes, you do, Mrs . Walsingham. j There are some things that will hardly j bear to be discussed, even between conspirators. I am not going to enter into details. When 1 found you in this room three years ago on Gilbert Sinclair’s wedding-day, you had but one thought, one desire—your whole being was athirst for revenge. You are revenged, and I have been the chief instrument in the realization of your wish. A wicked wish on your part; doubly wicked on mine, with less passion and weaker hatred, to be your aider and abettor. Soit. lam content to bear the burden of my guilt, but not to be cheated of my reward. What I have done I have done for your sake —to win your love. ” I “To buy me,” she said, “as slaves are bought, with a price. That's what ' you mean. You don’t suppose I shall love you for working Gilbert Sinclair's ruin?” ' “You wanted to see him ruined.” “Yes, when I was mad with rage and grief Did you think you were talking to a sane woman that evenj,ng. after Gilbert’s marriage? You were talking to a woman whose brain had been on fire with despair and jealou y through the long hours of that agonizing day. What should I lobg for but revenge » then?”

“Well, you have had your heart's desire, and it seems to me that your conduct since that day has been pretty consistent with the sentiments you gave expression to then. Do you mean to tell me that you are going to throw me over now —that you are going to repudiate the pro .ise you made me—a promise on wire.r I have counted with unflinching faith in your honor?” “In my honor!” cried Mrs. Walsingham, with a bitter sneer, all'the more bitter because it was pointed against herself. “In the honor of a woman who could act as I have acted!” “I forgive anything to passion: but to betray me would be deliberate cruelty. " “Would it?” she added, smiling at him. "I think it would ba more cruel to keep my word, and make your life miserable. ” “You shall make me as miserable as you please, if you will only have me,” urged Wyatt. “Come, Clara, I have been your slave for the last three years. K-I have sacrificed interests which most ’ men hold sacred "to serve or to please you. It would be unparalleled baseness to break your promise.” “My promise was wrung from me in a moment of blind passion,” cried Mrs. l*iWalsingham. “If the Prince of Dark- " iiess had asked me to seal a covenent with him that day, I should have consented as freely as I consented to your bargain.” *The comparison is flattering to me, r&lied Mr. Wyatt, looking at her darkly from under bent brows. There isw stage at which outraged love turns to&keenest hate, and James Wyzatt s feelings are fast approaching that \ stage. “In one word, do you mean keep faith with me? Ye9 ’ ]a^ r ’ with a steady look that meant «i ft.nAA And Biflr£tln no* JLtiH* v**w |

world what you have done, and how I have cheated you. Publish your wrongs If ycu dare. 1 have never loved but one man in my life, anl his name is Gilbert Sinclair. Ard now go. d-night, Mr. Wyatt, or, rather, gcod-mornlng, for it is Sunday, and I don’t Want to be late for church.” CHAPTER XX. DU. nOLLBNIIOHI' The new year began with the ringing of par Th bells, some genuine joviality in cottages and servants’ halls, and various conventional rejoicings in polite society, but silence and solitude still reigned at Davenant. The chief rooms—saloon and dining-room, library and music-room—were abandoned altogether bv the gloomy master of the house. They might as well have put on their Holland pinafores and shut their shutters, as in the absence of the family, for nobody used them. Gilbert Sinclair lived in his snuggery at the end. of the long gallery, ate and drank there, read his newspapers and wrote his letters, smoked and dozed in the dull winter evenings. Ho rode a good deal in all kinds of weather, going far afield, no one knew whore, and coming home at dusk, splashed to the neck, and with his horse in a condition peculiarly aggravating to grooms and stable-brys. “Them there ’esses will ’ave mud fever before long,” said the hirelings, dejectedly. “There’s that blessed chestnut he set such store by a month ago with ’ardly a leg to stand on for windgalls, and the roan filly’s over at knees a’ready. ” . “He” meant Mr. Sinclair, who was riding his finest horses with a prodigal recklessness. Constance Sinclair lived to see the new year, though she did not know why the church Dells rang out on the quiet midnight She started up from her pillow with a frightened look when she heard that joy peal, crying that those were her wedding bells, and that she must get ready for church. “To please you, papa, ” she said. “For your sake, papa. Pity my broken neart” There had been days and nights at the end of the old year, when Dr. Webb had trembled for the sweet young life which he had watched almost from its beginning. A greit physician had come down from London every day, und had gone away with a fee proportionate to his reputation, after diagnosing the disease in a most wonderful manner; but it was the little country apothecary who saved Constance Sinclairs life. His watchfulness, his devotion, had kept the common enemy at bay. The life-current, which had ebbed very low, flowed gradually back, and after lying for ten days in an utterly prostrate and apathetic state, the pat ent was now strong enough to rise and be dressed, and lie on the sofa in her pretty morn-ing-room, while Melanie, or honest

Martha Briggs, who had come back to nurse her old mistress, read to her, to divert her mind, the doctor said; but, alas! as yet the mind seemed incapable of being awakened to interest in the things of this mortal life. When Constance spoke it was of the past—of her Childhood or girlhood, of people and scenes familiar to her in that happy time. Os her husband she never spoke, and his rare visits to her room had a disturbing influence. So much so that Dr. Webb suggested that for the present Mr. Sinclair should refrain from seeing his wife. “I can feel for you, my dear sir,” he said, sympathetically. “I quite understand your anxiety, but you may trust me and the nurses. You will have all intelligence of progress. The mind at present is somewhat astray.” “Do you think it will always be so?” asked Sinclair. “Will she never recover her senses?” “My dear sir, there is everything to hope. She is so young, and the disease is altogether so mysterious, whether the effect of the blow—that unlucky fall —or whether simply a development of the brooding melancholy which we had to fight against before the acci--1 dent, it is impossible to say. We are quite in the dark. Perfect seclusion 1 and tranquillity may do much.” Lord Clanyarde came to see his daughter nearly every day. He had ■ come back to Marchbrook: from far ’ more agreeable scenes on purpose to be 1 near her. But his presence seemed to ' give Constance no pleasure. There 1 were day?'on which she looked at him 1 with a wandering gaze that went to ■ his heart, or a blank and stony look that 1 appalled him by its awful likeness to death. There were other days when

she knew him. On these days her talk was all of the past, and it was clear that memory had taken the place of intelligence. Lord Clanysrde felt all the pangs of remorse as he contemplated this spectacle of a broken heat, a mind wrecked by sorrow. “Yet I can hardly blame myself for her sad fate, poor child,” he argued. “She was happy enough, bright enough, before she lost her baby.” The new year was a week old, and since the first rally there had been no change for the better in Constance Sinclair’s condition: and now there came a decided change for the worse. Strength dwindled, a dull apathy took pcssession of the patient, and even memory seemed a blank. Dr. Webb was in despair, and fairly owned his helple sne-s. The London physician came and went, and took his fee, and went on diagnosing with profoundest science, and tided the last resources of tho pharmacopoeia, with an evident conviction that he could minister to a mind diseased; but nothing came of his science, save that the patient grew daily weaker, as if fate and physic were too mm h for one feeble sufferer to cope withal. Gilbert Sinclair wa- told that unless a change came t ery s; eedily his wife must die. “If we could rouse her from this apathetic state, ” said the physician; “any shock—any surprise—e peoially of a pleasurable kind - that would act on the torpid brain might do wonders even yet; but all our attempts to interest her have so far been useless.” Lord. Clanyarde was present when this opinion was pronounced. He went home full of thought, more deeply concerned for his daughter than he had . ever been yet for any mortal except Lhimself.

■Poor little Connie!” he thought, remembering her in her white frock and blue sash; “she was always my favorite—the prettiest, the gentlest, the most high-bred of all my girls, but I didn’t know she had such a hold upon my heart. ” At Marchbrook Lord Clanyarde found an unexpected visitor waiting for him —a visitor whom he received with a very cordial greeting. Soon after dusk on the following evening Lord Clanyarde returned to Davenant, but not alone. He took with him an elderly gentleman, with white hair, worn rather long, and a white beard—a person of almost patriarchal appearance, but somewhat disfigured oy a pair of smoke-colored spectacles of the kind that are vulgarly known as “gig-lamps.” The stranger's clothes were of the shabbiest, yet even in their decay looked the garments of a gentleman. He wore ancient shepherd’s plaid trousers, and a bottle-green overcoat of exploded cut. Gilbert Sinclair was in the hall when Lord Clanyarde and his companion arrived. Mr. Wyatt had just come down from London, and the two men were smoking their cigars by the great hall fire, the noble old, cavernous hearth which had succeed the more mediaeval fashion of a fire in the center of the hall. “My dear Sinclair," began Lord Clanyarde, with a somewhat hurried and nervous air, which might be forgiven in a man whose favorite daughter languished between life and death, “I have ventured to bring an old friend of mine, Doctor Hollendorf, a gentleman who has a great practice in Berlin, and who has had vast experience in the treatment of mental disorders. Doctor Hollendorf, Mr. Sinclair. I beg your pardon, Wyatt, how do you do?” interjected Lord Clanyarde, offering the solicitor a couple of fingers. “Now, Gilbert, I should much like Doctor Hollendorf to see my poor Constance. It may do no good, but it can do no harm; and if you have no objection, with Dr. Webb’s concurrence, of course, I should like—” “Webb is in the house,” answered Gilbert. “You can ask him for yourself. I have no objection. ” This was said with a weary air, as if the speaker had ceased to take any interest in life. Gilbert hardly looked at the German, or Anglo-German, doctor; but James Wyatt, who was of a more observant turn, scrutinized him attentively. “Here is Webb,” said Gilbert, as t:e little Doctor came tripping down the great staircase, with the lightsome activity of his profession, rubbing his hands as he came. Lord Clanyarde presented Dr. Hollendorf to the rural practitioner, and stated his wish. Dr. Webb had no objection to offer. Any wish of a father’s must be sacred. “You will come up and see her at once?” he said, interrogatively. “At once,” answered the stranger, with a slightly guttural accent. The three men went up the staircase, Gilbert remaining behind. “Aren’t you going?" asked Wyatt. “No; my presence generally disturbs her. Why should I go? I’m not wantod w “I should go if I were you. How do you know what this man is? An impudent quack, in all probability. You

ought to be present. ’ “Do you think so?" “Decidedly.” “Then I’ll go." “Watch your wife when that man is talking to her,” said Wyatt in a lower tone, as Gilbert moved away. “What do you mean?” asked the other, turning sharply around. “What I say. Watch your wife!” Mrs. Sinclair’s morning-room was a spacious, old-fashioned apartment, with three long windows, one opening into . a wide balcony, from which an iron stair led down to a garden, small and secluded, laid out in the Dutch style—a garden which had been always sacred to the jnistre s of Davenant. There were heavy oak shutters, and a complicated arrangement of bolts and bars to the three windows, but as the e shutters were ra ely clo ed, the stair and the balcony might ba conside ed as a convenience specially provided for the benefit of burglars. No burgl rs had, however, yet been heard of at Davenant Tnere was a piano in the room. There were well-filled book-cases, pictures, quaint old china —all things that make life pleas mt to the mind that is at ease, and which may be supposed to offer some consolation to the care-bur-dened spirit The fire blazed merrily, and on a sofa in front of it Constance reclined, dressed in a loose white ca hmere gown, hardly whiter than the wasted oval face, from which the darkbrown hair was drawn back by a band of blue ribbon, just as it had been ten years ago, when Constance was “litt'e Connie,” flitting about the lawn at Marchbrook like a white and blue butterfly. [TO BE CONTINUED. I Brigandage in High Circles. Brigandage is assuming alarming proportions in Europe. The official gazette at Athens announces that a new election has been ordered in a certain district of Thessaly in order to fill the seat in Parliament rendered vacant by the sentence of Congressman Kalambaka to penal servitude for complicity with the banditti infesting his province. At Palermo the Italian government has just arrested Baron de Ramo on identical grounds, a peculiar feature in his ca e being that he is a millionaire. In the north of Italy we have Count Serpiere, commanding an infantry regiment at Verona, and a very rich man, arrested and court-mar-tialed for having stolen an innumerable quanity of plate, chiefly forks and spoons, which he was in the habit of pocketing wherever he dined, no matter whether it was a private house or a restaurant A Luminous Tree. “Everyone has heard of luminous plants and shrubs. ” said a gentleman of 'Nevada, “but comparatively few people are aware of the existence in our State of a luminous tree of la-ge proportions. The Indians have always entertained a wholesome dread of this tree and have a number of legends connected with it. It is a valuable landmark at night, as it can be seen half a mileaway, and the phosphorus substance which exudes from it is so powerful that it is possible to read a few words of print held close to it. Several botanists and tree scientists have made purpose journeys to inspect and report on the tree, but I have never seen a | really intelligent explanation of what seems to be quite a unique phenomenon.** I

TALMAWE’S SERMON. “V RESPONSIBILITY for what we WEAR ON OUR BODIES. Rev. Dr. Talmage on the Influence of the jdol of FMhlon— Haalnees and Character Shipwrecked on the Wardrobe—A Practical and Powerful Hermon. The Drew Tragedy. Rev Dr. I’almago, who is now in Melbourne on his round the world tour, has chosen as the subject of his sermon through the press “The Tragedy of Dress,” the text selected being r Peter iii, 3,4, “Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning oi plaiting the hair and the wearing of gold or of putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden man of the heart.” That we should all be clad is proved by the opening of the first wardrobe in paradise withits apparel of dark green. That we should all, as far as our moans allow us, be beautifully and gracefully appareled is proved by the fact that God never made a wave but He gilded it with golden sunbeams, or a tree out He garlanded it with blossoms, or a skv but He studded it with stars, or allowed even the smoke of a furnace to ascend but He columned and turreted and domed and scrolled it into outlines of indescribable gracefulness. When I see the apple orchard of the spring and the pageantry of the autumnal forests, I come to the conclusion that if nature ever does join the church, while she may be a Quaker in the silence of her worship, she never will be a Quaker in the style of her dress. Why the notches of a fern leaf or the stamen of a water lily? Why, when the day departs, does it let the folding doors of Heaven stay open so long, when it might go in so quickly? One summer morning I saw an army of a million spears, each one adorned with a diamond of the first water—l mean the grass with the dew on it. When the prodical came home, his father not only put a coat on his back but jewelry on his hand. Christ wore a beard. Paul, the bachelor apostle, not afflicted with any sentimentality, admired the arrangement of a woman’s hair when he said in his epistle, “if a woman have long hair, it is a glory unto her.” There will be a fashion in Heaven as on earth, but it will be a different kind of fashion. It will decide the color of the dress, and the population of that country, by a beautiful law, will wear white. I say these things as a background to my sermon, to show you that 1 have no prim, pre-’ ,cise, prudish, or cast iron theories on the subject of human apparel. But the goddess of fashion has set up her throne in this world, and at the sound of the timbrels we are all expected to fall down and worship. The Old and New Testament of her bible are the fashion plates. Her altars smoke with the sacrifice of the bodies, minds and souls of 10,000 victims. In her temple four people stand in the organ loft, and from them there comes down a cold drizzle of music, freezing on the ears of her worshippers. This goddess of fashion has become a rival of the Lord of heaven and earth, and it is high time that we unlimbered our batIntUnr, anrilnnt I/I Q ♦ V»VT hOH T

tenes against tnis idolatry, w nen i come to count the victims of fashion, I find as many masculine as feminine. Men make an easy tirade against woman, as though she were the chief worshipper at this idolatrus shrine, and no doubt some men in the more conspicuous part of the pew have already cast glances at the more retired part of the pew, their look a prophecy of a generous distribution. My sermon shall be as appropriate for one end of the pew as for the other. Frivolities of Men. Men are as much the idolaters of fasion as women, but they sacrifice on a different part of the altar. With men the fashion goes to cigars, and clubrooms, and yachting parties, and wine suppers. In the United States men chew up and smoke $100,000,000 worth of tobacco every year. That is their fashion. In London not long ago a man died who had started in life with $750,000, but he ate it all up in gluttonies, sending his agents to all parts of the earth for some rare delicacy for the palate, sometimes one plate of food costing him S3QP or S4OO. He ate up his whole fortune and had only one guinea left. With that he bought a woodcock, had it dressed in the very best style, ate it, gave two hourfe for digestion, and walked out on Westminister bridge and threw himself into the Thames and died, doing on a large scale what you and I have often seen done on a small scale. But men do not abstain from millinery and elabortion of skirt through any superiority of humility. It is only because such appendages would be a blockade to business. What would sashes and trains tnree and a half yards long do in a stock market? And vet men are the deoiples of fashion just as much as women. Some of them wear boots so tight they can hardly walk in the paths of righteousness. And there are men who buy expensive suits of clothes and never pay for them, and who go through the streets in great stripes of color, like animated checkerboards. 1 say these things because I want to show you that I am ’ impartial in my discourse, and that both sexes, in the language of the surrogate’s office, shall “share and share alike. ” As God may help me, I shall show you what are the destroying and deathful influences of inordinate fashion. The first baleful influence I notice is in fraud, illimitable and ghastly. Do you know that Arnold of the Revolution proposed to sell his country in order to get money to support his wife’s wardrobe? f declare here before God and this people that the effort to keep up expensive establishments in this country is sending more business men to temporal perdition than all other causes combined. What was it that sent Gilman to the penitentiary, and Philadelphia Morton to the watering of stocks, and the life insurance presidents to perjured statements about their assets, and has completely upset our American finances? What was it that overthrew the United States Secretary at Washington, the crash of whose fall shook the continent? But why should Igo to these famous defaultings to show what men will do in order to keep up great home style and expensive wardrobe, when you and I know scores of men who are put to their wits’ end and are lashed from January to December in the attempt? Our politicians may theorize until I the expiration of their terms of office

will be of no use and things will be no better until we learn to put on our heads and backs and feet and hands no more than we can pay for. Tragedy of Human Clothe*. There are clerks in stores and banks on limited salaries who, In the vain attempt to keep the wardrobe ot their family as showy as other folks’ wardrobes, are dying of muffs auddiamonds and shawls and high hats, and they nave nothing left except what they give to cigars and wino suppers, and they die before their time, and they will expect us ministers to preach about them'as though they were the victims of early piety, and after a high class funeral, with silver handles at the side of tlje cotlin of. extraordinary brightness, it will be found out that the undertaker Is cheated out of his legitimate expenses! Do not send me to preach the funeral sermon of a man who dies like that. I will blurt out the whole truth and tell that he was strangled to death by his wife’s ribbons. Our countries are dressed to death. You are not surprised to find that the putting up of one public building in New York cost millions of dollars more than it ought to have cost when you find that the man who gave out the contracts paid more than $5,000 for his daughter’s wedding dress. Gashmeres of a thousand dollars each arc not rare on Broadway. It is estimated that there are 10,00 u women in these two cities who have expended on their personal array $4,000 a year. What are men to do in order to keep up such home wardrobes? Steal! That is the only respectable thing they can do. During the last 11 fteen years there have been innumerab’e fine businesses shipwrecked on the wardrobe. The temptation comes in this way: A man thinks more of his family than of all the world outside, and if they spend the evening in describing to him the superior wardrobe o’ the family across the street, that they cannot bear the sight of, the man is thrown on his gallantry and on his pride of family and without translating his feelings into plain language he goes into extortion and issuing of false stock and skillful penmanship in writing somebody else’s name at the foot of a promissory note, and they all go down together-the husband to the prison, the wife to the sewing machine, the children to be taken care of by those who were called poor relations. Oh, for some new Shakspearo to arise and write the tragedy of human clothes! Will you forgive me if I say in tersest shape possible that some of the men have to forge and perjure and to swindle to pay for their wives'dres-es? I will say it whether you forglve me or not. A foe of Almsgiving. Again, inordinate fashion is the foe of all Christian almsgiving. Men and women put so much in personal display that tney often have nothing for God and the cause of suffering humanity. A Christian man cracking his Palais Royal glove across the back by shutting up his hand to hide the cent he puts into the poor-box. A Christian woman, at the story of the Hottentots, crying copious tears into as2s handkerchief and then giving a 2 cent piece to the collection, thrusting it under the bills so people will not know hut. it a. $lO o*old niece. One hun-

DUb 1L Wtt» a <piv gUIU VUG uuudred dollars for incense to fashion; 2 cents for God. God gives up 90 cents out of every dollar. The other lOcents by command of His Bible belong to Him. Is not God liberal according to His tithing system laid down in the Old Testament? Is not God liberal in giving us 90 cents out of a dollar when He taxes but 10? We do not like that. We want to have 99 cents for ourselves and 1 for God. Now, I would a great deal rather steal 10 cents from you than from God. I think one reason why a great many people do not get along in worldly accumulation faster is because they do not observe this divine rule. God says, “Well, if that man is not satisfied with 90 cents of the dollar, then I will take the whole dollar, and I will give it to the man or woman who is honest with me.” The greatest obstacle to chariety' in the Christian Church to-day is the fact that men expend so much money on their table, and womefi so much on their dress, they have got nothing left for the work of God and the world’s betterment. In my first settlement at Belleville, N. J., the cause of missions - was being presented one Sabbath, and a plea for the charity of the people was being made, when an old Christian man in the audience lost his balance and said right out in the midst of the sermon, “Mr. Talmage, how are we to give liberally to these grand and glorious causes when our families dress as they do?” I did not answer that question. It was the on y time in my life when I had nothing to say. How Fashion Distracts Worship. Again, inordinate fashion is distraction to public worship. You know very well there are a good many people who come to church just as they go to the races to see who will come out first. What a flutter it makes in church when some woman with extraordinary display of fashion comes in! “What a lovely bonnet!” says someone. “What a perfect fright!” say five hundred. For the mbst merciless critics in the world are fashion critics. Men and women with souls to be saved passing the hour in wondering where that man got his cravat or what store that woman patronizes. In many of our churches the preliminary exercises are taken up with the discussion of wardrobes. It is pitiable. Is it not wonderful that the Lord does not strike the meeting houses with lightning! What distraction of public worship! Dying men and women, whose bodies are soon to be turned into duet, yet before three worlds strutting like peacocks, the awful question of the soul’s destiny > submerged by the question of navy blue velvet and long fan train skirt, long enough to drag up the church . aisle, the husband’s store, office, shop, factory, fortune, and the admiration of i half the people in the building. Men ■ and women come late to church to sho w ; their clothes. People sitting down in a pew or taking up a hymn oook, all , absorbed at the same time in personal . airay to sing; > Else my soul, and stretch thy wings; l Thy better portion trace, , Else from transitory things Toward Heaven, thy native plaxe. , I adopt the Episcopalian prayer and 1 say, “Good Lord, deliver ua.” Insatiate fashion also belittles the intellect. Our minds are enlarged or 1 they dwindle just in proportion to the

man intellect than the study of fashion? I see men on the street who, judging.from their elaboration, 1 think must have taken two hours to arrange their apparel. After d few years of that kina of absorption, whlcn one of McAllister'S magnifying glasses will be powerful enough to make the man’s character visible? They all land in idiocy. I have seen men at the summer watering places through fashion the mere wreck of what they once were. Sallow of cheek. Meager of limb. Hollow at the chest. Showing no animation save in rushing across a room to pick up a lady’s fan. Simpering across the corridors, the same compliments thev simpered twenty yea’rs ago. A New York lawyer at Gnited States Hotel, Saratoga, within our hearing, rushed across a room to say to a sensible woman, “You are as sweet as peaches!” The fools of fashion are myriad. Fashion not only destroys the body, but it makes idiotic the intellect. A Wasted Life. Yet, my friends, I have given you only the milder phase of this evil. It shuts a great multitude out of Heaven. The first peal of thunder that shook Sinai deelared, “Thou shalt have no other God before me, ” and you will have to choose between the goddess of fashion and the Christian God. There are a great many seats in Heaven, and they are all easy seats, but notone seat for the devotee ot fashion. Heaven is for meek and quiet spirits. Heaven is for those who think more of their souls than of their bodies. Heaven is for those who have more joy in Christian charity than in dry goods religion. Why, if you with your idolatry of fashion should somehow get into Heaven, you woula be ior putting a French roof on the “house oi many mansions.” Give up this idolatry of fashion or give up Heaven. What would vou do standing beside the Countess of Huntington, whose joy it was to build chapels for the poor, or with that Christian woman of Boston who fed 1,500 children of the street at Faneuil Hall on New Year’s day, giving out as a sort of doxology at the end of the meeting a pair of shoes to each one of them, or those Dorcases of modern society who have consecrated thbir needles to the Lord, and who will get eternal reward for every stitch they take. Oh, men and women, give up the idolatry of fashion. The rivalries and the competitions of such a life are a stupendous wretchedness. You will always find some one with brighter array, and with more palatial residence, and with lavender kid gloves that make a tighter fit. And if you buy this thing and wear it you will wish you had bought something else and worn it. And the frets of such a life will bring the crows’ feet to your temples before they are due, and when you come to die you will have a miserable time. I have seen men and women of fashion die, and I never saw one of them die well. The tappings off, there they lay on the tumbled pillow, and there were just two things that bothered them—a wasted life add a coming eternity. I could not pacify them, for their body, mind and soul had been exhausted m the worship of fashion,- and they could not appreciate the gospel When I knelt by their bedside, they were mumbling Out their regrets and saying: “O God! O God!” rnVxoiv* rtormanta himflr nn in thft ward-

melr garments nung up in onu warurobe never again to be seen by them. Without any exception, so far as my memory serves me, they died without hope and went into eternity unprepared. Eternal Expatriation. The most ghastly deathbeds on earth are the one where a man dies of dblirium tremens, and the Other where a woman died after having sacrificed all her faculties of body, mind, and soul in the worship of fashion. My friends, we must appear in judgment to answer for what we have worn on our bodies, as well as for what repentances we have exercised with our souls. On that day 1 see coming in Beau Briimmel of the last century, without his cloak, like which all England got a cloak, and without his cane, like which all England got a cane, without his snuffbox, like which all England got a snuffbox. He, the fop of the ages, particular about everything but his 'ffibrals, and Aaron Burr, without the letters that down to old age he showed in pride to prove his early wicked gallantries, and Absolom without his hair, and Marchioness Pompadour without her titles, and Mrs. Arnold, the belle of Wall street when that was the center of fashion, without her fripperies of vesture. And in great haggardness they shall go away into eternal expatriation, while among the queens of ‘heavenly society will be found Vashti, who wore the modest veil before the palatial bacchanalians, and Hannah, who annually made a little coat for Samuel at the temple, and Grandmother Lois, the ancestress of Timothy, who imitated her virtne, and Mary, who gave Jesus Christ to the world, and marly of you, the wives and mothersand sisters and daughters of the present Christian church, who, through great tribulation are entering into the kingdom of God. 8 Christ announced who would make up the royal family of when He said, “Whosoever doeth the will of God, the same is my brother, my sister, my mother.” A Mysterious Lake. . Although it may not he generally known outside of New York State, or perhaps the immediate locality in which it is situated, Lake Cayuga is. nevertheless, one of the wonders of the Eastern States. It is situated in i West Central New York, and is upi ward of forty miles in length, with an average breadth of but three miles.' One of its peculiarities is this; Although upward of 200 per- ' sons have been drowned in'its waters since the settlement of the adjacent territory, not a single corpse has so far been recovered, and it is a common saying that “Lake Cayiga never ■ gives up its dead.” Those who have' 1 made an attempt to fathom this mystery say that the bottom of this re- ! markable sheet of water is simply a [ series of large openings and craterlike cavities, the entire lake bed having the appearance of being one huge honeycorub, each of the well-like holes being reputed to be bottomless. Another mystery Is its Irregular I tides. There Is no stated times for their appearance, but when they do 1 come they are very decided, the wa- ' ter often Instantly receding fifty to ’ pne hundred feet and as quickly re-