Decatur Democrat, Volume 39, Number 35, Decatur, Adams County, 15 November 1895 — Page 8

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CHAPTER VII. I “Well, old chap,” said Bart, walking fito his friend’s studio the next morning, not packing up, I see. Night's rest gives wisdom. Got over that traveling fit?” “I don’t understand you.” “About going over ther. Given that tip?” “I have been obliged to. There was not k berth to be had though I offered the kgent double fees.” i “Well, that’s all for the best, you see. Fate is working with you.” “But I have taken passage in the next.” “You have?” . “And paid my fare.” “Humph! Well, and what will you do

When you get there? Go and see her taamma ?” “Os course. Bart, old fellow, this has given me an idea. I want fresh ground for a picture or two. Hayti and its inhabitants, the grotesque tropic colors, the foliage, sea, and sky, and the picturesque people.” “Yes, a deal of paint you would spread on your canvas. Nonsense, man, you’ll thing differently before your month is tip.” Paul looked at him with a peculiar mocking smile upon his lip, and began to arrange a canvas on his easel. “Well, I must be going,” said Bart, cheerily, “I’ve a couple of important operations to see at the Maison Dieu. I say, are you going to the hotel this morning?” “No,” said Paul, quietly, “I have been.” “Did you see your sister?” Paul smiled. “Yes," he said. “And Mms Dulau?” “For a Jew minutes,” said Paul, flushing. “Birt, old fellow,” he said, hastily, “I don’t like that woman, Madame Sainlone. She is trying to keep ns apgft.” “Naturajjy, my boy; tulody who is apofeWgnf ? own.J* ‘Nonsense, old fellow! You look ,' 'ough a magnifying glass at things. r my own part, I think she behaved ry well. Here, I must be off. May « you to-night, but probably not till totrrow morning. ~I say, though, are, you ing to see them off at the station?” ‘I shall go to Havre with them, if I n.” ‘ls your sister going?” “No.” Bart looked at his friend and then meed at his watch, closed it, and hur>d away, eager and interested in his udies; and, as he had anticipated, he as not able to look Paul up again till e next morning when he met him just issing the concierge’s lodge. “Going to the hotel?” he said, eagerly. Paul nodded. “Take me with you, old fellow. Oh, I ■ iy, don’t hesitate. Hang it all, I will iel for you in your trouble, so have a ttle pity on me. Your sister returns to ae convent to-day.” “How do you know?” said Paul, dryly. “Well—er—the fact is she told me.” Paul laughed, but there was no mirth i that laugh. ’ “Come along,” he said, “you shall call uth me again.” “That’s right. I say, Paul, old fellow,

really am sorry for you.” “Oh, as sorry as a man can be who is j erfectly happy,” said Paul, bitterly. ■ Step out; it is nearly twelve.” It was a needless request, for Bart was , sady to break into a run, regardless of le effect it would have upon the saunterig people they passed. As it proved, he ither outwalked his companion, and the locks were striking twelve as they reachd the hotel. “Send up our cards to Madame Sainone,” said Paul to the concierge. The man looked at him wonderingly. “She is gone, sir." “Gone?” “Yes, sir; but one of the yqung ladies is here still.” “Quick; send up the cards to her, Bart. She has repented,” he whispered. Bart looked at him, half reproachfully. “You know you are deceiving yourself, Did chap,” he said to himself, as he saw his friend begin to pace the hall excitedly, while his own heart beat, and he knew that he was hot wrong in thinking that the young lady still in the Creole lady’s room was Lucie. “Will you step up, sir,” said an attendant, and directly after they were inhered Into the presence of Lucie, who was waiting, dressed for her departure, and who flew to her brother’s arms. “Oh, Paul dear,” she cried, bursting into tears. “What does this mean ?” he said, harshly; “where is Aube?” “Gone, dear,” cried Lucie, hysterically, is she sclung to her brother. “Don’t—lon’t be angry with me. I could not help t.” “Quick,” said Paul, who was as pale as ishes. Lucie tried to choke down her sobs and rent on volubly. “It was that Madame Saintofle’s doing, ear. I hate her. She is ” “Go on, quick,” criec) Paul, fiercely. Why has she gone before the appointed ime?” “Madame Saintene said it was her duty o Aube to save her all the pain and sufering she could, for one thing; and anther was that she had had a telegram rom Havre which necessitated her going o join the ship at once.” “And they went?” “And they went an hour ago; and, Paul, am sure it was to keep you from seeing tube, for everything was packed ready.” “Yes," he said, hoarsely, “and lube X. "Sent her loving farewell to you, but Paul, she is so changed. l|he only had • time to say a few words to j that wotpan or her daughter oetag by, Jjmtsbe told me to stay till yppWfrfflg

and tell you she would never forget you, and ” “Bart, see my sister back to the convent," cried Paul, hurrying towards the door.* “Paul, what are you going to do?” “To follow them,” he said, shortly. “I am not satisfied that she should go with this woman. Bart, I trust to you. Goodby!” “Oh, Paul, Paul!” cried Lucie, bursting into a fresh fit of sobbing, as the door was closed; and somehow she did not reject the resting-place offered for her head as Bart knelt down by her. But it was only for a few moments before the teachings of the convent and her own maidenly reserve prompted her to

• rise and take a chair by herself, pointing to another. i “I must go home now, Mr. Durham,” I she said, sobbing less frequently now; “but I can’t go through the streets with • a face like this.” > “No, of course not," he said, sympathetically. “Wait a little while.” “Mr. Durham,” said Lucie, “would it be asking too much of you if I begged i you to follow Paul to Havre, to take care of him. Poor boy! he is half mad with grief.” “Too much?” cried Bart. “Why, I like it. Ask me and I’ll go with him to the West Indies when he starts.” “Go where?” cried Lucie, with a horrified start. “Eh? Well, I oughtn’t to have told you, perhaps, if he did not,” said Bart, confusedly. “My brother going to the West Indies?” “Well, he talked about it —following them, you know —and be said he had secured his berth, but it’s some time yet, and all that will go out of his head before then. “So Paul said he would follow Aube?” “Yes; that’s what he said,” cried Bart, hastily.« “ThpnLVtg odfcry, - sSid Bats, excitedly. “I twits me to the heart to see you like this.” “How* can I help it,” she sobbed, “when you tell me this? Mr. Durham, you do like Paul?” “More than I should ever have liked a brother.” “And you would do that for him? “Do what for him?” “Go with him to the West Indies?” “No.” “Mr. Durham!” cried Lucie; “is that being his brother?” “I don’t know,” said Bart, sturdily; “but I will not do it for him, but if you ask me I will do it for you.” “You will?” cried Lucie, joyously, and with all a girl’s inconsistency and thoughtlessness. “Yes, that I will. Why shouldn’t I go? It’s six months before I can have possession of my practice, and if you wish, me to go I’ll take passage in the same boat and look after him, and doctor him, and keep him out of danger.” “You’ll do this for my brother?” cried Lucie, flushing deeply. “No,” said Bart, “I’ll do it for you if you’ll promise to pay for it some day in the way I ask.” “Mr. Durham!” said Lucie, rising and speaking hastily, “my eyes are better now, will you mind seeing me to the convent?"

“I am your slave, Miss Lucie, as I’ve proved to you. Wait one moment; you will pay me for going, as I ask?” “I—l will give you as much money as I can, Mr. Durham, but I am not rich.” “Money!” he said, “as if I wanted money. I want you to promise me that ” “Really, Mr. Durham, I must go now,” cried Lucie, hurrying to the door, “and I think if you see me into a fiacre and tell the man to drive me to the convent, that would do.” “For me, in Paul’s eyes!” said Bart, roughly, “not so untrustworthy as that. Miss Lowther needn’t be afraid of me,” he muttered, bitterly, as he followed her out on to the staircase and down through the hall, where they waited while a fiacre was obtained; and..as soon as‘they were inside, Luce began to chatter to her companion excitedly, so that he could not get in a word, and sulkily accepted the situation. i'l’ve offended her," he said to himself, “and all the time it was so genuine and true, for I would have gone to the world’s end for her sake.” Boon after the fiacre drew up at the convent gate, and was allowed to enter the courtyard. “We must say good-by directly, Mr. Durham,” said Luce now, in a husky voice. “Yes,” he said; “good-by.” “And you will go with Paul whatever he does?" “You wish me to?” he said, as the carriage began to draw up at the entrance. “Yes. Don’t touch me now,” she whispered. “Yes, do, do; and protect him always.” “And my payment by and by? Luce, I do love you with all my heart.” “Hush! Here is the sister,” she whispered, as the door was opened and a thin, elderly; woman in the nun’s garb looked scandalized at seeing one of the pupils return like this. “Good-by, Mr. Durham,” she said, “and thank you for seeing me safely back. Ah—She burst into tears as he handed her out and retained her hand. “Good-by—good-by!” She ran in, and Bart slowly entered the fiacre again and told the man to drive to his lodgings. “She did not promise me, but I promised her,” he said to himself, “and I’ll keep my word. Os course, she did not promise. What girl could' promise so much to such a fellow as I am?" But she shall see I’m staunch, that she shall. I’d go to the world’s end for her.” And an hour later he was on his way to the station, with a small valise In his iflCd; ready to follow his friend to

Havre and onward to the West Indies if he went. “Not much baggage," he said to himself, “but I can buy a clean shirt or two at Havre, and then ” He paused; and then aloud; “Go to the West Indies for her? She shall see.” CHAPTER VIII. "I hate her," said Antoinette, with a vicious, look aft, one evening when the wonderfully deep blue amethystine waters of the great gulf were being turned to purple and gold by the gorgeous light of. the setting tropic sun. “’Toinette, my child!” said Madame Saintone, with laughing reproval. “I do,” said the girl, vindictively. “Ever since we started she has played her fine boarding-school airs on everybody with her mock innocence and sham simplicity. How you can make so much fuss over her I don’t know.” “My dear ’Toinette,” said Madame Saintone, arranging her dress about her chair, so that it should fall in graceful folds upon the deck; “Fate said that I was to take charge of the poor girl, and I have treated you both alike.” “Yes; put that woman’s child on a level with me, mamma—that brat of such a creature as that.” “I hardly thought about the mother, my dear, only of the beautiful, highly educated girl.” “She is not beautiful, mother.” “A matter of taste, my dear. At all events she is the daughter of a man who used to be your father’s friend.” “And look at her where she sits, playing the queen with all her court around her,” cried the girl, mockingly. “Any one would think there was not another lady on board.”

She looked vindictively at where Aube was seated, gazing towards the west, her face irradiated by the dying day, listening to the words of the young officers and passengers who had vied one with the other in their attentions ever since the vessel sailed from Havre. In fact, there had been rivalries innumerable, and more than one angry quarrel without cause, for Aube had always distributed her gentle words and looks with the greatest impartiality, trying hard not to be wearied by the many attentions and acts of kindness she had received. “Yes,” said Madame Saintone, smiling, “she has reigned pretty well over them, my dear, and no wonder; freed from her convent life she is a very sweet girl." “Mamma—mother! How can you say so?” cried Antoinette with a stamp of the foot “Because I think so, and I am displeased and angry with you for being so petty. I wished you to be nicer with her. You silly, jealous child,” she continued mockingly, “what is the matter? Let her have her short reign, she will not rob you of any of your admirers when top cnnu i Norfctill tongues are the wisest I wish you to be loving and kind to the pretty heiress Fate has thrown in our way.” •‘But- —” “Hold your tongue and continue to be gentle and pleasant to her. It is not for long. To-morrow morning at daybreak we shall be off the port.” “But it sickens me all this false display for a creature I detest." “You will grow to like her, ’Toinette, as I do; but if you are not more careful, your conduct will sicken her. Come, now.” The girl made a grimace showing her disgust, but Madame Saintone’s word was law, and drooping her heavy lids with their long lashes over her dark eyes she followed her mother across the deck to where Aube was seated, every movement being carefully otudied, and displaying in an exaggerated form that was often ludicrous the fashionable graces she had picked up in Paris during her stay.

(To be continued.) V. l ~ — OVERRUN BY RATS. i 1 An Army of Vermin Takes Possession of the Island of Tropic. i The Island of Tropic, twenty miles south of the Florida coast, has been invaded by an army of savage rats, and the inhabitants have been forced to flee for their lives. Tropic is three miles long and two miles wide and the soil is very fertile. A dozen families have settled on the Island and engaged In growing vegetables for market. George Butler, one of the settlers, has Just reached here, and tells a thrilling story of the Invasion and subjugation of Tropic by the rats. Up to a month ago, according to Mr. Butler, there were no rats on the island. At that time the advance guard of the rodents arrived, and were quickly followed by others, until In two weeks there were fully 10,000 on the Island. The rats came from the mainland, which was only two miles away, and Mr. Butler affirms that they swam across. He says he has seen them coming out of the water by hundreds. At first the rats contented themselves with attacking the vegetables, which were soon destroyed. Then they invaded the homes of the settlers. The latter made war on the rats, killing hundreds of them. Mr. Butler says he has killed as many as 100 at one shot, but that others‘Xvould rush forward and attack him, biting him viciously on the legs. In spite of the slaughter the rats got Into the houses and attacked the women and children. Several of the latter were badly torn by the sharp fangs of the rodents. One baby was so severely bitten about the face that Its life is despaired of. For three nights, Mr. Butler says,'not a soul on the Island slept, as that would have meant death. At last the people, in terror and worn out, fled in their boats to the mainland, where they are now camped In a destitute condition. Mr. Butler says the rats pursued them tothe water’s edge, and the women an< children were repeatedly bitten before the boats could be pushed off. very vestige of vegetation had been destroyed on the island and it resembles a desert The rats are described as gray In color and monstrous in size, being larger than squirrels.—New York R» corder. i

The Adamites, a sect of the fourteenth century, were named from one Picard, who called himself Adam, ttw •co erf God. ■ > - - -

TALMAGE’S SEBMON. I NEW LESSON FROM THE FEAST OF BELSHAZZAR. 1 ‘ _______ Weighed in the Balance and Found Wanting—The Suddenness of God’s Judgments—A Thought as to the 1 Forme of Prayer—Look and Live. ■*■■■■■■ Mil The Banquet of Sin. Since his going to Washington Dr. Talmage’s pulpit experience has been a remarkable one. Not only has the church in which he preaches been filled, but the audiences have overflowed into the adjoining streets to an extent that has rendered them impassable. Similar scenes were enacted at last Sunday’s services, when the preacher took for his subject, “Handwriting on the Wall,” the text chosen being Daniel v., 30, “In that night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain.” Night was about to come down on Babylon. The shadows of her 250 towers began to lengthen. The Euphrates rolled on, touched by the fiery splendors of the setting sun, and gates of brads, burnished and glittering, opened and shut like doors of flame. The hanging gardens of Babylon, wet with the heavy dew, began to pour from starlit flowers and dripping leaf&a fragrance for many miles around. The streets and squares were lighted for dance and frolic and pgomenade. The theaters and galleries or art invited the wealth and pomp and grandeur of the city to rare entertainments. Scenes of riot and wassail, were mingled in every street, and godless mirth, and outrageous excess and splendid wickedness came to the king’s palace to do their mightiest deeds of darkness. A royal feast to-night at the king’s palace! Rushing up to the gates are chariots, upholstered with precious cloths from Dedan and drawn by fire-eyed horses from Togarmah, that rear and neigh in the grasp of the charioteers, while a thousand lords dismount and women dressed in all the splendors of Syrian emerald, and'the color blending of agate, and the chasteness of coral, and the somber glory of Tyrian purple, and princely embroideries brought from afar by camels across the desert and by ships of Tarshish across the sea. A Great Banquet. Open wide the gates and let the guests come in. The chamberlains and cupbearers are all ready. Hark to the rustle of the silks, and to the carol of the music! See the Waze of the jewels! Lift the banners. Fill the cups. Clap the cymbals. Blow the trumpets. Let the night go by with song and dance and ovation, and let that Babylonish lAgue be palsied that wilfrnqt say 'P. L' i , t’ —uauqueiTia Wilicn these great people

came. All parts of the eW?th had sent their richest viands to that table. Brackets and chandeliers flashed their, light upon tankards of burnished gold. Fruits, ripe and luscious, in baskets of silver, intwined with leaves, plucked from royal conservatories. Vases, inlaid with emerald and ridged with exquisite traceries, filled with nuts that were thrashed frotn forests of distant lands. Wine brought from the royal vats, foaming in the decanters and bubbling in the chalices. Tufts of cassia and frankincense wafting their sweetness from wall and table. Gorgeous banners unfolding in the breeze that came through the open window, bewitched with the perfumes of hanging gardens. Fountains rising up from inclosures of ivory, in jets of crystal, to fall in clattering rain of diamonds and pearls. Statues of mighty men loking down from niches in the wall upon crowns and shields brought from subdued empires. Idols of wonderful work standing on pedestals of precious stones. Embroideries stooping about the windows and wrapping pillars of cedar, and drifting on floor inlaid with ivory and agate. Music, mingling the thrum of harps, and the elash of cymbals, and the blast of trumpets in one wave of transport that went rippling along the wall and breathing among the garlands and pouring down the corridors and thrilling the souls of a thousand banqueters. The signal is given, and the lords and ladies, the mighty men and women of the land, come around the table. Pour out the wine. Let foam and bubble kiss the rim! Hoist every one his cup and drink to the sentiment: “O King Belshazzar, live forever!” Bestarred head band and carcanet of royal beauty gleam to the uplifted chalices, as again and again and again they are emptied. Away wfth care from the palace! Tear royal dignity to tatters! Pour out more wine! Give ns more light, wilder music, sweeter perfuine! Lord shouts to lord, captain ogles to captain. Goblets clash; decanters rattle. There come in the obscene song, and the drunken hiccough, and the slavering lip, and the guffaw of idiotic laughter, bursting from the lips of princes, flushed, reeling bloodshot; while mingling with it nil I hear, “Huzza, huzza! for great Belshazzar!”

What is that on the plastering of the wall? Is it a spirit? Is it a phantom? Is it God? The music stops. The goblets fall from the nerveless grasp. There is a thrill. There is a start. There is a thousand voiced shriek of horror. Let Daniel be brought in to read that writing. He comes in. He reads it—“ Weighed in the balance and found wanting.” " A Warning. Meanwhile the Medes, who for two years had been laying siege to that city, took advantage of that carousal and came in. I hear the feet of the conquerors on the palace stairs. Massacre rushes iu with a thousand gleaming knives. Death bursts upon the scene, and I shut the door of that banqueting hall, for I do not want to look. There is nothing there but torn banners, and broken wreaths, and the slush of upset tankards, and the blood of murdered women and the kicked and tumbled carcass of a dead king. For “in that night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain.” I go on to learn some lessons from all this. I learn that when God writes anything on the wall a man had better read it as it is. Daniel did not misinterpret or modify the handwriting on the is all foolishness to expect a minister of the gospel to preach always things that the people like or the people chpose. Young men of Washington, what shall I preach to you to-night? Shall I tell you o? the dignity of human nature ? Shall I tell you of the wonders that our face has accomplished? “Oh, no,” you say. “Tell me the message that came from God.” I wiM. If there is any handwriting on the wall, it is this lesson: “Repent! Accept of Christ and be saved!” I might talk of a great many other things, but that is tho message, and Iso declare it. Jesus never

were offensive in his sight, *»Ye generation of vipers, ye white sepulchers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell!” Paul the apostle preached before a man who was not ready to hear him preach. What subject did he take? Did he say, “Oh, you are a good man, a very flue man, a very noble man ?” No; he preached of righteousness to a man who was unrighteous, of temperance to a man who w*as a victim of bad appetites, of judgment to come to a man who was unfit for it. So we must always declare the message that happens to como to us. Daniel must read it as'lt is. A minister preached before James I. of England, who was James VI. of Scotland. What subject did he take? The king was noted all over the world for being unsettled and wavering in his ideas. What did the minister preach about to this man who was James I. of England and James VI. of Scotland? He took for his text James i., 0: “He that waVereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed." Hugh Latimer offended the king by a sermon preached, agd the king said, “Hugh Latimer, come and apologize.” “I will," said Hugh Latimer. So the day was appointed, and the king’s chapel was full of lords and dukes and the mighty men and women of the country, for Hugh Latimer was to apologize. He began his sermon by saying, “Hugh Latimer, bethink thee! Thou art in the presence of thine earthly king, who can destroy thy body. But bethink thee, Hugh Latimer, that thou art in the presence of the king of heaven and earth, who can destroy both body and soul in hell fire." Then he preached with appalling directness at the king’s crimes.

The End of Bin. Another lesson that comes to*us tonight: There is a great difference between the opening of the banquet of sin and its close. Young man, if you had looked in upon the banquet in the first few hours you would have wished you had been invited there, and could sit at the feast. ‘SOh, the grandeur of Belshazzar’s feast!” you would have said, but you look in at the close-es the banquet and your blood curdles with horror. The king of terrors has there a ghastlier banquet; human blood is the wine and dying groans are the music. Sin has made itself a king in the earth. It has crowned itself. It has spread a banquet. It invites all the world to come to it. It has hung in its banqueting hall the spoils of all kingdoms, and the banners of all nations. It has gathered from all music. It has strewn, from its wealth, the tables and floors and arches. And yet how often is that banquet broken up, and how horrible is its end! Ever and anon there is a handwriting on the wall. A king falls. A great culprit is arrested. The knees of wickedness knock together. God's judgment, like an armed host, breaks in upon the and that night is Belshazzar, ?up. Why, it is exhilarating! It makes me feel well. I can talk better, think better, feel better. I cannot see why people have such a prejudice against it.” A few years pass on, and he wakes up and finds himself in the clutches of an evil habit which he tries to break, but cannot, and he cries out, “O Lord God, help me!” It seems as though God would not hear his prayer, and in an agony of body and soul he cries out, “It biteth like a serpent and it stingeth like an adder.” How bright it was at the start! How black it was nt the last!

Here is a man who begins to read loose novels. “They are so charming,” he says. “I will go out and see for myself whether all these things are so.” He opens the gate of a sinful life. He goes in. A sinful sprite meets him with her wand. She waves her wand, and it is all enchantment. Why, it seems as if the angels of God had poured out vials of perfume in the atmosphere. As he walks on be finds the hills becoming more radiant with foli--lige and the ravines more resonant with the falling water. Oh, what a charming landscape he sees! But that sinful sprite, with her wand, meets him again. But now she reverses the wand, and all the enchantment is gone. The cup is full of poison. The fruit turns to ashes. All the leaves of the bower are forked tongues of hissing serpents. The flowing fountains fall back in a dead pool stenchful with corruption. The luring songs become curses and screams of demoniac laughter. Lost spirits gather about him and feel for his heart and beckon him on with “Hail, brother! Hail, blasted spirit, hail!” He comes to the front door where he entered and tries to push it back, but the door turns against him, and in the jar of that shutting door he hears these words, “This night is Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain.” Sin may open bright as the morning. It ends dark as the night!

Death at the Banqnet. I learn further from this subject that death sometimes breaks in upon a banquet. Why did he not go down to the prisons in Babylon? There were people there that would like to have died. I suppose there were men and women in torture in that city who would have welcomed death, but he comes to the palace, and just at the time when the mirth is dashing to the tip-top pitch, death breaks in at the banquet. We have often seen the same thing illustrated. Here is a young man just come from college. He is kind. He is loving. He is enthusiastic. He is eloquent. By one spring he may bound to heights toward which many men have been struggling for years. A profession opens before him. He Is established in the law. His friends cheer him. Eminent men encourage him. After awhile you may see him standing in the American Senate, or moving a popular assemblage by his eloquence, as trees are moved in a whirlwind. Some night he retires early. A fever is on him. Delirium, like a reckless charioteer, seizes the reins of his intellect. Father and mother stand by and see the tides of his life going out to the great ocean. The banquet is coming to an end. The lights of thought and mirth and eloquence are being extin-# guished. The garlands are snatched from the brow. The vision is gone. Death at the banquet! We saw the same thing, on a larger scale, illustrated in our civil war. Ouy whole nation had been sitting at a national banquet—North, South, East and West. What grain was there but we grew it on our hills? What invention was there but our rivers must turn the new wheel and rattle the strange shuttle? What warin furs but our traders must bring them from the arctics? What fish but our nets must sweep them for the market? What music but it must sing in our halls? What eloquence but it must speak in our senates? Ho, to the national banquet, reaching from mountain to mountain and from sea to sea! To prepare that banquet the sheepfolds and the aviaries of the country sent their best treasures. The orchards piled up on ths table their swsst.

fruits. The presses burst out with new wines. To sit at that table came the yeomanry of New Hampshire, and the lumbermen of Maine, and the Carolinian from the rice plantation, and the Western emigrant from the pines of Oregon, and we were all brothers—brothers at a banquet. Suddenly the feast ended. What meant those mounds thrown up at Chickamauga, Shiloh, Atlanta, Gettysburg, South Mountain? What meant those golden grainfields, turned into a pasturing ground for cavalry horses? What meant the cornfields gullied with the wheels of the heavy supply train? Why those rivers of tears —those lakes of blood? God was angry I Justice must come. A handwriting on the wall! The nation had been weighed and found wanting. Darkness! Darkness! Woe to the North! Woe to. the South! Woe to the East! Woe to the West! Death at the banquet. Sudden Judgment. I have also to learn from the'subject that the destruction of the vicious, and of those who despise God, will be very sudden. The wave of mirth had dashed to the highest point when the invading army broke through. It was unexpected. Suddenly, almost always, comes the doom of those who despise God and defy the laws of men. How was it at the deluge? Do you suppose it came through a long northeast storm, so that people for days before were sure it was coming? No. I suppose the morning was bright; that calmness brooded on the waters; that beauty sat enthroned on the hills, when suddenly the heavens burst, and the mountains sank like anchors into the sea that dashed clear over the Andes and the Himalayas. The Red Sea was divided. The Egyptians tried to cross it. There could be no danger. The Israelites had just gone through. Where they had gone, why not the Egyptians? Oh, it was such a beautiful walking place! A pavement of tinged shells and pearls, and on either side two great walls of water—solid. There can be no danger. Forward, great host of the Egyptians! Clap the cymbals and blow the trumpets of victory! After them! We will catch them yet, and they shall be destroyed. But the walls begin to tremble! They rock! They fall! The rushing waters! The shriek of drowning men! The swimming of the warhorses in vain for the shore! The strewing of the great host on the bottom of the sea or pitched by the angry waves on the beach—a battered, bruised and loathsome wreck! Suddenly destruction came. One-half hour before they could not have believed it. Destroyed, and without remedy. I am just Betting forth a fact which you have noticed as well as I. Ananias comes to the apostle. The apostle says, “Did you sell the land for so much?” He says, “Yes.” It was a lie. Dead, as quipk as that! Sapphira, his wife, comps in “FliH ■» 1 ta

Thsjy come suddenly. A Simple Prayer. The destroying angel went through Egypt. Do you suppose that any of the people knew that he was coming? Did they hear the flap of his great wing? No! No! Suddenly, unexpectedly he came. Skilled sportsmen do not like to shoot a bird standing on a sprig near by. If they are skilled, they pride themselves on taking it on the wing, and they wait till it starts. Death is an old sportsman, and he loves to take men flying under the very sun. He loves to take them on, the wing. Oh, flee to God this night! If there be one in this presence who has wandered far away from Christ, though he may not have heard the call of the gospel for many a year, I invite him now to come and be saved. Flee from thy sin! Flee to the stronghold of the gospel! Now is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation. . Good night, my young friends! May you have rosy sleep, guarded by him who never slumbers! May you awake in the morning strong and well! But, oh, art thou a despiser of God? Is this thy last night on earth? Shouldst thou be awakened in the night by something, thou knowest not what, and there be shadows floating in the room, and a handwriting on the wall, and you feel that your last hour is come, and there be a fainting at the heart, and a tremor in the limb, and a catching of the breath—then thy doom would be but an echo of the word of the text, “In that night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain.” Oh, that my Lord Jesus would now make himself so attractive to your souls that you cannot resist him, and if you have never prayed before or have not prayed since those days when you knelt down at your mother’s knee, then that to-night you might pray, saying: Just as I am,' without one plea But that thy blood was shed for me And that thou bidst me come.to thee, O Lamb of God, I come! But if you cannot think of so long a prayer as that I will give you a shorter prayer that you can say, “God be merciful to me, a sinner!” Or; if you Cannot think of so long a prayer as that, I will give you a still shorter one that you may utter, “Lord save me, or I perish!” Or, if that be too long a prayer, you need not make it. Use the word “Help!” Or, if that be too long a word, you need not use any word at all. Just look and live!

Transpiration Through Clothing. It is absolutely essential to health that the emanations from the skin pass easily through the clothing. This—which Is called “transpiration"—may be Interfered with by an excess of clothing or by clothing of a very close texture. All who wear India rubber coats know how uncomfortable they are after they have been on a short time. Ordinarily proper clothing will not prevent transpiration, but an excess will interfere with It, and where too much clothing Is worn it soon becomes foul, because the outside air cannot freely pilngle with the gases from the body and dilute them, Some wear the thickest and heaviest undervests which they can buy, and-such people are generally the victims of frequent colds. Following the rule of light clothing they would be much safer from the danger of exposure were they to wear two light undervests Instead of one very thick and heavy. ...... -n' ' """""" The Evening Primrose. - One of the most singular peculiarities of the floral world Is the evening primrose; which opens about 0 o'clock p. m. with an explosion not very loud noi formidable, but still quite perceptible to anyone who fe Watching the bud. It remains open all flight