Pike County Democrat, Volume 31, Number 34, Petersburg, Pike County, 28 December 1900 — Page 2

(SACRIFICES OF GOD. Dr. Talmage Preaches an Appropriate Christmas Sermon. The Lord's Gift of His Son Through His Love of Mm for the 'World's Diaeathrallsnent — Mission of the Saviour.

(Copyright, 1300, by Louis Klopseh, N. Y.] Washington, Deo. 23. In this discourse Dr. Talmage describes in a new way the sacrifices made for the world’s disenthrallment and deliverance. His text is I. John iy., 16: | “God is love.” s ; Perilous undertaking would it be to attempt a comparison between the attributes of God. They are not like a mountain range, with here and there a higher peak, nor like the ocean, with here and there a profounder depth. We cannot measure infinities. We would not dare to say whether His omnipotence, or omniscience, or omnipresence, or immutability, or wisdom, or justice, or love is the greater attribute, but the one mentioned in my text makes deeper impression upon us than any other. It was evidently a very old man who wrote the chapter from which I take the text. John was not in his dotajje, as Prof. Eichorn asserted, but you can tell by the repetition in the epistle and the rambling styl& that he called grown people “little children” that the author was probably an octogenarian. Yet Paul, in midlife mastering an audience of Athenian critics on Mars hill, said nothing stronger or more important than did the venerable John when he wrote the three words of my text: “God is love.” Indeed the older one gets the more he appreciates this attribute. The harshness and the combativeness and the severity have gone out of the old man, and he is more lenient and aware of his own faults, is more disposed to make excuses for the faults of others, and he frequently ejaculates: “Poor human nature!” The young minister preached three„ sermons on the justice of God and one on the love of God, but when he got old he preached three sermons on the love of God and one on the justice of God. Far back in the eternities there came a time when God would express one emotion of His nature which was yet unexpressed. He had made more worlds than were seen by the ancients from the top of the Egyptian pyramid, which was used as an observatory, and more worlds than modern astronomy has catalogued or descried through microscopic lens. All that shotved the Lord’s almightiness, but it gave no demonstration of His love. He might make 50 Sat urns and a hundred Jupiters dud not demonstrate an instant of love. ...-'That was an unknown passion and the secret of the universe. It was a suppressed emotion of the great God. But there would come a time when this passion of infinite love would be declared and illustrated. God would veil it no longer. After the clock of many centuries/ had ;run down and worlds had been born and demolished on a comparatively obscure star a race of human brings would be born and who, thougk-^o bbuntifully provided for that they ought to have behaved themselves well, went into insurrection and conspiracy and revolt and war — finite against infinite, weak arm against thunderbolt, man against God. If high intelligences looked down and saw what was going on, they must have prophesied extermination, complete extermination, of these offenders of Jehovah. But no! Who is that coming out of the throne room of Heaven? Who is that coming out of the palaces of the eternal? It is the Son of the Emperor of the universe. Down the stairs of the high heavens He comes till He reaches the cold air of a December night in Palestine, and amid the bleatings of sheep and the lowing of cattle and the moaning of camels*and the banter of herdsmen takes his first sleep on earth and for 33 years invites the wandering race to return to God and happiness and Heaven. They were the longest 33 years ever known in Heavem Among many high intelligences, what impatience to get Him back! The Infinite Father looked down and saw his Son slapped and spit on and supperless and homeless^ and then, amid horrors' that made the noonday heavens turn black in the face, His body and soul parted. And all for what? Why allow the Crown Prince to come on such an errand and endure such sorrow and die such a death? It was to invite the human race to put down its antipathies and resistance. It was because “God is love.”

Now, there is nothing beautiful in a shipwreck. We go down to 100k at the battered and split hulk of an old ship on Long Island or New Jersey coast. It excites our interest. We wonder when and where it came ashore, and whether It was the recklessness of a|pilot or a storm before which nothing |ould bear up. Human nature wrecked1* may interest the inhabitants of other worlds as a curiosity, but there is nothing lovely in that which has foundered on the rocks of sin and sorrow^ Yet it was in that condition of moral break up that Heaven moved to th^ rescue. It was loveliness-hovering over deformity. It was the lifeboat putting out into the surf that attempted its demolition. It was harmony pitying discord. It was a living God putting His arms around a recreant world. The schoolmen deride the*idea that God has emotion. They think it would be a Divine weakness to be stirred by any earthly spectacle. The God of the learned Bruch and Schleiermacher is an infinite intelligence, without feeling, a cold and cheerless divinity. But the God we worship is one of sympathy and compassion and helpfulness and. affection . “God is love." In all the Bible there is no more consolatory statement. The very best people have in their lives occurrences inexplicable. Thej- are bereft or persecuted or impoverished or invalided They

have only one child, and that dies, while the next door neighbor has seven children, and they are all spared. The unfortunates buy at a time when the market is rising and the day after the market falls. At a time when they need to feel the best for the discharge of some duty they are seized with physical collapse. Trying to do a good and honest and useful thing, they are misrepresented and1 belied as if they had practiced a villainy. These are people who all their lives have suffered injustices. Others of less talent, with less consecration, go on and up, whilje they go on and down. There are in many livesriddles that have never been solved, mysteries that have never been explained, heartbreaks that have never been healed. Go to that man or that woman with philosophic explanation, and you will make matters worse instead of making them better, liut let the oceanic tide of the text roll in that soul, and all its worriments and losses and disasters will be submerged with blessing, and the sufferer will say: “I cannot' understand the reason for my troubles, but I will some day understand. And tjjey do not come by accident. God .allows them to come, and ‘God is love.’ ”

But for this divine feeling1 I think o,ur world would long ago have been demolished. Just think of the organized wickedness of the nations! See the abominations continental! Behold the false religions that hoist Mohammed and Buddha and Confucius! Look at the Koran and the Shastra and the Zend-Avesta that would crowd out of the world the Holy Scriptures! Look at war, digging its trenches for the dead across the hemispheres! See the great cities, with their holocaust of destroyed manhood and womanhood! What blasphemies assail the heavens! What butcheries sicken the centuries! What processions of crime and atrocity and woe encircle the globe! If justice had spoken, it would have said: “The world deserves annihilation, and let annihilation come.” If immutability had spoken, it would have said: “I have always been opposed to wickedness and always will be opposed to it. The world is to me an affront infinite, and away with it.” If omniscience had spoken, it would have said: “I have watched that planet with minute and comprehensive inspection, and I cannot have the offense longer continued.” If truth had spoken, it would have Said: “I declare that they offend the law must go down unde^Nb law.” But divine love took a differe^4_view of the world’s^ obduracy and pollution. It said: “I pity all those woes)of the earth. I cannot stand here and see no assuagement of those sufferings. I will go down and reform the world. I will medicate its wounds. I will calm its frenzy. I will wash off its pollution. I will become incarnated. Iwill take on my shoulders and upon my brow and into my heart the consequences of the world’s misbehavior. I start now, and between my arrival at Bethlehem and my ascent from Olivet I will weep their tears and suffer their griefs and die their death. Farewell, my throne, my crown, my scepter, my angelic environment,-my Heaven, till I have finished the work and come back!” God was never conquered but once, and that was when He was conquered by His own love. “God is love.” In this tiay, when the creeds of churches are being revised, let more emphasis be put upon the thought of my text. Let it appear at the beginning of every creed and at the close. The ancients used to tell of a great military chieftain who, about to go to battle, was clad in armor, helmet on head and sword at side, and who put out his arms to give faretvell embrace to his child, and the child, affrighted at his appearance, ran, shrieking, away. Then the father put off the armor that caused the alarm, and the child saw who he was and ran into his arms and snuggled against his heart. Creeds must not have too much iron in their make up, terrorizing rather than attracting. They must not hide the smiling face and the warm heart of our Father, God. Let nothing imply that there is a sheriff at every door ready to make arrest, but bver us all and ajround us all a mercy that wants to save, and save now. If one paragraph of the creej seems to take you, like a child, out of the arms of a father, let the next paragraph put you in the arms of a mother. “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I oomfort you.” Oh, what a mother we have in God! And my text is the lullaby song to us when we are ill, or when we are maltreated, or when we are weary, or when we are trying to do better, or when we are bereft, or when we ourselves lie down to the last sleep. We feel the warm cheek of the mother against our cheek, and there sounds in it the hush of many mothers: “God is love!”

Tins was the reason the Bible was written. The world needs no inspired page to tell it that God will chastise sin, for that is proved in the life of many an offender. You can look through the wicket of any prison and see the fact which the w'orld understood thousands of years before Solomon wrote it: “^he way of the transgressor i^ hard.” ‘ The world needed no Bible to tell it that God isjomnipotent, for anyone who has seen Mont Blanc or Niagara or the Atlantic ocean in a cyclone knows that. The world needed no Bible to tell it of God’s wisdom, for everything, from i ’spider’s web to the upholstery of a summer’s sunset, from the globe of a dewdrop to the rounding of a world, declares that. But there was one secret about God that was wrapped up in a scroll of parchment, and it staid there until apoltolic hand unrolled that scroll and let out upon the world the startling fact, which it could nevier have surmised, never guessed, never expected, that He loved our human Tace so ardently that He will pardon sin and subdue the offender with a Divine kiss and turn foaming malefactors into worshipers before the throne, Oh, I am so glad that the secret is out and

-Lthat it canmever again be veiledl Tell it to all tne^ sinning, suffering, dying race; tell it in song and sermon, on can* vas and in marble, on arch and pillar; tell it all around the earth—“God is love.” Notice that the wisest men of the nations for thousands of years did not, amid their idolatries, make something to represent this feeling, this emotion. They had a Jove, representing might; Neptune, the god of the sea; Minerva, the goddess of wisdom; Venus, the goddess of base appetite: Ceres, the goddess of corn, and an Odin, and an Osiris, and a Titan, and a Juggernaut, and whole pantheons of gods and goddesses, but no shrine, no carved image, no sculptured form has suggested a god of pure love. That was beyond human brain. It took a God to think that, a God to project that, a God let down from Heaven to achieve that. Fear is the dominant thought in all false religions. For that the .devotees cut themselves with lances and sviiing on iron hooks and fall under wheels and hold up the right arm so long that they cannot take it dc»wn. Fear, brutish learl But love is the queen in our religion. For that we build temples. For that we kneel at our altars. For that we contribute our alms. For that martyrs suffered at Brussels market place and at Lucknow and Cawnpur and Peking. That will yet bejewel the round earth and put it an emerald on the great, warm.throbbing heart of God.

The world has had many specimens of slandered men and women, their motives slandered, their habits slandered—slandered until they got out of the world, and then perhaps honored by elaborate eulogium and tall shaft of granite, all four sides chiseled with the story of how good and great they were. But no one under the heavens or over the heavens has ever been so much slandered as God. Bad men have fought against Him and have thought they heard fiis voice in the crash of a thunderstorm, but have not seen Him in the sunshine of the spring morning. They have blamed Him for wrongs which they had done themselves. The sight of a church building excites their disgust. They like the madrigal of a saloon better than the doxology of a temple. They do, not want to live with Him in Heaven, but would prefer on leaving this world to go into some realm where God has abdicated the throne and from which He is exiled forever. The reason is they do not know Him. They do not-realize the fact that God is the best friend this world ever had or ever will have, and that He would do more for their happiness than anyone in the wide universe; that He would help them in the wear and tear and tussle of this life; that He would hush their sorrows; that H$ would help cure the evil habits with which they sometimes struggle; that * He would at their request not only forgive but forget the wrong things in their life. Yes, forget! And that is the only thing that God ever does forget—pardoned transgression. The best memory in the universe is God’s memory, and He remembers all that has transpired in all time and in all eternity save one1 kind of occurrence. That passes completely out of His memory. He declares: “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.’* _ V -V Do you want more proof that “God is love?” Yea, disinterested love. No compensation for its bestowal. No reward for its sacrifices. But I call that back: The world did pay Him. It paid Him on Calvary, paid Him with brambles on the brow and foi¥f~spikes, two for the hands and two for the feet, and one spear for the side near the heart; paid Him in execration; paid Him with straw pillow in a barn and a cross on a hill; paid Him with a third of a century of maltreatment and hardship save one year—yea, is paying Him yet in rejection of His mission of mercy. Having dethroned other kings, the world would like to dethrone the King of kings. But He knew what He was coming to when He left the portals of pearl and the land where the sun never goes down. Yes, He knew the world, how cold it is, and knew pain, how sharp it is, and the night, how dark it is, and expiation, how excruciating it is. Out of vast eternity He looked forward and^saw Pilate’s criminal courtroom, and the rocky bluff with three crosses, and the lacerated body in mortuary surroundings, and heard the thunders toll at the funeral of Heaven’s favorite, and understood that the palaces of eternity would hear the sorrow of a bereft God.

What do the Bible and the church liturgies mean when they say: “He descended into hell?” They mean that His soul left His sacred body for awhile and went down into the prison of moral night, and swung back its great door, and lifted the chain of captivity, and felt the awful lash that would have come down on the world’s back, and wept the tears of an eternal sacrifice, and took the bolt of Divine indignation against sin into Himself, and, having vanquished dearth and hell, came out and came up, naving achieved an eternal rescue if we will accept it. Some have compared the love of God to the ocean, but the comparison fails, for the ocean has a shore, and God’s love is boundless. But if you insist on comparing the love of God to the ocean ^put on that ocean four swiftsailing craft, §nd let one sail tp the north, and one to the south, and one to the east, and one to the west, and let them sail on a thousand years, and after that let them all return and some one hail the fleet and ask them if they have found the shore of God’s love, and their four voices would respond: “No shore! No shore to the ocean of God’s inercy!” The Cork Tree. The cork tree is an evergreen, ano oak, quercus sube~ about the size of our apple tree, an grown largew <• Spain for commercial uses.

'LL. tell you a story, my girl, to-day. And the story I tell Is true, There is not a power on earth to win So strong as the power In you. Hold firm to the beautiful things In life,

juearn Dotn to work ana to pray. Let holiness have Its royal place— And a world is yojirs to sway. The power of right is more than might— i The weakest ones are strong When they reach above to the hand of Love And goodness conquers wrong. The ages In passing have garnered their store, Have brought things good and true. But Time’s unfolding has left nb gift Like the gifts he has left for you. For you, my girl, who* more than queen. May hold a royal place »■ . 9 By the winsome charms of beauty and youth, e And the power of goodness and grace; For hearts are breaking, and souls are sad. There are lives to brighten and cheer, There’s hope in the touch of a kindly hand, And a smile may dry a tear. And, remember, your right of dower, nay girl. Is gaining a world from sin, Is strengthening manhood’s npblest alms, Is womanhood’s crown to win. Then strive, my girl, for all that’s pure, And seek for all that’s true, Be thoughtful and loving, and gentle and kind, For the world has need of you. -Jennie L. Lyall, In Christian Work. LIZABETH had run away from school to find her “mental balance,” she assured herself. “Seems to me you look kind of run down,” Mr. Simeon Goldthwaite said, as he met her at the small country station. “.No, Uncle Simeon, it’s just the other way. Haven’t 3 0U .ever wound your watch so tight that you had to give it a shake to set it going?” “Yes, I have,” and he remained silent a moment to get the full force of the illustration. “I guess you’re right. These schools ’re hard on the mainspring.” Elizabeth settled back in the sleigh restfully. She had never been in the real country in midwinter before, although a portion of more than one summer vacation had been spent with this kind Uncle Simeon. His home was only 20 miles from Hawthorne, where she was a pupil in the famous Hawthorne school, while her own was in. another state several hundred miles away. When the * invitation came to spend the latter part of Christmas week and New Year’s at the farmhouse her first sensation was a shiver. Then she had said: “What do I care for the cold? I’m freezing inside here, and a few frostbites outside will only be a counter-irritant.” But there was little danger of freezing in Uncle Simeon’s sleigh with a foxskin robe tucked around her and Aunt Agatha’s big shawl over her warm jacket. The December air was a elear, bracing cold, the snow was packed and crusted on either side of the roadway, and Doll, the good gray horse, trotted just fast enough to keep the sleigh-bells jingling with a monotonous and restful sweetness. Her world of duties and perplexities was leagues behind. This new world with its wide-.reaches of pure white, untrodden fields, its circling mountains clear-cut against the blue-gray sky, its lines of forest with their indescribable shades of coloring—this world was a deligutful surprise. Slowly she disentangled her thoughts from this fascinating outlook and brought them back to her uncle’s words. “I ought not to let you think I’ve been studying too hard,” she said. “I’ve been a naughty girl, and my heart aches. I’m all out of sorts with myself—that’s the trouble.” “Sho! You don’t mean to say! I never thought you was naughty. You come of a steady-going race,” and* he gave her a quick glance over his fur collar as if to read her face. “Oh, I haven’t been * ‘cutting up,’ Uncle Simeon, but I’ve—had trouble— with my very, very dearest girl friend, and—we don’t speak to each other.” The last words were almost a sob. Simeon Goldthwaite had been a class-leader for many years, and had learned to read the inner life of old and young in his small circle. It is a great gift—that of genuine, unselfish sympathy with other people, bbt this simple-hearted man had received it, and used it with reverence. “Well, now, Elizabeth, I dare say *twas a small affair to start with.” “Oh, yes—yes, it was! Alice and I were rivals in ,',*s work, but we loved each other dearly until—she threw, a suspicion upon me, Uncle Simeon; a suspicion that I was unfair and untrue. I could have forgiven her, but right away she grew cold and distant, and she hasn’t spoken to me for three months.” Elizabeth paused to control her voice and then went on: “It is affecting all the girls. They take sides, and A.l*<« is so bright, and winning that

they follow her. Bui I don’t care ao much for that—it ia her friendship I miss. But she doesn’t s?em to care at all.” “You can't be sure how that is, for no two bear trials alike. But. ’pears to me, ’Lizbeth, I wouldn’t let it run on like this much longer. Why don’t you speak yourself?” “I’m not at fault, Uncle Simeon, and she is. She ought to come to me.” “ Tain’t right not to speak, though. Right over ther^ lives a man and his wife that haven’t spoke to one another for five j'ears,” and Mr. Goldthwaite pointed with his whip to a small brown farmhouse, its windows blazing with splendor reflected from the sunset, “Why, how strange! Did you say they were married people?” “Yes, and growing old. They had trouble over some money, and she declared she’d never speak to him till he told her what he’d done with her butter money. Well, he wouldn’t, so there they’ve lived—both church members, too—all these years.” “How do they manage when, they want to tell each other about work, and such things?” Elizabeth asked, full of interest. “Oh. they had their youngest son till he left home to set up for himself. Then they took a town’s poor girl, and when she was gone to school Mis’ Abbott would tell the cat what she wanted. I was in there one day and she says: ‘Tabby, I s’pose you know the pump needs fixing. If it ain’t done the water’ll freeze.’ And Abbott says: ‘All right,. Tab.’ ” % Elizabeth laughed. “Oh, how foolish!” “Terrible! Well, I’ve talked to ’em, and this yenr I says to him: ‘Now, Abbott,’ I says, ‘you’re growing old, and here ’tis Christmas week and the year ’most gone. Why don’t you just settle old difficulties and begin the new year right? You know and I know,’says I, ‘that you bought land with that money. Why don’t you tell her so?’ *Oh, she suspicioned me.’ says he. ‘She’d ought to know I’d take good care of the money.* Then I told him that when a woman worked hard all summer to earn money she’d a right to know where it went to. But I couldn’t move him. And now Christmas week’s going fast, and if they don’t get reconciled before New Year it’ll go on 12 months longer.” “What makes you think so, Unde Simeon?” “Well,” and he began to make crosses upon the snow with his long whip, “because it’s the fitting time to wipe out old scores and begin over again; beI

had had a stroke? Wouldn't I Just kbt her and cry over her and forgive every* tilings—everything? I couldn't bear h| Fil write to-morrow morning and tell her I love her. There! I feel better already. I do love her, and I love everybody. I’m glad Uncle Simeon called Christmas ‘the forgiving time.’ I’m glad there was a little Child who brought peace, and I love Him tonight.” The sudden happiness which filled her heart, driving out the pride and jealousy and bitterness of three long months, gave her a sweet sense of com’panionship and comfort; she went to bleep like a child who has just found its mother. The morning sun was shining, her uncle and aunt had returned, and breakfast was nearly ready, when she dressed and ran downstairs. “Did they speak? Is she alive?” were | her first questions. Her uncle knew why such interest jNVas felt in strangers, and hastened to : answer: “At first we didn’t know as | she’d recover, but we did the best we j could, and by ’n’ by the doctor got there. But before he ,came Abbott ieaned over the bed, and savs he very slow and distinct: ‘I paid the butter money .towards the hill pastur, Clor- , ind’a.’ And she sensed it. She made a desperate effort to speak, and says she: John.’ That was all, but it showed—** At this point Uncle Simeon turned to the window and looked out toward his neighbor’s in silence. “The Lord vras good to give ’em a chance to speak together again,** chirped Aunt Agatha, as she placed the coffee pot on the table. _ As soon as possible after breakfast Elizabeth sat down at her uncle’s desk in one corner of the spacious kitchen and wrote a long letter to Alice. It was such a letter as she might have written from the planet Mars, if she had been visiting that mysterious orb, for she felt possessed of “another world’s spirit.” It was a true girl’* letter, full of adjectives and exclamation points, but had she written it sitting beside the manger-cradle, it could have breathed no less selfish affection. “One day more in this year; then, will it be ‘Happy New Year* for me?** she asked herself again and again, aa she devoted herself outwardly to her friends. Her uncle knew she had written. and guessed her anxiety. “Whatever happens, you’ve prepared the way, ’Lizbeth,” said he. “I don’t believe anybody has a real happy New Year unless he ‘casts up a highway and gathers out the stones.’ **

“TABBY, I S’POSE YOU KNOW THE PUMP NEEDS FIXING.

| cause th6 forgiving time comes just before the good-resolution time. IMdn’t you ever think of it? When I think of that Baby over in Bethlehem and ail those angelis singing 'about peace, I wonder we don’t learn the lesson faster. ‘Peace on earth’ doesn’t mean just betwixt nation and nation, but betwixt families and friends first of all. We’d ought to bring our grudges and outenmities right to the manger and lex the Baby put His hand upon them. You can’t hold spite when you’re looking into a cradle. That’s the lessor I get every Christmas. Old Isaiah speaks about a Child leading us, and so I says: ‘Lead on, little Child!’ And everything in me that’s like a wolf or<* lion or a leopard or a poison reptile seems to die. Then cOmes Christmas week—time to write letters or go t< see the ones that don’t like you; and then comes New- Year’s, and theTe you are, all ready to moke good resolutions.” “But if I make them I break them,” sighed Elizabeth. “It’s likely, it’s very likely;, but that’s the only way to climb, sure’*you live. You can’t afford to throw away a ladder when you break a rung. Put in another and go ahead. But here w* be, and I’ll warrant your Aunt Agatha's got a supper that’ll make you laugh.” That night, after Elizabeth was snug ly tucked between the blankets^nc half buried in Aunt Agatha’s best feather bed, she heard a tapping at her door. “’Lizbeth,” said her uncle, “your aunt and 1 have been summoned to Mr Abbott’s. They think she’s got a stroke. We may be gone all nighu, but don’t you be a mite afraid, for we’ll lock the door and take the key.” Elizabeth’s first impulse was to spring up and follow them, but the next was to stay in the nest, ever though the loneliness was dreadful to contemplate. She heard the front door dose, and the light from their lantern flickered for a moment across her window. Then an intense stillness settled over everything. “Oh, I hope she don’t die before they apeak,” she whispered to herself. “How dreadful that would bet Wbat if Alice

The answer came on New Year*! morning. A youth rode from the village on purpose to bring it, for it bore a special delivery stamp. He had never seen one before, and waited until Elizabeth tore it off for him. She redd the first words and broke downfadaughing and crying hysterically. “Well, well, well!” ejaculated Uncle Simeon; “if she’s gone back on you—” “No, no!” Elizabeth sobbed* “she hasn’t. I’m crying because I’m so happy. Read it and you’ll see.’ He picked up the letter. It was written “vertically,” and he was not acquainted with that style of penmanship; but he soon made out: “My pr^ cious, precious Elizabeth. Forgive me* forgive me. I was to blame, and I’ve beensounhappy. I shall tell all the girls how wicked I 'was to let those wordago uncorrected when I saw they were being taken in earnest. They were only spoken in jest at first, but my J>roud, stubborn heart wouldn’t confess. How could you write first when you weren’t at fault? Will I ‘begin qll over again?* Won’t I? l*or the first time in months I look forward to a happy New Year.” “That’s the talk,” said Uncle Simeon, pausing to wipe his eyes. “You have your forgiving time, and now you’ve got your happy New Year.” — Zion’s Herald. To tke Jfew Year. Come, little boy, so fresh and new! Till you are sear and yellow, I’ll be your chum and so with you. And there’s my hand, young fellow. For just one year let us be friends In every kind of weather, ' And like two well-assorted ends May we meet well together. 'Tis yours, my lad, to make me laugh. Or cry—be sad or fearful. May you preponderate with chaff, And keep me always cheerful. Inflict on me no useless pain, Nor let me be long blue, sir. ^tnd when we part, may I remain To say good-by to you, sir. —Tom Masson, in N. Y. Ufe. A First Lesson In Saving. The first lesson for a boy to learn, in saving his money is to resist tfco hints of his sisters every tiae ha irarnn a dollar.—Atohiaon Globa