It was by his beard that the same Joab took Amasa, when he plunged a poniard into his body, a powerful argument for shaving.

Barbers are not only witty themselves, but they are often the cause of wit in other men. Thus Martial, the Roman poet, in speaking of a lazy tonsor of his time, complains that while he is tediously scraping the face of a customer another beard grows out,

Are barbers so called because, all the world over, they are not barbarous? The patience and forbearance of barbers under provocation, considering that they so often hold men's lives in their fingers, are eminently noteworthy. Alfieri, the Italian dramatist, was so nervously sensitive that if, when his face was under the razor, one hair was pulled a little tighter than the rest, he would fly into a paroxysm of rage, draw his sword, and threaten to destroy the offender; yet such was his confidence in his barber that he would the next moment submit his throat again to the razor! Who does not admire the bold yet calm and dignified reply of a barber to a pimple-faced man, who with a loaded pistol in his hand compelled the tonsor to shave his beard, at the same time declaring that if the barber cut him in a single place he would instantly blow out his brains. After the barber had successfully accomplished the difficult and dangerous task, the man was asked whether he had not been terrified during the operation. "No, sir," he replied; for I had made up my mind the moment I drew blood to cut your throat.”

Legal Niceties.

WE hear a great deal to-day about the hairsplittings of theology, but can they compare with those of the law? Lord Lyndhurst won his legal spurs by getting an indictment against his clients quashed, which described them as "proprietors of a silk and cotton lace manufactory," when, in fact, as he shrewdly objected, they were manufacturers of silk lace and of cotton lace, not of lace made of a mixture of silk and cotton.

a va

A widow's debtor in London, who had been arrested as he was clandestinely embarking in a ship for India, was discharged because in the copy of a writ of capias which was served upon him a single letter was omitted. In the original writ the words were "Sheriffs of London," in the copy"Sheriff of London" had been used, riance adjudged to be fatal. An eminent London conveyancer accidentally omitted one word in drawing a will, and thereby deprived a lady (the intended devisee) of estates yielding an income of $70,000 a year. It is reported that by the improper use of the one word "thereof " in a recent will at Pittsburg, Pa., the sum of $100,000 will be diverted from the intended legatee of the testator.

To say of an attorney that "he is no more a lawyer than the devil," or that he is "a daffa-down-dilly," is actionable; but whether to say "He hath no more law than the man in the moon" is doubtful, - for the law contemplates the possibility of there being a man in the moon, and he a sound lawyer. You may say with impunity of a man that "he is a great rogue, and deserves to be hanged as well as G., who was hanged at Newgate," because this is a mere expression of opinion, and perhaps you may think that G. did not deserve hanging.1 Again,

1 T. Jones, 157.

to say of an attorney that "he has no more brains than a goose" is not actionable, according to that old legal luminary, Lord Coke. Quære: the reason of this distinction? Is it that the latter statements discredit the man only, while the first asperses his professional ability? It is hard to see how a lawyer can be worth retaining who can reply to the opposing counsel only by a hiss.

A singular law-case came recently for adjudication before a county court in Iowa. A tenant for years saw a meteorite fall on land that had been leased to him, and immediately dug it up and sold it. In conformity with a decision of a lower court in Iowa, in 1875, in which a meteorite that fell on a highway was adjudged to belong to the owner of the fee and not to the finder, the landlord in the first-mentioned case, who claimed the meteorite, won the suit. But, quære: if the meteorite was the property of the landlord, should he not have been liable for damages if, in its fall, it had smashed his tenant's house or skull?

A novel mode of proof was allowed in the New York Court of Common Pleas recently. In a suit brought to recover five hundred dollars paid for a violin, Edward Mollenhauer played on the instrument before experts while the court was taking a recess. After the recess he testified that in his opinion the violin was worth six hundred dollars.

Religion for

EVERY great writer has some defect, and the Times. the admirer of Milton will acknowledge that his one evident lack - his one hopeless, irremediable want in literature and life-is humor. Yet there is one passage in his prose writings which is a startling exception to the almost universal gravity of his style. In that gorgeous

"Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing," the "Areopagitica," he gives us a masterly portrait, which

is at the same time a scathing satire, of a kind of pietist of his time that is only too common in our own day. A wealthy man, addicted to his pleasure and his profits, would fain have the name, he says, to be religious; but he finds the practice of piety to be so troublesome that he resolves to give over toiling, and to find some factor to whose care and credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs, some divine of note and estimation that may be. "To him he adheres; resigns the whole warehouse of his religion, with all its locks and keys, into his custody; indeed, makes the very person of that man his religion, and esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and commendatory of his own piety. So that a man may say his religion is now no more with himself, but is become a dividual movable, and goes and comes near him, according as that good man frequents the house. He entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him; his religion comes home at night, prays, is liberally supped, and sumptuously laid to sleep, rises, is saluted; and, after the malmsey or some well-spiced beverage, and better breakfasted than he whose morning appetite would gladly have fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop, trading all day without his religion."

This keen sarcasm which extorts from Dr. Richard Garnett, Milton's latest and in many respects ablest biographer, the acknowledgment, "Surely as ever Saul was among the prophets, behold Milton among the wits!" has lost little of its edge or point in the lapse of two cen

turies. The picture portrays a certain class of religious persons of our day as vividly as if painted but yesterday. The clergy are no longer the keepers of men's consciences; men no longer bow to authority as they did in Milton's time, and "resign the whole warehouse of their religion, with all its locks and keys," into a priest's custody,but they too often now as then find the investigation of religious doctrines as well as the practice of piety to be "troublesome," and leave both to their pastor. Religion, now, as then, is too often made a distinct engagement from the ordinary pursuits of life. Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, used to complain that while he could get religious subjects treated in a masterly way, he could not get common subjects treated in a religious spirit. So with religion itself: we are ready to give it a day wholly to itself, but make it too often a stranger to the other six. As Emerson somewhere says, religion is not invited to eat, drink, or sleep with us, or to make or divide an estate, but is a holiday guest; we confine it to churches and the closet, and do not think of taking it with us to the shop, the bank, or the social circle. Piety does not permeate, inform, and color all the acts of a man's life, but is cultivated per se, as a branch of the whole duty to man; it is put on and off with the Sunday clothes. Business is not regarded as religion; religion does not furnish the motive to business.

Godliness is not

a sort of enclosure,

so much a life as a specific part of it, railed off from the entire surface of existence, for the cultivation of virtues that will not flourish elsewhere. God's law is not allowed to enter the broker's or banker's shop, or the office of the lawyer or the politician; it belongs to the church and Sunday. If the merchant spies it in his store, he throws it over the counter; if the note-discounter