or the pawnbroker sees it in his place of business, he pitches it into the street.

The world has had enough of such piety. It demands at this close of the nineteenth century a religion that has something more to show as its credentials than orthodoxy of belief and attendance on church ordinances. It demands a religion that will not sell thirty-five inches of cloth or ribbon for a yard; that will not put the best wheat in the top of the sack, the best shingles on the outside of the bunch, and all the big, sound strawberries in the top of the basket; that will not put chiccory into coffee, alum into bread, or water into milk-cans; that will not put Dent's or Jouvin's stamp on Jones's kid gloves, nor make Paris bonnets in the loft of a Boston or New York shop. The religion that commends itself to men's reason, and challenges their acceptance of it to-day, lays stress not only on "the exceeding sinfulness of sin," but on the wickedness of particular sins. It is a religion that will banish scant weights from the counter and short measures from the bin; that will not prey upon men after praying for them; that will discourage litigation; that will refuse two per cent a month on a loan to a poor man; that will pay the fare on an electric car when the conductor neglects to ask for it, and will call the cashier's attention to the mistakes of a waiter in a restaurant as well when he undercharges as when he overcharges; that will be deaf to backbiting and scandal; that will feel for the poor and the suffering in the pocket as well as in the heart, and give them loaves as well as tracts; that will have a conscience at Washington, in a committee-room, or in a caucus, as well as at home; that will be far less anxious to seem godly than to be so, and will seek not so much to do religious things as to do ordinary things in a religious spirit.

To promote such a religion, we need more preaching than we have to-day on what Robert Hall terms "particular parts of moral conduct and religious duties." "It is impossible," said he, "to give right views of them unless you dissect characters, and describe particular virtues and vices. To preach against sin in general, without descending to particulars, may lead many to complain of the evil of their hearts, while at the same time they are awfully inattentive to the evil of their conduct.”1

Common To ask a trader if the article he sells you is Absurdities. of the first quality.

To tell a man of whom you would borrow money, that you desperately need it.

To ask a man to return borrowed money to you, and expect to retain his friendship.

To think you must win a lawsuit because you have the law and evidence on your side.

Το say that you have "no leisure," instead of that you have no desire, for mental or moral improvement.

or

To tell everybody what a bright boy your "Johnny" "Tommy" is, and repeat his "dreadfully smart"

sayings.

or, "I

To say after every notable event, "I knew strongly suspected that it was going to take place." To visit a friend when you are half dead with ennui, and expect him to enjoy, or to be thankful for, a visit which he owes solely to your being tired of yourself.

To think that the great difficulty in life is to find opportunity for your talents, and not talents for the opportunity. To put salt in your soup before you have tasted it.

1 Charge to the Rev. J. K. Hall.

To make a foolish match, and then ask a friend's opinion of it.

To think that a man who has wronged you will hate you no more than if you had wronged him.

To be a Smith or a Brown, and fancy that you have a distinct individuality.

To think that flogging boys makes them smart mentally as well as corporally.

To read a newspaper article on Goethe or The World's Fair, and be surprised if it ends with a puff of a patent medicine.

Sticklers for READER, did you ever suffer from one of Exactness. those pests of society, an argumentative bore, -one of those formal, mathematically precise people who take everything literally, and don't know what a trope or figure of speech means; who insist that a mile is only a mile, a peck measure only a peck, an hour just sixty minutes, no more and no less; who insist that you shall be exact to the minutest degree, to the most infinitesimal fractions, in your affirmations? If you ever knew such an one, did you not think that of all the nuisances you had encountered in society he was the most intolerable? Let one of these formalists enter a circle of good fellows, and he chills it like an iceberg. If one of the circle tells a good story, which is brimful of fun and "sets the tables in a roar," but which is not rigidly demonstrable in all its particulars, the scrupulist will proceed with owl-like gravity to correct him, and, stating his syllogism in barbara or celarent, will prove triumphantly that there is a screw loose" in the logic, that there is a 66 non-distribution of the middle term," and that the merry gentleman is mistaken.

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An inquisitor of this stamp will reply to the remark, "Ah! that is something like," with "Like what?" and insist upon an explanation. Tell him that on a certain day "it rained pitchforks," and he will regard it as an egregious falsehood, and demonstrate to you that it is physically impossible. Or, say "it rained cats and dogs," and he will gravely acknowledge that it may have rained toads, that is well known to scientists,

dogs, never!

but cats and

In an editorial article some years ago, we compared something to "a bird's egg in size," and two of these sticklers rushed incontinently into our office and remonstrated against the extreme looseness of our statement; birds' eggs, they protested, were of all sizes, from a robin's up to those of an ostrich or condor.

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A friend of ours chancing to say that it was but a smart walk" to a certain place, he was rigidly catechised by one of these dampers about the length of a smart walk. Steeprock or Barlow," said the higgler for truth, “would do a dozen miles in an hour; whereas Daniel Lambert, with his unwieldy mass of flesh, would have regarded a single mile as exhausting."

Another gentleman happened to use the phrase, "a stone's throw off," and was at once brought up with, “It's but a stone's throw, you say; but, my dear sir, what do you call a stone's throw? Mount Vesuvius will throw you a stone a matter of thirty miles; and little David, though not so strong as Vesuvius, would throw a stone much farther than I could, witness his attack upon Goliath!" "Oh, I mean it is but a street's length off," answered the victim. "Well, but, my dear sir, streets differ in length,” rejoined the indefatigable querist; and he proceeded to illustrate

the correctness of his assumptions by citing divers examples of long and short thoroughfares.

Whip us such incorrigible matter-of-fact men!

Colored

Or all the persons, from Mrs. Malaprop Malaprops. downward, who dislocate and disguise the Queen's English, the colored men take the lead. Some years ago a white-washer of this race called upon us and asked for a job. When questioned about his skill, he replied: "Squire, I will do it in the most obnoxious manner. You'll find it perfectly obnoxious.”

The late James T. Fields once told us that an aged "darkey," whom he often passed when taking his "constitutional," used to say to him: "'Pears to me, Mr. Fields, you are a mighty predestinarian."

The late Dr. Jeremiah Chaplin, of Boston, used to tell of a colored Baptist preacher, who was ludicrously unfortunate in his use of words. One Sunday morning, after the doctor had preached to his people, the pastor prayed with great fervor that the Lord would "bless to their good the gospel that had been dispensed with that day!"

The Poet WHAT a strange, mocking destiny was that of Home. which made a man who never had a home stand for all time as home's representative poet! By turns actor, clerk, and journalist, John Howard Payne became at last a writer of plays, and entered upon a career which he henceforth persistently pursued despite the humors of a fortune that more frequently frowned than smiled. During his voluntary exile of twenty-one years he spent much time in Paris, engaged in the profitless task of adapting French dramas to the English stage. This period was perhaps the gloomiest and most trying in his vagabond