career.

EVILS OF HAVING ONE'S LIFE SAVED. 299

Often the future laureate of home happiness had not a place in which to lay his head with absolute assurance against ignominious expulsion. There were even times when he could not muster money enough to pay the postage of an English letter, times, too, when his landlady impounded all his worldly goods, and cheap scraps from the restaurants formed his frugal dinner.

The savage irony of Payne's fate has few parallels. The nearest that we can hastily recall are Cowper writing “John Gilpin” in a state of mental gloom bordering on madness, and Heron composing his book on "The Comforts of Human Life" in prison.

Evils of Having MORALISTS of all ages, from Solomon One's Life Saved. downward, have laid much stress on the danger of being "under obligation," and their warnings seem well founded. It is pleasant to have kindnesses done to us, but not if we are to be unceasingly reminded of them, and of the debt of gratitude we owe.

Many years ago, a friend of ours was saved from drowning by a person with whom he was slightly acquainted. Of course, he thanked his deliverer most warmly. Ever afterwards the philanthropic gentleman stuck to him like a burr. He clung to him like the Old Man of the Sea to Sinbad the sailor; he followed him to his house, dined and wined with him, borrowed money which he forgot to repay,

-in short, dogged and haunted him at every step, constantly asking favors on the plea that he had saved his life. Our friend bore this with philosophic equanimity for a long while, only now and then bemoaning his ill luck in having been pulled out of the water. At last, being asked one day, for the hundredth time or more, "Well, Jones,

you'll stand treat to-day, I suppose, saved your life, you know?" our friend lost patience, and turning upon his persecutor, he burst forth, in a voice which made the fellow's hair stand up like quills on the fretful porcupine: "Yes, sir, I will treat this time, and the last, though I've paid that debt thrice over, long ago. But, sir, mark me! if ever you catch me drowning again, for Heaven's sake let me sink, let me go, hook and line, bob and sinker; for it would have been a thousand dollars in my pocket if you had let me drown before!"

Be Good WOULD not some men be more virtuous and without more happy if they would act a little more selfa Theory. unconsciously, allow themselves to be moved more by feeling, and less by a knowledge of the causes of action? Many persons treat their virtues or their piety as Goethe says that Mendelssohn treated beauty, — they try to catch it as a butterfly, and pin it down for inspection. They succeed in the same way as they are likely to succeed with the butterfly: the poor animal trembles and struggles, and its brightest colors are gone; or if you catch it without spoiling the colors, you have at best a stiff and awkward corpse. When a child plucks up daily the bean he has planted, to see how it grows, he destroys the life he would cherish; and when men pluck up the roots of holiness or happiness to see just how they sprout, and watch the growth of the minutest bud or the unfolding of the tiniest leaf, they destroy the plants they are trying to Bees will not work under prying eyes; the bird is scared from its nest when even kindly hands disturb its eggs; trees die if their roots are laid bare; and the germs of goodness and happiness, if torn up and planted on the firm ground of scientific conviction, wither and die.

rear.

THERE are few men, even Christians, who

Old Age. do not dread old age. Why is this? As the nightingale sings most sweetly in the evening; as the woods put on their gayest and most charming aspect in the fall of the year; as the sun is most beautiful when about to sink beneath the horizon, - why should not old age, the sunset of life, be more cheerful and joyous than its meridian?

We believe it may be so, provided one has that "hope which is an anchor to the soul," and provided he is not, as the French say, désillusionné, — a sad word, by which they designate one who has worn out all his youthful ideals; who has been behind the scenes," and has seen the bare walls of the theatre, without the light and the paint, and has watched the ugly actors and the gaunt actresses by daylight. When Fontenelle at ninety was asked what inconvenience he experienced, he replied, "None but that of existence," an admission that most of the ills of old age are imaginary, and that in regard to this as to many other bugbear troubles, "the fear of ill exceeds the ill we fear."

A Bad STATES, as well as individuals, sometimes Bargain. make bad bargains, which appear to be wise strokes of policy. One of the worst trades ever made was made by France, when, after the Peace of Paris, she bought the half-savage island of Corsica, despite the intrigues of the North. Only a twelvemonth after the sale was consummated, Napoleon Bonaparte was born there, a French subject, the founder of a military despotism, which by incessant conscriptions drained France of its life-blood, perverted education to serve the cause of tyranny, converted religion into an engine of oppression, corrupted the nation's morality by successful spoliation, subjected a

proud military people to the humiliation of an armed enemy in its capital, and turned Europe backward to those ages of darkness and calamity when the only law was the sword.

The Classics in WE believe in the classics - the masEducation. ter-pieces of Greek and Latin literature as a means of culture, notwithstanding we have read a great many arguments therefor. One of these arguments is, that Greek and Latin literature was the ark in which all the world's civilization was preserved during the deluge of barbarism. True; but Noah did not think himself bound to live in the ark after the deluge had subsided, did he? When a college professor, seeking to convince Horace Greeley of the value of the classic languages as a means of culture, said: "These languages are the conduits of the literary treasures of antiquity," - the white-coated philosopher replied: "I like Croton water very well; but it doesn't follow that I should eat a yard or two of leadpipe."

Boys.

WHAT a dull, humdrum world this would be but for the wit and mischief, the drollery and mirthprovoking follies, that come with the unfailing supply of youngsters! What sayings are more original, quaint, and unique, more truly "steeped in the very brine of conceit," than those that sometimes drop from the lips of boys? How often a little spindle-shanked fellow, who has not yet vaulted into a jacket and trousers, will stagger you with a problem beyond the power of an Aristotle or a Herbert Spencer to solve! How demure and innocent, too, the sly little rogues will look all the while, just as if they had n't

the wit to quiz you, and had never dreamed that their questions were not perfectly and easily explicable! John G. Saxe, who well understood the boy's nature, says,

"If to ask questions that would puzzle Plato,

And all the schoolmen of the middle age,

If to make precepts worthy of old Cato,

Be deemed philosophy, your boy's a sage."

No wonder that Charles Lamb, when looking at the sports in the playing-fields of Eton College, thought it a pity that so many of these fine young fellows would one day become mere frivolous members of Parliament. In a similar spirit the poet Praed wishes that he —

What could be happier than the reply of a schoolboy in one of the advanced classes to the question, "What is the highest form of animal life?" "The giraffe," was the prompt response. Hardly less felicitous was the reply of another little boy, a scion of the house of Beecher, who had been rebuked for some noisy proceeding, in which his little sister had also taken part. Claiming that she also should be included in the indictment, he said: "If a boy makes too much noise, you tell him he must n't be boisterous. Well, then, when a girl makes just as much noise, you ought to tell her not to be girlsterous."

The solutions of problems in natural philosophy given by boy-scholars are sometimes very amusing. An urchin in a public school in Maine, being asked why the rainbow is circular in form, answered that "it was fixed so that