'Thou'rt wrong, my friend, said king Hal, And tell me now what makes thee sing, While I am sad, though I am King, The miller smiled and doffed his cap- 'I love my wife, I love my friend, I owe no penny I cannot pay, I thank the river Dee, That turns the mill, that grinds the corn, "Friend,' said Hal, and sighed the while, But, say no more, if thou'dst be true, Thy manly cap is worth my crown, Such men as thou art England's boast, "THE LOVED AND LOST." The loved and lost! why do we call them lost? God's unseen angel o'er our pathway crossed, Straightway relieved them from life's weary load. And this we call a loss. O, selfish hearts! O, selfish sorrow! Let us look around some argument to borrow, Why we in patience should await the morrow, That surely must succeed this night of death. They are lost. They are within the door That shuts out death and every hurtful thing In their Redeemer's presence evermore, And God's Himself their Lord, and Judge, and King. Ah! look around this dreary, desert path? What thorns and thistles wheresoever we turn! What love, what fear, what joy, what wrath! They have escaped from these, and lo! we mourn. · THE STUDENT'S TRICK. A young man of eighteen or twenty, student in a university, took a walk one day with a professor, who was commonly called the student's friend, such was his kindness to the young men whom it was his office to instruct. While they were walking together, and the professor was seeking to lead the conversation to grave subjects, they saw a pair of old shoes lying in their path, which they supposed to belong to a poor man who was at work close by, and who had nearly finished his day's work. The young student turned to the professor, saying: "Let us play the man a trick; we will hide his shoes, and conceal ourselves behind these bushes, and watch to see his perplexity when he cannot find them." "My dear friend," answered the professor, "we must never amuse ourselves at the expense of the poor. But you are rich, and you may give yourself a much greater pleasure. Put a dollar in each shoe, and then we will hide ourselves." The student did so. and then placed himself with the professor behind the bushes close by, through which they could easily watch the laborer, and see whatever wonder or joy he might express. The poor man soon finished his work, and came across the field to the path where he had left his coat and shoes. While he put on his coat, he slipped one foot into one of his shoes; but feeling something hard, he stooped down and found the dollar. Astonishment and wonder were seen on his countenance; he gazed upon the dollar, turned it around, and looked around him on all sides, but could see no one. Now he put the money in his pocket and proceeded to put on the other shoe; but how great was his astonishment when he found the other dollar! His feelings overcame him; he fell upon his knees, looked up to heaven and uttered aloud a fervent thanksgiving, in which he spoke of his wife, sick and helpless, and his children without bread, whom this timely bounty, from some unknown hand, would save from perishing. The young man stood there deeply affected, and tears filled his eyes. Now," said the professor, "are you not much better pleased than if you had played your intended trick? "O, dearest sir," answered the youth, "you have taught me a lesson now that I shall never forget I feel now the truth of the words which I never before understood: "It is better to give than receive." THE KALEIDOSCOPE. "What is it? JUJUBE. Where does it come from? What is it made of?" I think five hundred times I have heard these and similar questions asked about the pleasant, palatable paste used in confections and pectoral compounds; and doubtless there are hundreds of thousands of people somewhat familiar with the commercial jujube paste of all civilized countries, who have no more definite idea of what it is made of, than a Hottentot has of a hymn book. This universal ignorance of jujube, and the tree that produces the genuine material, is scarcely creditable to us, who grow so many thousand tons of noxious tobacco, and make so many million gallons of murderous rum. In reply to the question, what is jujube paste made of, I have to reply, that three-fifths of all we buy and use as pure jujube is a compound of poor gum Arabic, damaged flour, and cheap sugar, tinted with some villanous chemical liquid. The little pure jujube paste we get is made from the fruit of the jujube tree-(Rhamnus Zizyphus) a common East Indian tree, or, more generally, a large shrub, growing also in the majority of the islands of Japan, and on the continent, hardy and abundantly fruitful in all the northern mountains of China, and North into Tartary, where the winter cold is so intense that no other fruit trees exist. The tree resembles most in appearance and habits of growth, the honey locusts of the United States, while the fruit is very like in size, shape and color, our smaller purplish damson plums, with a pit something similar, only smaller in proportion, rounder and more pointed. Eaten when quite ripe, the fruit has a pleasant taste, and slightly aromatic flavor. From the setting of the blossom to maturity, the fruit requires about three and a half months, though two or three pretty sharp frosts, either on the flowers or ripe fruit, does not appear to injure it. The paste is easily made, exactly as the housewife manufactures marmalade from pears, or other fruit, simply by stewing, straining and boiling down at a very low heat. There are a few of the jujube trees growing and bearing fruit in the United States, but considering that it will thrive and bear fruit wherever the apple, peach or pear will, and in some places where they will not; and considering also the very many purposes in confections and cookery to which it may be applied, as well as its valuable medicinal properties, a great many thousands of our people who have gardens ought to cultivate the jujube tree. COSMO. MONEY. What a very monster is money! What monsters both the possession, determination to obtain, and greed for money, makes of mortals! With coffers crammed to repletion, the heart of the money-king becomes callous-cold as the northern iceberg-hard as the quartz rock, whence the particles of gold are only crushed out by the power of resistless engines. Money makes very barbarians of the best of us by times. How often the greedy heart dictates, and the grudging hand gives to starving indigence the pittance so paltry that decency is outraged, and begging itself insulted! Money lays its cold, grasping hand upon the heart, chilling it into ice, hardening it into very flint; and the son or daughter thus possessed of a money devil, mercilessly kills by cruelty-neglect and absolute starvation it may be the aged and infirm parent, who has nurtured and nursed them through infancy, educated and taught them to acquire wealth-perhaps endowed them with fortunes that they deny them the veriest pittance of. Money-the contemptible "thirty pieces of silver"-made a disciple of the Son of God a murderer-betrayed the Saviour of mankind to a shameful death upon the cross. Money has made millions of Judases since that day, and will make millions more. We fight, beg, plunder, steal, starve, work, slave, die, and do all wicked things for money. Some one said one day, and whoever he was, no one ever said a truer thing:-"This madness for money is the lowest and meanest of all the human passions. It is the insatiate Moloch of the human heart, before whose remorseless altar all the better attributes of humanity are sacrificed. It makes merchandise of all that is sacred in human affections, and even traffics in the awful solemnities of the Eternal." MADELINE. WOMEN OF THE BIBLE. Among all our millions of books, new and old, and in the languages of all nations, the Bible stands stark alone, an unprejudiced exponent of woman's true character. There only we find woman depicted as God himself designed woman to be-not as the fine lady, patroness of fashion, proud as the feminine field marshal of le bon ton, the painted, perfumed, lace-bedizened female fop, worthless as a woman, and wofully miscalculated for any thing else; not as the persistent agitator, claiming the right to make herself as a man, or more than that, supremely ridiculous-not as the glib-tongued, petticoated politician, losing all sense of delicacy and decency in vituperous declamation before applauding vagabonds. We have no such women in the Bible. Wicked women there are certainly-a few that the Bible tells us of— women wise in their wickedness mostly. I have read in the Bible of but few wicked women-fools. Lot's wife, and two or three others, were women of that sort. Among the historical female names conspicuous in the Old Testament, we have those of Rebecca, Sarah, Miriam, Judith, Esther, Ruth and Deborah; each occupying her place, fulfilling an important mission on the grand dramatic stage of Bible history, modest, gentle, firm and womanly; consistent and feminine always, never seeking to glare and dazzle with the splendor of the meridian sun-never immodest, vulgar brawlers, prattling politicians, prating absurd nonsense: but content to shine in their true spheres, man's brightest, most beautiful stars, casting their mild, modest radiance over his morning, and shedding their pure effulgence upon his evening of life. Coming down to New Testament times, we find women still the samemother, wife or sister-ever loving, kind and good; combining all that is lovely and lovable in the character of woman. From Mary the blessedmother of the Son of God, back through all historic ages to Eve, the mo ther of all living, we find woman as we could love her best-nowhere the blatant exponent of monstrous isms, silly flippant politicians, or gilded butterflies, as worthless as the ephemeral moth they best represent. SNEERERS. COSMO. Nothing else in this world pertaining to humanity is so utterly contemptible as contempt itself. That man or woman who falls into the silly practice of sneering at others, whether better, worse, higher, lower, richer or poorer than themselves, treads a dangerous path, and becomes a target of universal contempt themselves. Self-conceit is the foul seed from which springs all the poor crop of pharisaical foolishness that so much curses society. The self-conceited purist, who affects to look upon his fellow-man, whatever his social, moral or intellectual status may happen to be, with contempt, saying, "Go, poor fool, I am better than you," is himself the poorest fool, and most an object of contempt. Sneering is the most unprofitable of all callings-an investment that pays a usurious rate of interest, but invariably in the basest coin. The habitual sneerer carries on a continual war against public opinion in which he is certain to become the vanquished party eventually, though his egotism may sustain him stoutly for awhile. MADELINE. FISH FOOD. A pity it is, that some eloquent 1866 or '67 Peter the Hermit, or some other Peter, or Paul, or John, or any man with power to persuade, would not preach a crusade against meat-meat everlastingly meat as food, and ten times more fish in its stead. There would be fewer funerals, and many more healthy men and women in our country. The average annual percentage of deaths in London, with all its poverty, filth and degradation, is far below that of any of our large American cities. Look at the Londoners' fish bill of fare per annum:-200,000,000 haddock, 50,000,000 herrings, 40,000,000 plaice, 1,000,000,000 shell fish, 100,000,000 soles, 30,000,000 mackerel, 5,000,000 fresh cod, 4,600,000 dried cod, and lobsters in season at the rate of 30,000 daily. Besides these, there is a considerable consumption of salmon, smelts, bass, and other fish of which no statistical account is given. In all fishing villages, towns and communities every where, where fish is eaten ten times more than meat, the inhabitants are healthy, hardy and robust, capable of undergoing more hardships than habitual meat eaters, and free from many diseases that afflict them. COSMOS. GROWLERS. A needless nuisance that ought to be abated-a pest to society and themselves are the race of growlers who are everlastingly carping, scolding, fretting, snarling, and finding fault with every body and any thing they come in contact with, and forty thousand things imaginable and unimaginable, that they do not. With the constitutional growler, there is no peace. Every trifle offends him, and going into a growl, he manages to make war on every object he can see, hear, feel, taste, smell or think of, rendering himself, and all things animate within the circle of his baleful influence, as miserable as possible. |