part of it which he fills with his imagination and invention. It described with great minuteness the immense numbers and size of the rats in Brazil-they grow as big as dogs, are very fierce, attacking children often, and are the dread of animals twice their size. Illustrations were given of their ferocity and great strength, and the measures adopted to reduce their numbers, if they could not be exterminated. When I asked him what was the source of his information, he said frankly he knew nothing about it, but had made it up, knowing very well it would be interesting to read, and yet nobody would care enough about it to inquire into its truth and detect the exaggeration.

"I am now writing," he continued, "another paper on 'the Cockroaches of Japan.' Do you know whether there are any in that curious country?"

My studies in natural history had not been directed that way, and I told him frankly I did not know that a cockroach had ever landed on that shore, but I had no doubt they were abundant there as here.

"Well, it don't make much difference whether there are any or not as I know their habits in this country, I shall give them many that are peculiar to Japan, where the people do everything in just the opposite way from ours: so I will make the cockroach a delightful domestic animal, which the ladies are fond of playing with as a pet, &c., you see?"

"Yes, I see, but do not greatly admire the work you are doing: a man with genius enough to invent such stuff is fit for something better, more elevating and useful, Besides, what's the difference between this and lying?"

"All the difference in the world: this is harmless and amusing: people love to read wonderful stories. Perhaps you call DeFoe a liar, and John Bunyan, and Cervantes, and Walter Scott, and Dickens: they are novelists: authors of fiction: so am I! All my stories are fiction, and, as the great authors I have named did not expect to be understood as writing actual facts, I am so much better than they that I want to be believed, and so I confine myself to what might be true but is not."

By this time we had reached Fourth Street, and the great exaggerator was obliged to leave the car, as his factory was located there, and I saw him no more. But I have since seen and heard, and read, many in the same line of business, whose habit of exaggeration is quite as large and fearful as this newspaper-man's.

Some of them are preachers. They cannot make a simple statement of truth, in language that everybody can understand, and in terms that commend themselves to the hearty confidence of the hearer. But they pile up the agony, with all their might, making terrible more terrible, and lovely so ineffably sweet that neither one nor the other is credible. In revivalists, and travelled speakers, and the sensational men generally, I observe this same habit in full flow. All their geese are swans. All their good people are angels. Even their reports of work done, souls saved, and reformations accomplished, are not in strict accordance with the facts.

Sitting on a platform last week at an anniversary meeting, while a speaker was careering splendidly along the brilliant line of his rhetoric, with a pyrotechnic display of facts and figures glorious if true, and he believed them so, a friend near by whispered to me:

'I wonder if he wouldn't discount that fifty per cent for cash!"

My friend was in the commercial line evidently, and intended to ask me if it would not be safe to take off fifty per cent, or one half of that, for the sake of sober truth-the cash.

Writers as well as public speakers draw the long bow. Even in the serious business of delineating the character of a departed friend, some persons have been known to indulge in eulogy justly liable to the suspicion of being somewhat overdrawn.

Women are not wholly exempt from this tendency to hyperbole. As a mouse is to them often more terrible than a lion, so they magnify trifles into mountains and hug their delusions as positive realities. Men and women indulge in

this habit of exaggeration until they come to believe what they say, and thus are victims of their own folly and sin. When charged with misrepresentation, they defend their bad habit and resent the suspicion of falsehood as an insult. Even when convinced of their fault they fall into it in their confession, and repeat themselves, as did the minister whose brethren rebuked him for his habit of exaggeration, and filled with shame and repentance, he cried, "Yes, brethren, I know my fault. I have tried to correct it; I have shed barrels of tears over it."

It is no excuse for this or any other bad habit to say of the offender, “It is his way." No man has a right to continue in a bad way. It is his duty, when the wrong is shown him, to repent and reform. It is just as wicked to be an exaggerator in the pulpit, on the platform, at the dinner table, as in writing for the sensational newspaper on the rats of Brazil or the cockroaches of Japan.

Dean Stanley intimated, when he was among us, that the authors of America have the reputation abroad of being given to exaggeration. I do not think the habit is American. It would be quite as easy to find examples of it in British authors, and French and German, for it is a fault of human nature that it is never content with things as they are, and always is prone to make molehills into mountains. "A plain, unvarnished tale" is more forcible and useful than the inflated style which often passes for eloquence.

And so I have been taught by my companion in the car to despise the exaggerator. When I hear him in the pulpit or out of it, I ask myself if he would not take off fifty per cent for cash.

WHEN IT RAINS, LET IT RAIN.

My father was one of the rural clergy: a country pastor. It was his habit when he went from home to exchange pulpits with a distant brother, or to attend Synod, to take with him a few sermons. For them he had a pasteboard case, into which they would slide, and travel without being folded. On one side of this case he had written in a bold hand a Latin motto, of which I may write to you hereafter, and on the other side these words. "WHEN IT RAINS, let IT RAIN."

Long before I knew what they were intended to teach, I spelled them out, and wondered what difference it made whether he let it rain or not: it was not likely that it would rain more or less because he had a will about it. But as I grew older, and perhaps a little wiser, I began to see the meaning and the value of the motto, and to lay it up in my heart and to practise it in my life. I soon found, also, that ministers have special need of the virtue it teaches in the matter of rainy Sundays. They make preparation for the pulpit, with much care, labor and hope. They have a special object perhaps in view, and are very anxious to see all their people in their places when they come with this message from the mouth of God. They rise on the Sabbath morning, and lo! the rain is descending, the floods are coming, and it is certain there will be more pews than people in church. What shall he do? The sermon is not for those who will turn out in the rain, so much as it is for those who will certainly stay at home. He is tempted to fret at the weather. The discontented missionary to Nineveh, when there was too much sun, exclaimed, “I do well to be angry," and the country pastor is ready to be angry because it rains.

Then comes up the much-argued question, "Shall I preach my sermon prepared for to-day, rain or shine, people or no people, or shall I take an old one, or preach an off-hand discourse: on the principle that anything will do for a rainy day?" The wise pastor has no invariable rule on the subject. Sometimes he does the one thing, and again he does

the other, according to circumstances. And those of his people who go to church in all weathers say, "Our minister preaches his best sermons on rainy Sundays." They do not know the secret of it, which is that they who have the heart to brave a storm, and go to the house of God, are sure to find its word and ordinances sweet to their taste, yea, sweeter than the honeycomb. Like wine on the lees well refined, it rejoices the heart.

When Dean Swift's congregation was so small as to include only the sexton and himself, he began the service, instead of "Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth,” etc., by saying, "Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture," etc. The Dean was not a very serious preacher, and with him this was a pleasantry. But many a preacher, whose audience was nearly as few as his, has preached with power and great effect, to the glory of God. The jailer was the only hearer when the gospel made him cry out, 'What shall I do?" The Great Teacher himself was willing to teach one at a time. And the minister who dismisses all thought about numbers, and just goes onward preaching the Word to many or to few, trusting in God to make it effectual to accomplish that whereunto it is sent, will, in the end, do the best work for the Master.

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My father faithfully acted upon this principle, and always let it rain without worrying himself about it. He never stopped for a storm. He said it was no part of his business to bring the people out when it rained, but he would do his whole duty in the pulpit, and they who heard and they who did not would have their respective accounts to render. This was the quiet conviction of a strong, brave man, who did not undertake to regulate the weather or to manage the affairs of the universe. He was content to do his duty, and he just did it.

The rule is as good for the people as it is for the pastor, and quite as good in all the affairs of this life of ours as it is on Sunday. How often even good people say: 'I'm so sorry it rains to-day: I would rather have it rain all the week than on Sunday." But that rain which shuts them in