The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

J. YAH SUES, Editor * MUAtr, iMcHENRY. 1: 1 ILLINOIS. THE NEWS-CARRIER. "How DO yon know?" " Who toldyon so?" These words you often hear; , And then it often happens, too. This answer meets your eax: ~v-;, " A little bird has tola the tale, ' And far it spreads o'er hill and dull.* • Now let as see if this can hei • O . How can the birds find oft#so wtt&F ' d And give the news to all? Or, if they know, why need they tell? And which among the feathered tribe Must we u» keep.»«- sccrets bribe ? The busy crow ? . As all well know. *J %t" 4 He sometimes breaks the laws; - «#*- ' We ahull regret it, when he does, For he will give us cause. Though slyest of the feathered tribe, ' The crow would scorn to need a btibe;--, Not robin red; he holds his head With such an honest air, And whistles bravely at bis work, But has no time to amie,,. , 1 mind my own concerns, says. ' They're most important, all may Nor birdie blue, BO leal and true; He never heeds the weather, '• •••" But in the latest winter-days * His fellows flock together; <- ' :«,» And then, indeed, glad news they MPflf; ' . Of early buds and Dlossoming. . ,5 Might not each one beneath the st8t • Otf all the race reply, 1 If Questioned who should wear thil nan 'v "Oh no! it is not I?" • ' For there are none who, every day, . ' - Are busier at work than they. S They chatter, too, aa others do; Bat what it is about, 9 i The wisest sage in all the earth Murht puzzle to make out. : , But I'maa sure as 1 can be, They never talk of you or me. We hear " They Bay,"--oh. every day ! ; s Are 'A«V the birds, I wonder, That havesueh power with words to part The dearest friends asunder? , , Or must we search the wide world through To bring the culprits full in view? t The birds, we see, though wild and free, |£ Have something else to do; JL* And reader, don t you think the same Might well be said of you? . • It really seems to be a shame | •' That tney should always bear the blame. ^4-iCatharint 8. Boyd, iu. St. Nicholas for Match. JONCEIM A CERTAIN GAL. PRODI- time I encountered the late Noah Babbitt, journeyman printer, he struck me, as thev say on the frontier, jjfojr a loan of .two dollars. It was in the sanctum of the Commonwealth news­ paper at Topeka. He had drifted in "from his habitual wanderings only the day before, and been put on as a f" sub., V with the customary promise of J ̂ regular cases" as soon as a vacancy should occur. This particular night he was not at work; and after the last of • the loafers had gone, and while I sat . running my pencil over a delayed proof '^"hurriedly, and vexed with the heat and "the buzzing of insects about the lamp­ shade--it was a fervid August night# I ,' tenjembef, with not air enough to dis- "•tftrb the exchanges lying loosely in the j: open window--he tapped me familiarly "Ton the shoulder and said: *' Cap., that leader of yours yesterday •on the labor question was an awful good thing; you sounded the key-note, and I want to congratulate you." Thereupon we shook hands with ex­ travagant warmth, though with a reser- !*l$tion of mutual distrust, I think, and X Ihuii we fell to talking on a variety of topics, ranging from pauperism to the •-doctrine of the atonement, in that can­ did, positive and encyclopedic, but picturesque and superficial, style cbm- mon to newspaper offices the world • over. So much did the fellow interest me, that, weary as I, was with the night's work, t found myself, after two hours, still patiently listening to him, as the town clock struck four in the ^lqrning. In spite of my first instinct- ^ ilfa misgivings, he made me like him. • He seemed so frank and self-confident, so observant, so quick-witted and so heroically contented; and then, did he : fill every lull in the conversation with a| flattering reference to my editorialsP A|i, right well he knew, the calculating ( .watch, that he, too, had sounded a key-note with that introductory con­ gratulation^ But it was not until after . we had finished our talk, and I was making ready to leave him, that he tasked me--I hardly know how, it was • done so dexterously--to favor him with A "couple of dollars, till Saturday." -Of course he got it, though I needed .net be told that with the borrowing ^printer, " till Saturday," is a measure -of time that spans eternity; and then he walked with me, arm-in-arm, to the ;OJd Crow Saloon, where he would not i permit me to avoid joining him in a >glass of ale, and as I turned to go, I fsaw him hand my two-dollar bill over t J t&e bar with an air of complacence that really touched me like a personal p'ijndness. After this we were frequently togeth­ er, and came to be quite cordial, not to v ?ay -confidential, in our relations. Every *s * 'night, almost, when I was waiting for the cabalistic "30" that ended the tele­ graphic news report, or after the final % proofs had been corrected and the com- positors had "pasted their strings," he would come slipping into my room with that soft, considerate tread peculiar to * pi-inters when entering an editorial ; sanctum, and we would talk there all alone as at our first meeting, or, if the Weather was pleasant, would go forth into the night and walk the broad, ' smooth streets till the moon went down. My friend was a confirmed "banner- rite," as t^e printers term it--a care­ less, shiftless, strolling vagabond, here to-day and there to-morrow, without home or kindred, and treating life as a farce full of amusing checks and bal- ' ances, with death closing it all, at last, is a kind of unguessed conundrum. He had walked thousands of miles over the country. He always walked when lie traveled. "I get sea-sick on the *oars," he said to me once, with a grim iv smile; and toen he added, slowly and m a shrinking tone, "makes my feet sore to ride, too." During the previous year he had " made the tour of Cana- • da," as he phrased it; thenee to Bos­ ton, New York, Charleston, New Or­ leans, and up the Mississippi to St. Louis, and then across Illinois and Iowa, and finally to Topeka. He had >aot worked over e week in any one .place, nor rode a mile on the Whole Journey. "A hankerin' for scenery," was the reason he gave me for this ex­ tended ramble. And surely he had not been blind to the shifting delights of sfc 1 ipj |i» andshadnmjiwfqmal Think had opened out* before Mm like' ATfiffn- rolling picture. Nor had he failed, vagabond as he was, to note the pe­ culiar and varying traits of the differ­ ent peoples among whom his travels had led him; for he had a keen insight, and detected a flaw or a foible of char­ acter as if it had been a bourgeois let­ ter in a line of nonpareil. He was better than a book to me, since he read himself and turned his own leaves; and I grew to look forward all the day to his coming nightly visit with impatient eagerness. No doubt he lied to me many times and scandalously, for he was mortal and not wholly without egotism; but he did it, when lie deemed ft advisable, in such a large, overcoming, cliff-like way that it was almost as good as the truth. Where there is much to inter­ est, says some generous philosopher, inhere must yet be something to pardon. I Why til© boys - In the office called Trim " Old Noaii," I could never quite fiake out. Perhaps it was because he ad traveled so far and seen so much that his life seemed to them to have been projected forward, somehow, faster and farther than the years Counted. Or, it may have been that his supreme indifference to all the alert and urging elements of everyday life gave to him, in their estimation, some­ thing of the leaning and waiting spirit of one aged before hi* time. Certainly he bore no physical signs of being an ©Id man.. He stood erect, lacking even the depression of chest that is charac­ teristic of his craft; his eyes were full, elear and steady; and the slight touch ©f silver in his whiskers made his face stronger rather than weaker. He could not have been mtfre than forty ̂ he might easily _ have passed for thirty-five/ The 'oldest thing about him was his costume. That was always and conspicuously in the pathetic second childhood of decay, and always, too, out of harmony with the prevailing weather, thus appearing to have been left over from the preced­ ing season. The summer th&t 1 saw so much of him he wore a he&vy, dingy beaver-cloth coat, usually buttoned to the chin with clerical exactness-;too often, I apprehend, only to hide'Cne want of a shirt; and he declared to me with every indication of truth that a pair of brown cotton overalls had served to temper the bitter Illinois winds to his shuddering1 frame through the previous winter. "The peacock is a pretty bird," he remarked to me once, casually dis­ coursing upon this matter of apparel, " but it doesn't count; with all its gaudy feathers, it can't sing worth a cent. It looks well, but its music is the most abominable noise I ever heard-- and I have boarded in a house where they kept a melodeon," he added, with a conclusive toss of the head. » J Like most printers, "Old Noalf'tyas a good deal of a- cynic, though his cynicism was so closely wooied with a subduing sincerity that it was very difficult, frequently quite impossible; to tell where the Que lbft off and the other began. As 1 have said, he looked upon life as a play, •and he was fond of reciting Shakspefcfe's "Seven Ages" in support of this idea. "It's all right," he would argue, "as long as you don't eare.. That's 4Jhe whole secret. Ignorance ift bliss, oft­ en er than we think; it's kwbwin^ tbo much that bothers people, and if you're bothered you cantenjoy the sfcpw, don't you see? It isn't altogether un­ likely, let me tell you, that a well-be- haved dog, asleep in the sun and sure of a bone for his dinner, isn't better off than we are, With all %ur Wisdom, and all our doubts." And yet he rever­ enced wisdom, I am sure, and.respect­ ed all honest opinions, and 1 think that, away down in his heart, lurked a quiet faith in the saving power of virtue; but I doubt if he believed very much in the naked moral strength of human nature. I know he once sorely tried my patience in that regard. I was telling him how George Insley, known to us both as a hardened specimen of the printer-toper, had taken the pledge and was manfully keeping it; and after I had finished,, with the assurance that Insley had not tasted liquor for nearly six months (he subsequently shot himself, poor fel­ low!), he dropped his head a moment, and then looking up with an incredu­ lous smile, said quietly: " < £ "There was some truth in.7those •Arabian Nights' stories, tli'eh, after* allP" ' -- " -- Singularly enough, too, his skeptic cism was confinecrto his own sex; sin­ gularly, I say, for he was a man, you know, and not a womag. "It was Eve that the snake had to charm and be­ tray," he was accustomed .to put it; " Adam fell as a matter of course." This was a little sophistic, to be sure, as much of his logic was apt to be, but the.sentiment of it was so knightly that it readily won him credit among his critical fellow-printers, even at the expense of some disloyalty to their own personal sense of masculine supe­ riority. He had been in love, once in his life, this tattered prodigal,..and the venture had not been what could be called a complete success. He told me all about it, of his own accord, one restful night as we sat on the bridge at the foot of Kansas avenue, listening to the quiver of the cotton-wood foliage, and watching the river slowly gather the shadows to its tawny bosom. He was religiously sober that night, for a won­ der, and I felt that it must have been some subtle witchcraft of the at­ mosphere, rather than the few so-so remarks we had just been exchanging about Phil Reade's mar­ riage with the winsome little singer, Minnie Beals, that so suddenly drew his eyes away from the water and out into the vague perspective beyond the opposite shore, and sent his thoughts backward with a bound, as it were, to the rich days when every sky was blue to him and every sound a rapture of harmony. ' > " She was a good, solemn girl," he began, "and I think her intentions were honorable all the time. I know, n®w, that she was not handsome, for her eyes were crossed slightly; and her cheek-bones were high, and her chin had a retiring turn--the face didn't 'justify.' you understand--and her hair inclined to redness; but she was as beautiful to me, then, as a flower, and wnat we Vt& very Iloved her very dearly. I was holding ffrifYjftdi' HI000 f Quincy Herald, fn Illinois, at the time, aM " Some money every week. I was ex­ acting to be a man of family, you now. I had fixed in my own* mind tlin£# ffa&t I'arf asham of now. But it was all real to me then, I tell you. Not that I ever spoke to Isabel - pretty name, wasn't it?--about such matters. Oh, no. We were a very sensible pair of lovers, I can assure you, and our courtship was painfully correct. Thefe was none of the ' yon bright orb' nonsense about us. We weren't a bit spooney. We didn't turn the light down, nor hold each other's hands, nor say 'darling.' Not any. Once, only cioe, i put my arm arownd her valsC and "might have'M^ed her, maylbe, but' she "looked ignatelyHhito my face, and said, 'You forget,' and that^ was all there was of it. I used to wish, sometimes, that she would be a little more demonstrative--one gets tired dfonere wdPds, yoii k^m. in 'tales' kindr-rbut petlifclip-ierhaps it irOO lioffnv n o wrta ̂ waxed fat on the mere superabundance of ozone, and every q uarter-sectio n had waslbetfcer as if was. He paused and pressed his hands to his forehead, as if he feared the sweet memory would slip away from him in his talk; and 1 sat waiting for him to proceed, busying myself meanwhile with thoughts of a certain J»ne-oheek«d Juliet to whpm I had myself played Ro­ meo, an<rWhose hatf-for^ttett 4magfe his idyl had strangely restored to me there in the pensive starlight. "Well," he continued, directly, "we were very happy--too happy, Cap.--too happy, f lf there hadn't 4jeen quit# «o much of it, it .would have lasted longer, pirobablj. The titrtfa is, I#assqhappjj* that I had to do something to tone it down--to loosen the quoins, vou might say--and I took to drinking like a fish. I couldn't have helped it to save my life. Perhaps if she had acted a little warmer toward me, and I could have caressed and kissed her--been a little more ambrosial, you understand--it would have made a difference with me. But I don't know--I don't know." He relapsed into silence again, and there was only the dull fretting of the waters about the piers beneath us to disturb the stillness until, after several rnihute», he resumed--rapidly, now, And with apparent Axiety to halve dtifte With the feufrjetit: ~ 1 v "She bore with it month after month, as patiently as a nun; but she couldn't stand it always, of course, and so she told me, at last, not in anger, or blunt­ ly, but with firmness, and yet sadly, I thought, that the time had come for us to part It would havje cjhoked me to speak, even if speaking could have done any good, which it couldn't; so I simply took her hand a moment--it trembled, calm as she was--and bowing, went away." He paused once more, and I was upon the point of rising, supposing he had said all he desired to say, but he HMtiy»«ed me to remain, aod werit On taJSviug. " Altar that I lay tfck a "long tirtlfe--eight weeks, they told me--with some infernal sort of fever, and the monev I had saved went to the doctors. I pulled through, of course. 'Men have died, from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.' I don't know how it was, but when I got up again, my brain seemed to be kind of incoherent--' pied,' you ight say--and I couldn't get steady oi|t» arid feiihlly thfty Mgkn fo Miis- fer around about setadifig me to Jfck- soimlle--that's whore the crazy asy­ lum is, know. Then I braced up, and the first dark niglit 1 jumped the town, without saying a blessed word to auybody, and since then--.well, you know the i^st,' 6r a good deal of it But you didn't know--you would never have guessed if I hadn't told you-- that it was too much happiness made me what I am?" With this last ; paradox, Ira turned partially aside, and I noticed that he was fumbling about his clothes as ff in search of something--tobacco, I presumed. . Presently ne drew out from some inscrutable hiding-place an old creased atadrOf^led feather pocket- book, and"took from it a faded sprig of •ssadirrsf agwliiaadiqg-it---ta ljpe^sauli with tttal f|a|syf cynfcll Amile-i $e&:so olte$: f* There's rosemary^; thifk'9-jor 'l'em&ntfraioe. ' Pray y£u; l0£o,f re­ member." Then he told me Isabel Had given it to him once, standing by the gate, and that he had carried it through all the long years as a memento of her. When I reached it back to him, he put it a\yay again, in the wrinkle«| old pocket-book as ' tenderly as if it had been a tress of hair from the head of a dead baby, and then, "I wonder if she ever thinks pf me?" he said, quite seri­ ously, and we walked leisurely up the long * street together, neither of us speaking a word more until we came to the corner where we had to separate, and there we merely said " good­ night," and parted. I did not see him again for some time, and when, at length, he made me another visit, in the afternoon of a mellow October day, he informed me that he was about to leave the town, " Our planet is dropping into its an­ nual shadow," he said, with mock gravity, " and I must hie me away to fresh fields and pastures new. I want to commune with Nature, vou under­ stand; to touch the earth, like Antaeus; to eat haws, and smell the fall wheat; to mingle with the quails#, and bine-jays, and woodpeckers, mid all that sort of thing. Be good to yourself, Cap. Don't work too hard, arid beware of the enemy which men put in their mouths to steal away their brains. By-by." And be­ fore I had time to answer, he was out of my sight and shuffling down the stairs, leaving me in a mood that was nearer sadness than I would have cared to confess, and which, I fear, gave a d o w n c a s t t i n g e t o t h e C o m m o n w e a l t h ' s editorials for several mornings after­ ward. He returned in about two weeks, strange to say, and he solemnly assert­ ed that he had only been "looking for a homestead." He was jaded, foot­ sore, and, as usual, a little shabbier than usual as to clothing! He had read, he said, in some real-estate paper, of a locality out in primeval Kansas where corn grew wild, and live-stock geriogfoat ;mmrulaion(i «f agasfeU and he ^ had been ktintiag: for it, intending , to enter a home­ stead in it and be<i6riie a gfelltle shep­ herd. He couldn't fiad it, though; arid now he wanted a few days' work "to replenish his depleted exchequer." But, most of all, he s^id, he wanted to see the man who wrote those things he read in that paper. • The foreman found work for him in the job-room; but the next Saturday he left a^ain, without even the formality of saying good-bye to ipe. We heard of him in a few days, cracking jokes with Nobe *Prentlg of the Junction Union; then -worktag 'a week for Milt; Reynolds, of the Parsons Stm; then in. the Calaboose at Fort Scqtt, and We!) Wilder, of the Monitor, paying fines for him to keep him out of the chain-gan«j; and from Fort,Scott he swung *aronnn, abotft thfc' middle Of December. to To­ peka. : -U .ft P,. • .n "Just glided in to pay my respects," he remarked, " and to tell you I'm off for the sunny South. I like you Kan­ sas fellows ever so much, but I want to see the magnolias." • That was all he said. An hour later, happening to look from my window, I saw him moving briskly down the street which was also the State road* and, waving his hand to me, he disap­ peared. ' He came back again, with the grass Mid the birds, the following spring. He had been to Galveston, he ex­ plained, and had worked his way north through Arkansas and the Indian Ter­ ritory. Somehow the trip seemed to have disappointed htm. He talked gloomily about it* when I could get him to talk of it ^at all,s and the very thought of it appeared to cloud his spirits like the haunting of some miserable dream. Perhaps the trouble was deeper than my shallow vision discerned; perhaps it came from within, and not from without !tt all. Sometimes I thought so; but knowing him as I did, the ab­ surdity of the thing would creep in to upset such notions. And, finally, when he came to me one night, with the old, familiar, quizzical expression in his countenance, and told me he wanted to talk to me about writing an obituary for him when he should die, I felt sure that he was recovering: himself, and would soon tbiteh his natulral poise again. " I hope yon appreciate the honor I confer upon you," said he, "in select­ ing you to give me my final send-off. It's because I like your style; and 1 want you to tell just the barefooted facts about me--* nothing extenuate, nor aught set down in malice.' Don't speak of me as a ' brilliant, but erratic' fellow,.for that will simply mean that I was an awful liar. Don't say of me, 'He had his faults, as who of us has not,' because that is merely a polite way of telling that the deceased was a drunken sot > And if I die of the jim-jams, as I probably shall, don't .say it was apoplexy, or paral­ ysis, hut call it iim-jams, plain and simple; Til feel better about it if you do. I suppose there 'are a few good things you cfcn say of me. Say 'em as kindly aa possible, please, and chuck in a little Shakespeare--if you can think of something to suit. Of course vou can't say anything about where I've gone; we can't any of us figure much on that, you know--every­ thing's so mixed and uncertain over there. Genesis doses, you recollect, with a coffin." Haying thus bespoken my services, and indicated his preferences as to how the delicate task should be performed, he retired, humming to himself the breezy chorus of an old drinking song; and I thought but little, and that only in a ludicrous vein, of his singular reT quest until some days afterward, Chev came and told me he was missing. Nobody knew when, or how, or why, he had departed. Evidently, he had stolen off in the night, not wishing to speak of his plans, if he had any, for we learned on inquiry that lie had even omitted to settle with his too-indulgent landlady. But in his composing-stick, lving upon his case, he had left a line of type, which, spelled these words: "Gone West, to grow up the country." I never saw him anymore, and never heard from him -until 1 chanced OB© day upon a fugitive notice of his death. He was discovered, the paper said, frozen stiff and stark, in the February snow and ice of a Minnesota prairie. Very oddly, it was a young lady who found him--some accidental Isabel, perhaps --and they took him into the nearest town on a wood-sled, the Coroner and a few others, and then, I suppose, they dug a hole for him in the namb earth and put him away. Alas, you poor, queer, dead-and- gone prodigal, where be your gibes now? Was it fate, or but your own folly, that beckoned you to an end so pitifully desolate? Did you meet death as you had confronted life, ^ with that' unflinching eye and that placid, master­ ful smile? And did they find, I won­ der, in some whimsical recess of your ragged garments, a poverty-stricken old leather pocket-book, and a little sprig of faded cedar? Here I might stop; content ^ to let silence do the rest. But, recalling his injunction to " chuck in a little Shake­ speare," and remembering, also, his skepticism and his waywardness, I deem it only meet and fair to add in his behalf that carefully charitable pe­ tition which the great moimruh of thought puts into the King's mouth, at the death-bed of Beaufort: ^ ^ 'Teace to his soul, ifGod'sgood pl̂ ssiire Be!" --Henry King, in Scribner's Monthly. --Don't feed the tramps. If they ask for a meal send them to the wood pile and make them earn it. If they won't do that they are not very hungry. A rigid determination on the part of the people not to feed those who won't work will cure the tramping business sooner than anything else. --Dallas (Tex.) Commercial. ; --Judge Jeremiah Black has a dislike to ordering from a bill of faro when at dinner, and his usual direction 4o an attendant is, " Bring me anything that is proper for a civilized being to eat." Religious- 'THE'FTSTLX. BIBLE. t [THEfoll d'Wing imtiatiom of W ood worths w«Q- Imown lyric, "The Old Oaken Bucket," was written bearry flwrtf yean ago by the late Hon. fbomaaJBU £avd, bat l̂ws never a* far aa we know, appeared in print. Its publication now will awaken m mitny a household tender reool- lectJcjns.Qi the honie circle]: In darijfsoenea of life, when assailed by afflitr Wh^tooae /we most trusted deceive ua or WbiM ftorruw sad oare make us feel the oonvio- tion That cohort and peace mat be sought from delightfully memory traces > Tbafbratojwrdant spot in an ocean of sand, dearfaees.BW( home--with its group of Sorrojudjiurtke Bible that lay on the stand: The bra-fashioned Bible, the aoal-cheer- •' T* ^ utg Bible, family Bible that lay 011 the stand. °f fancy's portraying; The jheait is the tablet, the pencil is tenth, * l̂iaf to the mind's eye displaying mJ"6 cherished and fond recollections of youth.! Iia sweet to look back on our childhood's loved dwelling, A 5f S*t.?£¥i ""J fornitare mnged on each hand, And that blessed volume, all others excelling, family Bible that lay on the stand: 1 1 Tap.old^ashioned Bible, the soal-eheec1- The family Bible that lay on the standi To tee a loved circle in strains of devotion th« 6iw>r of food; lo_hear a dear father, with pious emotion, woe to bestow on us raiment and food, And then frou> the page of Divine, inspiration °mand >e A ,;iW s stern and unyielding de- Qrtura to the Gospel's free, kind invitation, . Contained in the'Kible that lay on the stand: ,<r Ihe.old-fa8hu»ned Bible,the soul-cheer­ ing Bible, The family Bible that lay OK tta ataad. \ Bttt ah! from this vfaion of mH wroUef+lfm* a to new scenes of collision and strife. And tind the warm glow of our early affections Impressed in the cold, heartless bustle of life! let olt may these day-dreams of love still be Riven _P° long aa we stay in this wilderness land: They solace us hete. and prepare for the Heaven - JMveahjd in the Bible that lay on the stand: The old-fashioned Bible, the soul-cheer- m ing Bible, The family Bible that lay on the stand. --Pretbyterlan Banner. lit Iftteraattonal 8unday ^heoi jUssons. •• " • • • • sHiii Uia ... QUABMEB,K-/J.... 4 iwhuo-201""-*" * e , . . . . . . . . . r g C h r o n i * : 9 - M . Moo, a);.--Be view of the Lessons for the Quarter. Now, the "Well done" is to come. He speaks it unto the conscience, and tbe fool site quietly 111 its solitary MMMMudon ta realize His approval.--8. H. Tyng. ** I WlU S01 Fall HM, SI Tkee*™ EAKi&friends^ay fail us; and IP we trust them, they will fail us- and fail us when we most need them ' But putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe. God promised JoshuA that He would not fail him, and He never did. He tried him. He allowed others to try him. He made him pray. He allowed him. to fear. But he never failed him in any struggle, but gave " him occasion and grace to appeal to Is­ rael and say, '• Ye know in your hearts, and in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed of all good things which the Lord your God spake con­ cerning you; all are come to pass unto you, aud not one thing hath failed thereof." Well, what God said to Joshua, He now says to us. He will not fail us, therefore let us implicitly trust in Him. He will not forsake us* therefore let us boldly say, " I will not fear what man can do unto me." If God will not fail, no matter who does* If God will not forsake us, we can do without the presence or help of any oi His creatures. But Sod will not fall us, therefore let us reini(win i -- J S m i t h . ."M . Progress of Christianity. i _ •, i A WHITER who is convinced' Of speedy triumph of Christianity over all idolatry and every false system of re­ ligion in the world makes the follow­ ing statements. The Christians num­ bered at the close of the centuries, 500,000 11th... ,000.000 mil. •fijOTOJ 8,000,i .10,000,1 m >,000 3d .̂1 4th..; eth............. »;ooo,ooo 7th»..<. 24,000,000 8th.... 90,000,000 9th, 40,000,000 10th. 50,000.000 18th,... 14th.... 16th... 16th.... 17th.... Mid. of 70,000, ̂80,000 19th IT is said that " God respeefeth ad­ verbs more than verbs." He cares more to have a man work well than to have him merely work. And there is one adverb that it Is God's will that we should esteem more highly than it is our custom to do, and that is the ad­ verb now. We live in the past, wp live in the future, and the present we allow to slip through our hands. Yet we are dead to the past, we are not born to the future, and the present is our only time for doing, enjoying, living. How constantly, as we go on in life and meet fresh trials and sorrows, are we disposed to exclaim, with Job, " Oh, that I were as in the months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when His candle shined upon my head, and when by His light I walked through darkness." Then I would be content and thankful. The woman, bereft of her husband, but blessed with a child, mourns over her past happiness, re­ gardless of her present sources of joy. The child is taken from her, and then she bitterly reproaches herself for past lack of resignation, and asks, " Oh, why was I so ungrateful while my child was spared to meP This new bereave­ ment is a judgment upon me for my re­ bellion." And even were every one of our nearest and dearest taken from us, should not the Christian heart exclaim, My Savior is left. He is the One whom my soul loveth, the chiefeth among ten thousand, and altogether lovely. He Will be m)r greatest joy throughout eternity, and He says to me now: "Can I suffice for Heaven, and not for earth? We must indeed think of the past to profit by the experience it has given us, to repent of our sins, and to make reparation where we have injured any­ one, but we must not let our life be in the past. We should tise the past only to live better, to live more fully in the present. As regards the future, there is a certain provision for it that is the duty of the present hour; but beyond that, we should stifle anxiety and fear as not belonging to us. We should re­ member how often we have allowed ourselves to be distracted by dread of a future difficulty or sorrow, and when the time and place were reached, lo! the heavy stone was already rolled away, and angels with blessings stood awaiting us. We may rest assured that if we do our part in the present, God will take care of the future. With us Christians, the bitterness of past days, whatever it may have been, should be both dead and buried. For is that bitterness sin? After repentance and all possible reparation for wrong­ doing, it is both a duty and a privilege to rejoice in forgiveness.--Church Jour- Ml. ° Tie Christian's BewArd. " INASMUCH as ve have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto Me." This commendation is made most sure and comprehensible. The time for His verdict is marked. It is not now* Do not be anxious to have your services recognized on this earth. You will be terribly disappointed if you do. The men who live in Christ's stead are lonely men. They bear the sins, the sorrows and the woes of the world. Only here and there is there a Lazarus, a Martha, a Mary, or a John, to share the secrets of their hearts and lives. There is only one class who have their reward now. The Master said, "I say unto you, Pharisees, ye shall have your reward." Dear friends, it is when the Master comes that our service shall be measured and rewarded. This most florious time will come, and then He eclares each act shall be personally recognized. The commendation shall come from the lips of the Great King, not from our fellow courtiers. You must not expect, Christian, to have un­ remitting love and unalloyed justice from the Church of God. You will not get it if you anticipate it. You must not expect, even from the ministry of God, unfailing justice. The desire for earthly applause is only a temptation of Satan to divert us from obedience to the Master. It is from Jesus alone that of 19th, 46̂ ,000,000 or 600,000,0 Indeed, two-thirds of the human family having already abandoned idol** try, it is more than probable that the worship of idols will nearly or quite have ceased by the close of the present century, and Christian teaching tal|i its place over all the earth. About three-fourths of the population of the earth are under Christian GOT: ernments to-day, viz--all America, adp Europe, but a small corner (Turkey),' all Northern and Northwestern Asia, and one-third of Africa, all the East and West Indies, Australia, and also most of the islands of the Pacific; and all the remaining portions of the earth, as China, Japan, Africa and the islands of the seas are being swiftly modified and molded, as to government educa­ tion and religion, by Christian Nations* which are exercising a preponderate influence over them.--ChicagoStandat An Indian Dish Manufactory. EARLY in the present iponth, Mr. N Angfcll, of tMs city. While quarry* ing about a ledge in Johuston, came upon what appears to have been ap Indian, manufactory of dishes. Let no one suppose that a building equipped with furnaces and furnished with tools has been unearthed. The Indiana who roamed over the Johnston Hill* were delightfully primitive in thejp manufacturing enterprises, as in other things. They made their dishes of soap-stone. Thdl soap-stone bed, the existence of which has hitherto been unknowh, lies between two slate ledges. When Mr. Angell's workmen uncovered the bed it was about six feet under ground. Attention was first attracted to it by finding quantities of Sulverized stone. Cart-load after cart->ad was carried away before any one had the least idea what the curious substance was. At last the workmen came upon a rock so curiously uneven as to attract attention at once. The whole surface of the rock was covered with hollows and projections. Quan­ tities of Indian hammers and axes were then discovered, and then the truth began to dawn upon the mind of the explorers. The soap-stone bed was about twenty-five feet wide, and it was cleared off as rapidly as possible for fifty or sixty feet. i In tlTe spa'ce thus cleared, one sees just how the former owners of the ®oll shaped their rude vessels. The soap- stone is quite sbft. The adjoining slate is very hard, and it oould not have been very difficult, with suita­ bly shaped pieces of slate, to cut away the soap-stone, leaving the proposed vessel solid, of course, bottom side up on the rock. Chipping under the pro­ jection thus formed, room was gained for the insertion of a wedge, by means of which the half-completed dish was split off the ledge. It then remained to hollow out the inside, which ap­ pears to have bee^ done by means of sharp stone scoops. When the spot was uncovered, & number of stone ba­ sins were lying on the bed; others had been begun and not finished, while oth­ ers still were just blocked out in th* work. The stone axes used were neat* ly all such as would fit naturally to thjt hand. There were two great stonia hammers apparently used for split­ ting off the proposed dish, when thd outside had been worked. One of the$0 hammers would weigh nearly if not quite a hundred pounds. It appears to have been hollowed out in the mid^ die, so that a withe could be bound around it and used as a handle for swingins' the great hammer. Upon noting the ledge more closely it was seen that the bed of soap-stone had been cut away--that is lowered several feet below its original height--and this, with the immense quantities of pulver- • ized rock, now known to be the soap- stone drippings, that have been carted away, shows something of the vast amount of work which nas been done at this bed. In the small space un­ covered the remains of something like 160 cuttings are to be seen.--Frovi- dence (R. L) Journal. -- --The Territorial Enterprise, of Nf* vada, says of Mark Twain, that, unless he has greatly changed since he left that paper, he will not be betrayed into the indiscretion of writing too says he always avoided would a pestilenoe. ft >*4 .vf