Earlier text: The Daily Use of the BibleTHREE valleys of singular interest open from the higher Alps into the rich plains of Piedmont below. Through each a rapid stream or mountain torrent, fed by perpetual snows and glaciers, rushes with a varying current, and mingles at length with the stately Po. Two of the vales, Lucerna and Perouse, widen as they descend from the crags above, and melt into the general softness of the Italian scene. Lucerna, the most fertile, the most beautiful, possesses unrivaled charms. Its thick and almost perpetual foliage, its groves of mulberry trees, its woods of chestnut, the waving fields of wheat, its vineyards climbing up the mountain-side, its temperate air, its countless hamlets, its innocent and happy people, seem to rest in perfect peace beneath the shelter of the encircling Alps. It would indeed be a paradise, exclaimed the historian Leger, if it were not so near the Jesuits at Turin. San Martino, the third valley, is happily less beautiful. It is a wild ravine pierced by a fierce mountain torrent—the Germanasca. On each side of the stream the huge Alps shoot upward, and ranges of inaccessible cliffs and crags frown over the narrow vale beneath. Its climate is severe, its people hardy. In the upper part of the valley winter is almost perpetual. The snow lies for eight or nine months on the ground. The crops are scanty, the herbage faint and rare. The shrill cry of the marmot, the shriek of the eagle, alone disturb the silence of the Vaudois Sabbath; and in the clear, bright air the graceful chamois is seen leaping from peak to peak of his mountain pastures. San Martino has formed for ages the citadel of the Vaudois, the last refuge of religious freedom. Often, when the papal troops had swept over its sister valleys, filling their fairer scenery with bloodshed and desolation, the brave people of the interior vale defied the invaders. The persecutors turned in alarm from the narrow pass where every crag concealed a marksman; where huge stones were rolled upon their heads from the heights above; where every cave and rock upon the mountain-side was tenanted by a fearless garrison. Here, within the borders of Italy itself, the popes have never been able, except for one unhappy interval, to enforce their authority. Here no mass has been said, no images adored, no papal rites administered by the native Vaudois. It was here that Henry Arnaud, the hero of the valleys, redeemed his country from the tyranny of the Jesuits and Rome; and here a Christian church, founded perhaps in the apostolic age, has survived the persecutions of a thousand years. The territory of the Vaudois embraces scarcely sixteen square miles. The three valleys can never have contained a population of more than twenty thousand. In every age the manners of the people have been the same. They are tall, graceful, vigorous, a mountain race accustomed to labor or to hunt the chamois in his native crags. The women are fair and spotless; their rude but plaintive hymns are often heard resounding from the chestnut groves; their native refinement softens the apparent harshness of their frugal lives. Over the whole population of the Vaudois valleys has ever rested the charm of a spotless purity. Their fair and tranquil countenances speak only frankness and simplicity; their lives are passed in deeds of charity, in honest labors, and in unvarying self-respect. The vices and the follies, the luxury and the crime, that have swept over Europe never invaded the happy valleys, unless carried thither by the papal troops. No pride, no avarice, no fierce resentment, disturbs the peaceful Vaudois; no profanity, no crime, is heard of in this singular community. To wait upon the sick, to aid the stranger, are eagerly contended for as a privilege; compassion, even for their enemies, is the crowning excellence of this generous race. When their persecutor, Victor Amadeus II., was driven from Turin by the French, he took refuge in the valleys he had desolated, in the cottage of a Vaudois peasant. Here he lived in perfect security. The peasant might have filled his house with gold by betraying his guest; he refused; the duke escaped, and rewarded his preserver with characteristic parsimony. In the French wars of the last century, when Suwarrow was victorious among the Alps, three hundred wounded Frenchmen took shelter in the village of Bobbio. The Vaudois cared for their former persecutors as long as their scanty means allowed, and then, taking the wounded soldiers on their shoulders, carried them over the steep Alpine passes, and brought them safely to their native France. We may accept, for we cannot refute, the narrative of their early history given by the Vaudois themselves. Soon after the dawn of Christianity, they assert, their ancestors embraced the faith of St. Paul, and practiced the simple rites and usages described by Justin or Tertullian. The Scriptures became their only guide; the same belief, the same sacraments they maintain to-day, they held in the age of Constantine and Sylvester. They relate that, as the Romish church grew in power and pride, their ancestors repelled its assumptions and refused to submit to its authority; that when, in the ninth century, the use of images was enforced by superstitious popes, they, at least, never consented to become idolaters; that they never worshiped the virgin, nor bowed at an idolatrous mass. When, in the eleventh century, Rome asserted its supremacy over kings and princes, the Vaudois were its bitterest foes. The three valleys formed the theological school of Europe. The Vaudois missionaries traveled into Hungary and Bohemia, France, England, even Scotland, and aroused the people to a sense of the fearful corruption of the church. They pointed to Rome as the antichrist, the center of every abomination. They taught, in the place of the Romish innovations, the pure faith of the apostolic age. Lollard, who led the way to the reforms of Wycliffe, was a preacher from the valleys; the Albigenses of Provence, in the twelfth century, were the fruits of the Vaudois missions; Germany and Bohemia were reformed by the teachers of Piedmont; Huss and Jerome did little more than proclaim the Vaudois faith; and Luther and Calvin were only the necessary offspring of the apostolic churches of the Alps. The early pastors of the Vaudois were called barbes; and in a deep recess among the mountains, hidden from the persecutor's eye, a cave is shown where in the middle ages a throng of scholars came from different parts of Europe to study the literature of the valleys. The barbes were well qualified to teach a purer faith than that of Rome; a Vaudois poem, written about 1100, called the "Noble Lesson," still exists, and inculcates a pure morality and an apostolic creed; a catechism of the twelfth century has also been preserved; its doctrines are those of modern Protestantism. The Vaudois church had no bishop; its head was an elder, majorales, who was only a presiding officer over the younger barbes. But in that idyllic church no ambition and no strife arose, and each pastor strove only to excel his fellows in humility and in charitable deeds.—Historical Studies. Moral and Intellectual Excellence
By Sir Humphry Davy
LET no difficulties alarm you. You may be what you please. Preserve the dignity of your mind, and the purity of your moral conduct. Move straight forward to moral and intellectual excellence. Let no example induce you to violate decorum—no ridicule prevent you from guarding against sensuality and vice. Live in such a way that you can always say, The whole world may know what I am doing.—Sir Humphry Davy. From the first, Christ offered to his followers no worldly inducement. Building Christian Characters
WE cannot build Christian characters without materials. The man who worships God on the Sabbath, and the world on week days, is putting too much sand in his foundation to have his building stand many storms. LET us put away all idle and frivolous speaking, hatred, variance, wrath, and strife; walking circumspectly, redeeming the time, that when the great gathering shall be, we may hear the blessed King of kings say unto us, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."—Sel. The Gospel Needs Proclaiming
THE gospel needs to be proclaimed much more than it needs to be explained, while it needs apologies least of all. That Christian, and especially that preacher, makes a great mistake who, for fear of claiming too much for the Bible, and of failing to seem to stand in the van of modern scholarship, allows himself to declare, or even imply, that its direct and positive statements need to be qualified and allegorized. The pictorial portions of the divine revelation are apparent, and where God means to be understood as teaching through allegory, the fact is not often, if ever, hard to discern. Some good people, who themselves have no real doubt of the authority of the Bible, are doing more than they are aware of to undermine its power over others, by treating its authority as probable rather than as positive and indisputable. No preaching ever yet has been mighty in saving men, no personal Christian life ever has been powerfully promotive of holiness, which has had only a timid and apologetic confidence in the declarations of God's word.—Congregationalist. State of Religion in Europe.
At a late ministers' meeting in St. Louis, Dr. Goodell talked upon the state of religion in Europe. He said: "Europe is a vast university, where human life has reached its highest in learning and art. As to its religious condition, there are two views: First, the outside view, and, second, the inner view, which finds a hidden but real power, a true life of faith. According to the outside view, religion seems dead. The Sabbath 'has gone by the board.' It is no longer a day of religious observance. The sanctuaries are being thinly attended, especially among State churches. At the morning service in many places there is only the preacher, the clerk, the singers, and a few others. No evening service is attempted. The day is spent in feasting, riding, and theater-going. The splendor of a European Sabbath is very attractive to worldly people, and many who believe in something better are drawn into the current. "I was once in a meeting at Geneva where eighteen ministers had come together for consultation in regard to the evils of Sabbath desecration. On the table were twenty kinds of wine, and in the afternoon they all went out riding, and it was the Sabbath too. That meeting did not check the evil. In Scotland whisky is a great enemy of the day. At a hotel the proprietor would not allow anybody even to whistle, and yet all through the sacred hours of the day a steady line of men filed up to his bar and drank and drank. They are drinking the day to death everywhere. "The Bible is a rejected book. Religious training in the family is neglected. Non-chastity is very prevalent in Italy, and in Paris it is said more children are born out of wedlock than in it. Skepticism is open and outspoken; in France many Catholic priests are pronounced infidels, but keep on going through the forms, because there is occupation and maintenance in it, and because they think it good for society. But it ought to be said here that in Wales it is claimed ninety-six per cent. of the population go to church, and in Scotland fifty per cent." WHAT is the most common defect in the training of our girls? What principles of conduct are most important, and what habits most essential to the development of a useful and noble womanhood? These and other similar questions have long occupied the thoughts of anxious fathers and mothers, solicitous for the well-being of their children, and of the wisest and best minds generally throughout the length and breadth of our country. Theoretically woman has already reached the elevated sphere for which God intended her, but practically, there are many who yet sit in darkness, slaves to their own weakness, or the foolish criticism of an idle world. That there are defects in the training of girls is evident; that a remedy is needed is equally clear. Lack of physical health and vigor is painfully noticeable among the girls in our schools and colleges, where large numbers are brought together from town and country, from homes of ease and homes where hard work and self-denial reign. There is no result without some cause, and to find this cause we must go back to the first years of life. If we look among the little children, we shall find the girls as robust as the boys; that they do not remain so is largely due to the fact that parents do not realize the power that lies in their hands of forming the physical, mental, and moral characters of their children. Carpenter, in his "Mental Physiology," says: "Order and regularity should begin even with infant life; the bodily habits thus formed greatly help to shape that mechanism whose subsequent action mainly determines not only the physical, but the intellectual and moral character." The mother who does not teach her child the necessity of air and sunlight, of regularity of diet and healthful modes of dress, neglects one of the chief duties of maternity. Give the little girls plenty of outdoor exercise in all suitable weather; be not so wickedly weak as to shut the sunshine from those little hands and faces lest they lose their delicacy. Let their dress be such that every muscle can be called into action; and not only do they need the sunlight out-of-doors, but it is quite as necessary within, in sleeping-room and sitting-room, warming and purifying the whole atmosphere. The shut-up exterior and chilly interior of some houses is enough to brand with dyspepsia even the third and fourth generations. Let the habit of systematic open-air exercise be formed in childhood, and it will not be forgotten in later life. The lack of such recreation is one of the prominent defects in the training of American girls, and a great promoter of disease. Another hindrance to woman's highest physical development is her dress, which is often lacking in warmth, and almost always worn in an injurious manner. In this matter of dress we see the need of wisdom in parents; the child that is taught the necessity of light, loose clothing, properly adjusted to the body, and is made to understand some of the laws of health, does not in womanhood become a devotee to the foolish, injurious fashions which every intelligent person must denounce. We have been much interested in an article on this subject of girls, by Washington Gladden, from which we quote some of the opinions of several women of note whom he consulted in the matter. One lady, whose opportunities for observation have been great, says: "From the time the little one can totter to the mirror to see how sweet she looks in her new hat, to the hour when the bride at the altar gives more thought to the arrangement of her train and veil than to the vows she is taking upon herself, too large a share of time and thought is devoted by mothers and daughters to dress." Another says: "I have heard a vain mother say of her beautiful baby, 'I'm so glad it's a girl; I can dress her finer than I could a boy.' O woman! woman! to what depths of degradation you have sunk when you can look into the face of a child that God has given you to train for the service of earth and the glory of Heaven, and have such a thought as that find a moment's lodgment in your mind. The pity of it, that children should ever be given to such women! It is one of the inscrutable things of Providence. What can such a woman do but destroy the souls of her children?" These are not the words of ignorant nobodies, bitter because they can't dress, but the candid opinion of some of our eminent women. We would not have girls bestow no thought on dress, for we believe in becoming, tasteful attire, neatly and hygienically worn; but do not make it the all-important thing. Carry Christian principle into dress, then you need not fear its belittling influence on yourselves or others. There is also a lack of industrial training among girls, seen quite as often in families of moderate means as among the wealthy. It is a great mistake that so many girls are taught nothing about the "practical duties and serious cares" of life. "All women," says one, "should have a practical knowledge of manual labor. To know how to cook, sew, care for the sick, etc., should form a part of every thorough education. To attain to a symmetrically developed womanhood, there must be industry, thoroughness in study and work, and self-reliance in thought and act." Mothers, take a little time from the work and worry, or the fashionable idleness of your daily life, and examine the training your daughters are receiving at your hands. Remember you are stamping upon their white souls impressions which will but increase their beauty, or leave a stain which neither time nor eternity can efface. Girls, if the experience of early womanhood has shown you grave defects in your childhood's training, earnest, persistent effort will do much to remedy the evil. Be strong in thought and deed, dare to follow right and your own good sense, whether fashion thus decrees or not. —Aleph, in Christian at Work. The Home Circle.
By Josephine Canning
Do we ever stop to consider
How little a kind word may cost,
And if once the hasty word spoken,
One chance in our life we have lost? Do we ever stop to consider
All the sorrow one little word
May bring to the heart that is yearning
For the tones of love seldom heard? Do we ever stop to consider
How much sunshine is thrown away,
When we close fast the door where kindness
Knocks anew to come in each day? Do we ever stop to consider
When everything seems to go wrong,
That the fault we think is another's
Has been our own all the day long? Now, a simple rule to consider,
And one I am sure we will find,
Is to see what is the motive
For saying a word that's unkind. And if we take time to consider,
The motive, perchance, will grow small;
And I think in the end we may find
That there is no motive at all.
—Josephine Canning. The Kist and the Siller.
By Christian Union
THERE is an admirable bit of serio-comedy by Christopher North, in which the taming of the shrew is re-enacted within the precincts of a humble Scottish home. The master of the house, a cobbler, if my memory serves me right, after a long experience of slights and scolding, effectually reduces his termagant companion from unmannerly supremacy to abject submission by the simple expedient of capturing from her the "key of the kist an' the siller." Henceforth the perturbed stream of domestic life flows on without a ripple, though, alas! the suddenly emancipated serf develops into an unreasonable despot. Still there is calm, and the scepter of household authority, typified by the key, is firmly grasped by the head of the house. Observation, comparison of views, thought on the subject, will convince the observer that both the pleasure and the pain of home life are more dependent than many fancy, on the question of money. Neither husband nor wife has a right to control the key of the exchequer. It belongs to both. Community of interests in marriage, equal responsibility, mutual respect, the harmonious adjustment of reciprocal obligations, and the fine sentiment of deference and courtesy which inheres in the best civilization, forbid the debtor and creditor system in home financiering. Notwithstanding the fact, however, that a wise, fair, and clearly understood policy in pecuniary matters is, in the long run, the best economy, many persons go blundering on, year after year, hurting not themselves only, but their children and society, through their singularly short-sighted management of the money question in its bearing upon every-day life. The theory of marriage as laid down in the highest attainable manual of jurisprudence, the Bible, is that the twain, united by a sacred tie, are one flesh. The husband is to love and cherish his wife, as the Lord the church; the wife is to reverence her husband. Can human language do more to make plain the dignity and beauty of the sacred relation? Indulgence, liberality, and generosity are terms wholly inapplicable to the situation when we are speaking of the relations of husband and wife. The one does not dispense an alms; the other does not accept a charity. They are partners in the business of life. For convenience' sake, and because thus from the first hath God ordained it, it is his part to do the providing, and hers to look after the use of the provisions. He attends to the outdoor economy; she to that of the interior, economy being taken in its root-sense of systematic government. She sees, if she be like the beautiful portrait in the Proverbs, that the household is clothed in scarlet and fed on the finest of the wheat. He takes his place among the elders of the land, and goes forth from the shelter and the refuge of a happy, well-appointed home, to the strife of the stock market, or the toil of the anvil, or the desk in the counting-room. "In true marriage lies
Nor equal, nor unequal;" Yet there can be nothing but the farce of equality where the wife must account to the husband for every sixpence, and the husband, forgetful of the consideration due his wife, allows her to be fretted and worried, worn to shreds, and subject to petty mortifications, because five days out of seven she is the possessor of an empty purse. Entire openness and confidence as to the resources of the firm, a definite and exact method of keeping household accounts, and a recognition of the fact that bricks cannot be made without straw, and that a certain approximating annual expense must be proportioned to the position the family occupies in the community, would go far to bring in a millennium in American homes. Governing the Passions
By John Locke
LET not any one say that he cannot govern his passions, nor hinder them from breaking out and carrying him to action; for what a man can do before a prince or a great man, he can do alone, or in the presence of God if he will. Health and Temperance.
By J. O. Corliss
An Enemy to Christianity.
THE pastor of a certain church, reporting the condition of his congregation, through the columns of his denominational paper, said:— “I have 267 members in full connection, and 100 probationers on my charge. Sixty-seven of them use tobacco, and on making inquiry of each one, I find they have spent for that article in a year, $845. The entire membership, with the aid of the outsiders, gave the pastor and presiding elder, conference claimants, missions, church extension, and freedmen, $841. One member confessed he had during the year expended $91 for tobacco! His contributions stood thus: Missions, $1; conference claimants, $1. Another acknowledged he had spent $145 for tobacco! His contributions for church extension during this term were 66 cents.” Just think of it! A church giving a little more than $2.25 a year per member for gospel work, while a portion of the same congregation average nearly $13.00 apiece for a villainous narcotic. The whole church of 367 members pay $841 for Christianity, while less than one-fifth of their number pay $845 for tobacco! Yes, and according to the acknowledgments of some of the members, their contributions to the Lord's work decreased in proportion as their tobacco indulgence increased. Thus, one man who paid $91.00 for tobacco during the year, gave to the cause $2.00, while another, who indulged in the use of the filthy stuff to the amount of $145, contributed to the church sixty-six cents! Yet in the face of all this, some will persistently claim that it is no harm for a Christian to use tobacco. Suppose the amount paid for tobacco by the members of the church just referred to, had been put into the church treasury, the church funds would have been doubled, more extensive missionary operations might have been maintained, and who will say that those members would not have been as well, or better off without the poisonous weed? In that case, Christianity was robbed of the opportunity to do what it might, because of the waste of means for a useless article. In this light, tobacco is an enemy to the cause of God. But the above is not an isolated case. Tobacco users are almost invariably selfish. It matters not that they are professed followers of Christ; they will have their tobacco, and they will use it, even though the heathen sit in darkness by reason of their selfishness. What do such care for others' salvation? Or if they have very little religious element about them, what do they care even for the comfort or discomfort of others. To illustrate: While riding with my family on the cars in Iowa a few years ago, a representative of the rising generation came in and took a seat nearly opposite to us. He was soon puffing vigorously at a vile cigar. My wife, being in delicate health, was soon overcome by its nauseating fumes. When I ventured to remind the young man that his tobacco smoke was quite offensive to the ladies, and requested him to seek the smoking-car to enjoy the remainder of his cigar, a more indignant person I never saw. He said I had grossly insulted him, and he demanded satisfaction. All he wanted, he said, was to get me out alone and he would fix me. I appealed to the conductor, and was troubled no more with him or other smokers during the day's journey. This is a fair sample of what the use of tobacco will do. To start with, this young man was probably no worse than the average; but his habit had so enslaved him that his manly qualities were nearly gone, and he was transformed into a selfish, brutal creature. Step by step he had gone to that point where his sensibilities were blunted, and he thus placed himself where it was nearly impossible for him to appreciate those things which pertain to refinement and Christianity. Tobacco does the same thing in a measure for every one who falls under its power, and is, therefore, an enemy to Christianity. J. O. CORLISS. Is It Right?
By Rural New Yorker
A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD boy writes us that, wanting a little money that should be all his own, he bought a pig last spring with his saved-up pennies and managed to buy enough mill feed to keep it growing all summer, and last fall he earned the corn to fatten it by husking nights for every eighth bushel. He has just sold the pig for twenty dollars, and his father took the money, saying the boy had no use for it, and that he would give him another pig in the spring. The boy asks was that right? We wish we could say, No, so loud that every father in America could hear. Legally, no doubt, the father had a right to the money, but morally he had no more right to it than he would have to any other boy's money. That boy had worked full hours for his father and had taken time from his sleep to earn the corn that made that pig, and it was theft for that father to take the money. Not only this, but the father who would so treat his boy, is as nearly a fool as would be he who should give a young colt its first lesson in harness hitched to a stump or an immovable load. A few such lessons crush the ambition all out of a boy or colt either, and while no one so treats an animal, the whole country is full of such examples with the boys. We know a hundred such fathers. They seem to think that the boys have no rights that their fathers are bound to respect, that the entire end and aim of boyhood is to add a few dollars to their wealth, and when the boys, utterly disgusted, leave home, they wonder why their boys take no interest in the farm. Nothing pays better than to encourage the boys—except to teach them honesty, and this you can't do by defrauding them—and nothing so encourages one to thought and care in his work, as a pecuniary interest. Don't fail, therefore, to give the boys a direct interest in something on the farm, and then see to it, as you would prize their integrity, that you deal honestly by them in dividing the profits. With how much more complacency will you leave, when you come to die, a full-grown, honest, prosperous man—your son—than a paltry bank account! Deal justly, deal liberally, deal encouragingly, with the boys.—Rural New Yorker. A SILVER RULE.—You all know the golden rule: "Do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you." Here is a rule which is almost a part of the golden rule, but which we will put by itself, and because of its value call it the silver rule: "Think and say all you can of the good qualities of others; keep silent and forget concerning their bad qualities." FASHION not only tortures her votaries, but also commands them to make themselves ridiculous and hideous. One is surprised to see the pains people take, not only to ruin their health but also to make themselves positively ugly. A girl will go about all day with her hair tied, twisted, and puckered, and pinned upon her forehead, looking like a perfect fright, for the sake of having the privilege at night of combing her tresses in kinky waves, or brushing them down in her eyes in the shape of contemptible frizzes; thus appearing like a guy all the morning, for the sake of looking like a chimpanzee at night; and losing the respect of those who know her best, for the sake of attracting the attention of those who never saw her before, and may never wish to see her again. I desire therefore "that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array, but, which becometh women professing godliness, with good works." 1 Tim. 2 : 9, 10.—Sel. Work: The Best Cure for Sleeplessness
JOHN B. GOUGH says that work is the best cure for sleeplessness. He relates that the celebrated Lyman Beecher used to keep a wagon-load of sand in the cellar, and after his evening sermon he used to go down and shovel it from one side to the other. The vigorous exercise coaxed the blood away from his brain into his muscles, so he was prepared for healthful and refreshing sleep. Sometimes, when unusually wide-awake, the old gentleman would take down his violin, and work himself into a sleepy mood by amateur fiddling. The narrator does not mention the effect of the fiddling upon the other members of the household. “Amateur fiddling” does not usually exert the most somniferous influence imaginable. The exercise prescription we can indorse without qualification. The persuasive effects of fiddling upon the sleepy god, Morpheus, would probably depend upon circumstances.—Good Health. IN contrasting evils which are merely local, with intemperance, and giving reasons why the liquor traffic should be prohibited, the Toledo (Ohio) Blade says:— “However rum is quite another thing. Its ravages are felt quite as much in the homes in the country as in the dwellings in the cities. There is not a hamlet too small for it; there is not a farm so remote from the highways of trade, but what its cold finger reaches. The brewer and distiller have been for years pushing out their infernal wares, with a persistency born of avarice, and wherever man is they have their customers. There is scarcely a family in the country that does not mourn a rum murder; there is no community that has not its tale of shame, sorrow, and distress, caused directly by rum. Men of the greatest intellect, and men of the lower grades have alike fallen into the hands of the rum-maker and seller, and suffered from the domination of the appetite they have carefully fostered. “It needs no argument to convince any one not interested in the profits of the horrible traffic, of its enmity to the human race; it needs no special pleading to convince any one of the necessity of doing something to stay its murderous hand. This necessity comes home to every father, every mother, every brother, and every sister in the land. “Every method has been tried to stay its ravages, and all of them have failed—but one. Licensing the sale of liquor has never affected the evil a particle. It has in some cases confined its ravages, but, in fact, it has added to its power for evil. The licensed rum-shop has the sanction of the law, and therefore a sort of respectability, which enables it to draw within its serpent-like embrace the better classes, while the lower grades of men find no difficulty in getting their supplies illicitly. To license, no matter how high the license, is to confine the curse to fewer channels, but it increases the volume of the destroying streams. “Moral suasion has accomplished some good, but what can the platform, the press, and the pulpit do against the personal efforts of the unnumbered thousands whose business it is to seduce the young and thoughtless? What can moral suasion do for the young man or boy who has the devil's agencies constantly at his elbow? “There is but one way, and that is absolute prohibition. It is a disease which admits of no milder treatment than extirpation. Prohibition has accomplished its work wherever it has been tried, and everything else has failed.” —Coal has been discovered at Gila Bend, Arizona.
—Prince Bismarck was seventy years old last Sunday.
—Maine catches about 15,000,000 pounds of lobsters a year.
—There was no Indian outbreak in the United States in 1884.
—The Canadian Parliament has passed a Chinese Restriction Bill.
—During February 11,019 immigrants arrived in the United States.
—Ex-President Arthur is going to spend the coming summer in Europe.
—March 25 a theater and a Catholic church were burned at Buffalo, N. Y.
—Ex-President Hayes lately gave $6,000 to a church in Fremont, Ohio.
—The estimated wool-clip the coming season in Oregon is 8,000,000 pounds.
—Two men were killed by the explosion of gas in a mine near Tucson, A. T., March 26.
—1,300 new buildings, worth about $4,000,000, were erected in Washington City last year.
—Revolutions are frequent in Panama. That State now has the fourth president since Jan. 1.
—The U. S. Supreme Court has sustained the constitutionality of the Edmunds Act, against polygamy.
—The steamer Mark Twain exploded her boilers near Memphis, Tenn., March 27, killing five men and wounding three others.
—The Northern Pacific Railroad Company is going to bore a tunnel 9,000 feet long, through the Cascade Mountains towards Puget Sound.
—Two army corps of 25,000 men each, with a reserve of 10,000, have been gathered in India to watch the British frontier in Afghanistan.
—The Windsor Hotel, at Randolph, Mass., was badly damaged by dynamite last Friday morning. Striking shoemakers, it is supposed, did the work.
—There is a rebellion of half-breeds and Indians at Prince Albert, British Columbia. Fifteen of the mounted police were killed in an engagement, March 24.
—It is stated that, according to a recent census, the number of houses in Corea is 2,355,499; the number of male inhabitants, 5,322,633, and of females, 5,196,300.
—Dynamite was placed under the skating rink at Girardsville, Penn., Saturday night, March 28, and its explosion tore out one side of the building. No one was hurt.
—Prince John, of Lichtenstein, Germany, returned the last quarter's rent to his tenants, who had suffered greatly from their poor crops. This generous act cost him about $500,000.
—In the Soudan, a battle was fought, March 22, in which, of the British forces, six officers and ninety-four men were killed, six officers and 136 men were wounded, and one officer and seventy men were reported missing.
—W. W. Corcoran, of Washington, has given for public purposes not less than $3,000,000, besides $1,000,000 devoted to charities, and he has left at least $10,000,000, as he is the largest real estate owner in Washington.
—In New York City, from Jan. 1 to March 15, there were 1,152 deaths from pneumonia, and in Boston, 279. In Washington there were 64 during the month of February. It is still prevalent in most Eastern cities.
—The N. Y. Independent mentions a town that placed the liquor license at $100,000; and says that that town has no saloon, and so far has had no application. Why can't more towns do that way, at least till prohibition can be obtained?
—President Cleveland has appointed the following foreign ministers: To England, E. J. Phelps, of Vermont; to Germany, G. H. Pendleton, of Ohio; to France, R. M. McLane, of Maryland; to Mexico, H. R. Jackson, of Georgia; to Turkey, S. S. Cox, of New York.
—March 26 the queen sent a message to the House of Commons, calling out the army reserves and the militia. Accordingly the War Office issued a call for 53,000 reserves and 140,000 militia. This increases the army to 585,200 men. An order has also been issued for the immediate supply of 5,000,000 cartridges.223
—Russia is about to erect a monster bridge between Cronstadt and the mainland toward St. Petersburg. It is to be five miles long, resting on granite piers.
—The distress in West Virginia for want of food is terrible. The unprecedented drought left nothing to eat in some counties, for either man or beast, and the help afforded has not yet been sufficient to give much relief.
—The rumors of war between Russia and England assume ugly proportions. From the most reliable reports there does not seem to be much ground between them for war, but England is doubtless making large preparations.
—The latest official census of Japan gives a total population of 37,442,966, of whom 18,492,807 are females, being but 457,352 less than the males. The number of houses in the empire is stated at 7,674,224, being an average of five persons to a dwelling.
—The French are not having it all pleasant in China. They have met with reverses, and their prospects at present are not bright. Their force is altogether insufficient to cope with the legions of men massed against them. In France much complaint is made of the ministry.
—Dr. Knapp, professor of ophthalmology in the University of New York, in a recent lecture in San Francisco, speaking of the anæsthetic properties of cocaine said that "in a recent operation for a patient suffering acute neuralgic pains in the eye, cocaine was applied, a delicate spear-head knife was plunged into the eye-ball and withdrawn; a suction-cup was applied over the wound thus made and some pus withdrawn from a sac in the eye which the knife had punctured, and all the while the patient, mentally fully conscious, chatted pleasantly with the operator, as insensible of the operation as though it were being performed on his hat-band."