XXI.-MAXIMS TO GUIDE A YOUNG MAN.

KEEP good company or none.

Never be idle; if your hands can not be usefully employed, attend to the cultivation of your mind.

Always speak the truth.

Make few promises.

Live up to your engagements.

Have no very intimate friends.

Keep your own secrets if you have any.

When you speak to a person look him in the face.
Good company and good conversation are the very sinews

of virtue.

Good character is above all things else.

Never listen to loose or idle conversation.

You had better be poisoned in your blood than in your principles.

Your character can not be essentially injured except by

your own acts.

If

any one speaks evil of you, let your life be so virtuous that none will believe him.

Always speak and act in the presence of God.

Drink no intoxicating liquors.

Ever live, misfortune excepted, within your income. When you retire to bed think over what you have done during the day.

Never speak lightly of religion.

Make no haste to be rich, if you would prosper.

Small and steady gains give competency with tranquillity f mind.

Never play at any game.

Avoid temptation through fear that you may not withstand it.

Earn your money before you spend it.

Never run in debt, unless you see a way to get out again. Never borrow if you can possibly avoid it.

K. N. E.-15.

VALUE OF AMUSEMENTS.

THE world must be amused. It is entirely false reasoning to suppose that any human being can devote himself exclusively to labor of any description. It will not do. He must be amused. He must enjoy himself. He must laugh, sing, dance, eat, drink, and be merry. He must chat with his friends, exercise his mind in exciting gentle emotions, and his body in agreeable demonstrations of activity. The constitution of the human system demands this. It exacts a variety of influence and emotion. It will not remain in health if it can not obtain that variety. Too much merriment affects it as injuriously as too much sadness; too much relaxation is as pernicious as none at all. But to the industrious toiler, the sunshine of the heart is just as indispensable as the material sunshine is to the flower: both soon pine away and die if deprived of it.

XXII.-SHORT SELECTIONS.

AMBITION.

HE who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find

The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;

He who surpasses or subdues mankind

Must look down on the hate of those below.

Though far above the sun of glory glow,

And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow

Contending tempests on his naked head,

And thus reward the toils to which those summits led.

But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell,

And there hath been thy bane; there is a fire
And motion in the soul which will not dwell

In its own narrow being, but aspire
Beyond the fitting medium of desire;

And but once kindled, quenchless evermore, Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire

Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,

Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore,

This makes the madmen, who have made men mad By their contagion, conquerors and kings,

Founders of sects and systems, to whom add Sophists, bards, statesmen, all unquiet things Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs, And are themselves the fools to those they fool; Envied, yet not enviable! What stings

Are theirs! one breast laid open were a school Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine or rule.

-Byron.

BLUNTNESS.

THIS is some fellow,

Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb
Quite from his nature; he can't flatter, he!—

An honest man and plain, he must speak truth!

And they will take it, so; if not, he's plain.

These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness
Harbor more craft, and far corrupter ends,

Than twenty silly, ducking observants,
That stretch their duties nicely.

-Shakespeare.

BOOKS.

We never speak our deepest feelings;
Our holiest hopes have no revealings,
Save in the gleams that light the face,
Or fancies that the pen may trace.
And hence to books the heart must turn
When with unspoken thoughts we yearn,
And gather from the silent page
The just reproof, the counsel sage,
The consolation sound and true

That soothes and heals the wounded heart.

-Mrs. Hale.

XXIII.-MAGNIFICENT DISTANCES.

ASTRONOMERS estimate that some of the most distant stars, seen by Lord Rosse's telescope, give to the earth the rays of light which left them fifty thousand years ago, having taken all that time, at the rate of two hundred thousand miles, or eight times round our earth, in one second, to reach us; that the rays emitted now will not reach our solar system until another fifty thousand years have passed away. Take our earth for a central point, and one of these distant stars being due east and another due west, their distance from each other would be double this distance from the earth; or, one hundred thousand years would be consumed in the passage of rays of light from one to the other, more time than is allotted to three thousand generations of the human race. If the time so occupied is inconceivably vast, how can we form any conception of the distance? Multiply the one hundred thousand years, reduced to seconds, by two hundred thousand, and you get the distance between two such stars in miles, but the number is absolutely overwhelming.

We have only begun to look a comparatively small distance out into infinite space, or perhaps into, to us, the unlimited creation. We may imagine a million of stars placed in a straight line, each as far distant from its next as the two we have above supposed, and yet the distance between the two last extremes would be too short for a measure to measure across the vast creation, though extended over new space once in each minute, for a million years.

How vast, how infinite, that Eternal Mind which filled these unmeasurable spaces with the creations we are able to see and contemplate, and whose presence intelligently fills the entire bounds of infinite space! Whose knowledge and power are not exhausted on the grand, the sublime system of the universe, but also employed in giving and sustaining life to the myriads of the microscopic insects in all the vast

universe, without diverting his attention at any time from either the greatest or smallest object within the range of our conceptions!

How appropriate to turn our eyes from all this vastness, and look at ourselves, inhabitants of this little "dirty speck men call earth!" How diminutive the size of man's body compared with these vast distances! How short his earthly duration, when measured by the vast ages and periods involved in the creation of the universe! How contracted the capacities of his mind compared with the allembracing intelligence of that powerful mind who originated, preserves, and regulates the boundless creation! How proper to repress the swellings of pride, to thus discover our own nothingness, and how appropriate to humble ourselves before that Being, who gave and preserves our existence !

XXIV.-FORTY YEARS AGO.

I'VE wandered to the village, Tom,
I've sat beneath the tree,
Upon the school-house play-ground,
That sheltered you and me;

But none were there to greet me, Tom,
And few were left to know

Who played with us upon the green,
Just forty years ago.

The grass was just as green, Tom,
Barefooted boys at play

Were sporting, just as we did then,
With spirits just as gay.

But the master sleeps upon the hill,
Which, coated o'er with snow,
Afforded us a sliding-place,

Some forty years ago.