moment, it is said, to strike against a torpedo that might make an irreparable breach. How sadly again, in our own day, was Carlyle's mighty mind marred by his waspish temper and his boorishness; and how much more resplendent would have been the lustre of Ruskin's brilliant genius, had it not been obscured by his brusqueness and irritability!

If great military commanders and statesmen need to cultivate patience and imperturbability of temper, how much more so does the Christian who would win victories for Christ! If, again, "temper," as Bishop Wilson has said, "is nine tenths of Christianity," or if, as Dr. Chalmers has affirmed, "heaven is a temper, not a place," what hope of happiness or heaven can the man of excitable, fiery nature have who does not strive, by ceaseless selfdiscipline, to convert the fire into a central glow and motive-power of life, instead of suffering it to waste, or worse than waste, itself in volcanic explosions?

Getting into

WITH the advance of cool weather, perHarness. sons who have been resting from toil in the summer undergo a dreary trial, which they secretly dread for days or weeks. They have been "out at grass," and have come back to the stable. They are inwardly chafing, perhaps groaning, as they feel the harness pressing against the old places, and rubbing against old sores that had nearly healed, but now make themselves felt again, with less painful but real distinctness. In vain do they wince and fret and sigh for the idyllic retreats, the cool, shady nooks, where they forgot the "carking cares," the dreary drudgeries, the teasing vexations of their ordinary life. They know that for ten months or more they will be tread

ing in the old monotonous mill-horse round, with the old wearinesses of body and depressions of spirit; and they cannot help exclaiming, Cui bono? Is this life of routine, of never-ending drudgery, the life for which man with his fiery energies, his lofty aspirations, his consciousness of fitness for nobler things, was designed?

While such are the repinings of some returned absentees, others probably the great majority - - come home from the mountain and the sea-side feeling like "eagles newly baited," or giants refreshed with wine, rioting in the consciousness of newly-gained strength, and eager for the fray of the courts, the fight with disease, the competition of the mart, or the contest of the stock-exchange. A life all play, all rest even in the downiest nest, would be to them one of intolerable ennui. Better, a thousand times better, they think, to drudge at the grimiest toil than swing in the hammock of laziness and doze life away! Better for the horse to draw its loads, even in a chafing harness, with the zest which they give to its respites from toil, than to suffer from a ceaseless surfeit of idleness and clover!

Room to

A GOOD anecdote is told of a celebrated

Swing a Cat. English divine, that, being visited one morning in his study, he was asked by a friend,

"Doctor, why do you sit in such a little place as this? You have not room to swing a cat!"

"I do not want to swing a cat, sir," was the reply.

What volumes of philosophy are comprehended in this answer! Wisdom can teach few lessons of greater utility than not to desire what we do not or cannot possess. The true secret of happiness lies, after all, not so much in

gratifying our desires as in conforming them to our actual situation. It is the longing, restless desire to attain something out of reach that makes so many lives miserable. It is said of an ancient philosopher, that, on beholding the splendors of a great palace, he cried out, "How many things there are here that Diogenes does not want! How few persons thus distinguish between the desirable things of life and its actual needs! How many sacrifice health, ease, and happiness (all that makes life worth living), and go on all their days "piercing themselves with many sorrows, ," for the sake of riches which they cannot need and will never use, but are only heaping up, as Pope says, “to spout through a spendthrift heir!" Truly did Izaak Walton say that "there be as many miseries beyond riches as on this side of them; " yet none will believe so till they have learned by experience; and unless they have "room to swing a cat," whether they want to do so or not, all are more or less wretched.

Sincere
Milk.

A GOOD Story was told us some years ago by an eminent New York Baptist preacher, just deceased, Dr. Armitage, who was a member of the American Bible Union, and an earnest advocate of a new translation of the Scriptures. He was taking tea one evening, in a town "out West," at the house of a Baptist sister who was opposed to such a translation, and who, when he spoke of the necessity of substituting new words for certain. ones in the King James version that had become obsolete or had changed in meaning, replied that she had never found any difficulty in understanding the words of the current version, their meaning was always perfectly clear to her. The good doctor, her guest, made no

answer, turned the conversation to other topics, and byand-by said quietly: "I'll thank you, Madam, for a glass of sincere milk." The lady stared, looked puzzled, and finally, thinking she could not have understood him, begged him to repeat his request. The doctor had no sooner complied than she exclaimed, "Sincere milk! Pray, what

kind of milk is that? I don't think I've ever heard of that before." "Why, Madam," was the reply, "we read in the current version of the Bible, don't we, of the sincere milk of the word; ' and did you not say, just now, that you had no difficulty in apprehending the meaning of any of its words?"

Labor Pays.

ANOTHER distinguished preacher told us some years ago that he once spent four weeks of hard labor upon a sermon, which when preached, so far as he could see, made no impression upon his hearers. No one ever spoke to him about it, or even indirectly alluded to it, and he felt that his effort was omnis effusus labor. Not long afterwards his time was so taken up one week with other duties that Saturday night, and even Sunday morning, found him with no sermon written. Going to the church at the hour for service, he stepped into the pulpit, made a prayer, gave out a hymn, and while the choir and congregation were singing, turned over the leaves of his Bible for a text. When the time came for him to preach, he extemporized as well as he could a discourse upon a subject which he had neither chosen nor thought of till after he entered the house. When he had come down from the pulpit, two deacons approached him and expressed their profound gratification with the sermon, one of them, with a significant look, saying to the other, "Well, that sermon

cost our pastor four weeks' hard labor, at least, you may be certain; " to which the other assented. "You make me mad," said the preacher. "Why? Because we have told you how much we liked your sermon?" "The reason is this," replied the pastor. "Some time ago I did preach to you a sermon which had cost me four weeks' hard labor, and you never said a word about it. To-day I deliver an impromptu sermon, of which the subject and text were not thought of till after I entered the pulpit, and you are in raptures."

"Well, Doctor," said we, after hearing his statement, "you have had abundant compensation for the labor spent upon the first sermon. It was only because you usually took pains, and occasionally extraordinary pains, with your sermons, that you were able to edify your hearers so greatly when you preached without preparation. Had you always extemporized, you would have heard as little said. of the second sermon as was said of the first," all which the good Doctor knew as well as, and better than, we.

A Happy Few things that seem so easy are so diffiToast. cult of execution as the production of a good toast. A man may have the most brilliant abilities for any other kind of intellectual effort, he may have genius enough to write a good poem, play, novel, oration, or state paper, and yet be utterly incompetent to write a good toast. Two things are essential to a felicitous toast, brevity and point. A telling toast is always conveyed in a sentence. Two are sure to spoil it. It must be also a flash of inspiration, the fancy of the moment. Elaboration, the use of the file, midnight oil, are as fatal to it as frost to the rosebud.