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We have consulted a Friend who has given much attention to the history of the meeting and grounds at 4th and Arch Sts. He writes thus:

"I have never fallen in with any evidence of there being a meeting-house on the Arch Street grave-yard lot, earlier than the present one, which was built,-that is the centre and east wing,—in 1804, and finished and occupied in 1805. The west wing was first occupied in the Fourth month, 1811.

"As early as 1738 there are indications that a school-house stood upon some part of the lot, apparently on Fourth street, near the southern line, but the references to it are so vague that I have never been able to arrive at any positive conclusion about this."

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"THE RIDDLE OF THINGS THAT ARE."

We walk in a world where no man reads
The riddle of things that are,

From a tiny fern in the valley's heart

To the light of the largest star,

Yet we know that the pressure of Life is hard
And the silence of Death is deep,
As we fall and rise on the tangled way
That leads to the gate of Sleep.

We know that the problems of Sin and Pain,
And the passions that lead to crime,
Are the mysteries locked from age to age
In the awful vault of Time ;

Yet we lift our weary feet and strive
Through the mire and mist to grope
And find a ledge on the mount of Faith
In the morning land of Hope.

-Harper's Weekly.

THE VIOLET.

HERE she is again, the dear,
Sweetest vestal of the year,

In her little purple good
Brightening the lonesome wood.

We who, something worn with care,
Take the road, find unaware

Joy that heartens, hope that thrills,
Love our cup of life that fills,

Since in Spring's remembered nooks,
Lifting fain familiar looks,

Once again with curtsying grace,

In the same dear lowly place,

God His manual sign hath set

In the tender violet.

-Margaret E. Sangster, in Harper's Magazine.

From The Independent.

BAD BOOKS AND GOOD BOOKS.

DEAN F. W. FARRAR.

THERE is one piece of advice which I would give with intense earnestness to all. It is: Never be tempted by curiosity to read what you know to be a bad book, or what a very little reading shows you to be a bad book. Bad books-by which I do not mean merely ignorant and misleading books, but those which are prurient and corrupt-are the most fatal emissaries of the Devil. They pollute with plague the moral atmosphere of the world. Many and many a time a good book, read by a boy, has been the direct source of all his future success; has inspired him to attain and to deserve eminence; has sent him on the paths of discovery; has been as a sheet anchor to all that was noblest in his character; has contributed the predominant element to the usefulness and happiness of his whole life. Benjamin Franklin testified that a little tattered volume of "Essays to Do Good," by Cotton Mather, read when he was a boy, influenced the whole course of his conduct, and that if he had been a useful citizen "the public owes all the advantages of it to that little book:" Jeremy Bentham said that the single phrase "the greatest good of the greatest number," caught at a glance in a pamphlet, directed the current of his thoughts and studies for life. The entire career of Charles Darwin was influenced by a book of travels which he read in early years. On the other hand, it is fatally possible for anyone—especially for any youth— to read himself to death in a bad book in five minutes. The well known minister, John Angell James, narrated that, when he was at school, a boy lent him an impure book. He only read it for a few minutes, but even during those few minutes the poison flowed fatally into his soul, and became to him a source of bitterness and anguish for all his after years. The thoughts, images and pictures thus glanced at haunted him all through life like foul spectres. Let no one indulge his evil curiosity under the notion that he is safe. He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool."

"O, who can hold a fire in his hand

By thinking on the frosty Caucasus ?'' Were we not warned two thousand years ago that "he who toucheth pitch shall be defiled"? and three' millenniums ago the question was asked, "Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? or can one walk upon hot coals, and his feet not be scorched?"

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What makes every form of bad reading such a murder of time and so entirely inexcusable is that the world abounds not only in good books, but in entire domains of good books. Even the "great books of the world furnish us with an inexhaustible supply. A lifetime would barely suffice to master all the good books which exist in any noble and fruitful branch of study. If we were not such bad economists of happiness we should make better use of the joy and beneficence opened to us by some of these developments of human faculty. Many a man whose life is now dreary, burdensome and pernicious might, had he been wiser, have been able to say,

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My mind to me a kingdom is,
Such perfect joy therein I find."

Many a sad and useless man might both have been good and done good-might both have been as happy as human life permits and a source of happiness to others-if he had learned to take delight in the great thoughts of the wisest and holiest of mankind. There are boundless realms of beauty and of wonder and of power in the universe of God of which the intellect of the wise has learned to decipher the meaning. There are priceless treasuries full of wealth "more golden than gold" which are open even to the humblest and poorest. To neglect them is not only unwise, but pusillanimous. These days especially need courage and gladness. The struggle for existence grows every day more keen, and is a struggle between nations no less than between individuals. Amid the vast growth of populations; amid the increasing difficulties of earning an honest subsistence; amid the reactions of lassitude caused by the wear and tear, the strain and stress of daily life; amid the depression and uncertainty caused by the deepening complexity of problems yet unsolved, we need every possible counteraction of irresolution, weariness and gloom. The influence of great books would enable us, more perhaps than any other influence, to acquire our own souls in confidence and peace. Says Sir Thomas Browne:

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I might well speak of the immeasurable services which any one of us might acquire from even a partial knowledge of science or of art, of which the greatest results and the most eternal principles are set before us in many books. But I will confine my remarks to the subject of General Literature. If science teaches us respecting nature and her forces, and art unfolds to us

"The shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades, Changes, surprises-and God made them all,'' literature unfolds to us the deepest thoughts which can fill the great heart of humanity. We may, if we choose, find a purer and more exquisite delight in wise reading than in almost anything else. A few of the testimonies of eminent thinkers may help to bring this truth home to us. Cicero, the master of Roman eloquence, said that

"Other studies are for one time, or one place, or one mood; but these studies are with us at home and abroad, in town or in the country, by day and by night, in youth and in old age; our consolation in days of sorrow, our exhilaration in hours of peace.

Petrarch, when his friend the bishop, thinking that he was overworked, took away the key of his library, was restless and miserable the first day, had a bad headache the second, and was so ill by the third day that the bishop in alarm returned the key and let his friend read as much as he liked. "A good book," says Milton in his "Areopagitica," which every one should read, “is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” The historian Gibbon said that he would not exchange the

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"

'My days among the dead are past ;
Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,

The mighty minds of old.
My never-failing friends are they
With whom I converse day by day.
"With them I take delight in weal,
And seek relief in woe:

And while I understand and feel
How much to them I owe,

My cheeks have often been bedew'd
With tears of thoughtful gratitude."

To these testimonies of great poets I will add three remarkable passages from prose writers-for my object is to impress on my readers, and especially on the young, a sense of the joy and safety which they may gain from the study of great books, and I therefore wish to quote to them the weightiest authorities.

Here, then, is a singularly bright and beautiful passage from a medieval writer, Gilbert Porretanus or del la Porrée, who became Archbishop of Poictiers in 1142. He was once left alone in his monastery while all his brethren had gone for change of air to the seaside, and he wrote:

All

“Our house is empty, save only myself and the rats and mice, who nibble in solitary hunger. There is no voice in the hall, no tread on the stairs. The clock has stopped . . . the pump creaks no more. But I sit here with no company but books, dipping into dainty honeycombs of literature. minds in the world's history find their focus in a library. This is the pinnacle of the temple from which we may see all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. I keep Egypt and the Holy Land in the closet next the window. On the side of them is Athens and the Empire of Rome. Never was such an army mustered as I have here. No general ever had such soldiers as I have. No kingdom ever had half such illustrious subjects as mine, or half as well governed. I can put my haughtiest subjects up or down, as it pleases me.

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I call 'Plato,' and he answers 'Here'—a noble and sturdy soldier. 'Aristotle,' Here,' -a host in himself. 'Demosthenes,' 'Cicero,' Cæsar, 'Tacitus,' 'Pliny'Here!' they answer, and they smile at me in their immortality of youth. Modest all, they never speak unless spoken to. Bountiful all, they never refuse to answer. And they are all at peace together. My architects are building night and day without sound of hammer; my painters designing, my poets singing, my philosophers discoursing, my historians and theologians weaving their tapestries, my generals marching about without noise or blood. I hold all Egypt in fee simple. I build not a city, but empires at a word. I can say as much of all the Orient as he who was sent to grass

did of Babylon. . . All the world is around me, all that ever stirred human hearts or fired the imagination is harmlessly here. My library shelves are the avenues of time. Ages have wrought, generations grown, and all their blossoms are cast down here. It is the garden of immortal fruits, without dog or dragon."

All readers will, I think, thank me for that bright passage from an old scholastic theologian nearly nine centuries ago. My next quotation shall be from Mr. Ruskin. He says, in "Sesame and Lilies":

"All the higher circles of human intelligence are to those beneath only momentarily and partially open. We may, by good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet and hear the sound of his voice, or put a question to a man of science and be answered good-humoredly. We may intrude ten minutes' talk on a Cabinet Minister . . or snatch, once or twice in our lives, the privilege of arresting the kind glance of a queen. And yet these momentary chances we covet . . . while, meantime, there is a society open to us of people who will talk to us as long as we like, whatever our rank or occupation. And this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, kings and statesmen lingering patiently in the plainly furnished and narrow anterooms, our bookcase shelves-we make no account of that company, perhaps never listen to a word they would say all day long!

And here is one more eloquent passage, from Eneas Sage:

"I go into my library, and, like some great panorama, all history unrolls itself before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingers in it.

I see the Pyramids building. I hear Memnon murmur as the first morning sun touches him. . . I sit as in a theatre; the stage is time, the play is the play of the world. What a spectacle it is! what kingly pomp ! what processions pass by! what cities burn to heaven! what crowds of captives are

dragged at the heels of conquerors! In my solitude I am only myself at intervals. The silence of the unpeopled Syrian plains, the incomings and outgoings of the Patriarchs, Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac in the fields at eventide, Rebekah at the well, Jacob's guile, Esau's face reddened by desert suns, Joseph's splendid funeral procession-all these things I can find within the boards of my Old Testament. . . . Books are the true Elysian Fields where the spirits of the dead converse, couched on flowers; and to these fields a mortal may venture unappalled. What king's court can boast such company? what school of philosophy such wisdom? . . . No man sees more company than I do. I travel with mightier cohorts around me than did Tamerlane and Zenghis Khan in their fiery marches. I am a sovereign in my library, but it is the dead, not the living, that attend my levee.”

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In another paper I will say a few words about great branches of literature, such as History, Poetry and Biography; but here I will conclude by urging you, dear reader, to enter on this paradisiacal domain which lies ever open before your feet-these gardens, rich with the summer opulence of heaven. breathe this pure and exhilarating spiritual atmosphere as you sit with those high souls whom God has illuminated with the flame of genius. Glorious leaders are waiting to welcome you, and gentle saints to sit as brethren by your sde. Why need any man feel cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd" in pettiness when at the lifting of a latch he may enter into “unimaginable realms of faerie"? Why need we be overworked by the fussy and the foolish, the base and the contemptible, when in books, without traveling as far as Endor, we may summon to our bidding the mightiest spirits of the dead? Why need we be drowned in disappointment and listlessness, as with that tide on the coast of

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Lincolnshire, "always shallow, yet always just deep enough to drown," when, at the price of a few pence, we may, as it were, hear heaven's seraphim choiring round the sapphire throne? Can he not escape from those whom the poet calls

Men-slugs and human serpentry ";

and can he not be relieved from.life's worst enemies— vexatious, fretful and lawless passions, "spirits of wasted energy and wandering desire, of unappeased famine and unsatisfied hope"-by communion with these kingly and radiant souls? A man who lives in this high society will walk through the world with the open eyes of wonder and the receptive mind of intelligence. He will believe in God; he will believe in man; he will believe in conscience; he will believe in duty; and while he believes in these, no darkness without can ever wholly quench that light within which is a reflection of the light of God himself in the human soul. The best books of man will throw more and more widely open before him the Books of God, which are best interpreted by that Chosen Literature of the Chosen People, which we specially describe as "The Book of God."

RUSSIAN SETTLERS IN NORTH DAKOTA. Kirk Munroe, in Harper's Magazine. THE doctor surprised me by stating that "his Russians," as he termed those settled in the Dakotas, were of Teutonic stock, and not Slavs at all, save as they had adopted Slavonic customs and modes of life during a residence of several generations in Russia. cording to him, Peter the Great, by liberal promises, induced several colonies of German farmers to settle in his dominions, where they were to teach his people their methods of agriculture.

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At length these semi-independent and libertyloving people became so numerous, and on account of the extraordinary privileges granted them excited so much discontent in the down-trodden communities in which they dwelt, that the Russian authorities became alarmed, and decided upon their repression. So, by imperial ukase, Czar Alexander III. arbitrarily revoked all concessions made to them by his famous ancestor. Thus by a stroke of the pen the GermanoRussians were reduced to the servile condition of their Slavonic neighbors, and saw naught before them save a future of hopeless misery. Rather than accept this, vast numbers of them attempted to leave the country. Many were intercepted and forced to return. Some were imprisoned transported to Siberia, condemned to death, or otherwise punished for striving to gain other liberty than that allowed by the Czar; but thousands made good their escape. Of these fortunate ones, some settled in Germany, others went to the Argentine, and so great a number came to this country that ten

thousand of them are estimated to be settled in the Dakotas.

Having been told that they lived like pigs in mud hovels, I was prepared for some very unpleasant experiences during my stay with them, especially at night; but in every case I found the anticipation much worse than the reality. To be sure, all the houses that I visited, with one exception, were constructed of

mud; but so is every brick building in the land, and these Russian dwellings were far from being hovels. All had board floors, and contained at least two rooms. While those of the more recent arrivals were built of sod, in every case where the proprietor had been two or more years in the country his house was a long, low, but neatly finished and very substantial structure of sun-dried brick, made of mud mixed with straw, and differing in no way that I could see from the adobes of Mexico. The framing was of unhewn cottonwood timber hauled from the nearest river bottom, and in many cases the interiors were ceiled with boards. The roofs were of closely laid poles or rough boards covered six inches deep with adobe, while every house had wide chimneys and glass windows. Many of them, as picturesquely foreign in appearance as though transplanted bodily from Russian steppes, were neatly whitewashed both inside and out, while often both doors and window casings were painted a bright blue.

The fourth stage of the Dakota settler's progress, which I saw reached by but one man, and he had been in this country seven years, is the frame-house stage. The old-timer who has gained this height of prosperity lives in Mercer county, which is almost wholly settled by Russians, and his neat dwelling, containing six rooms, all on the ground-floor, stands on a crest of the water-shed between the Missouri and Big Knife rivers, commanding a glorious view of twenty miles in every direction. This man owns six hundred and forty acres of land, all of which is upland prairie, such as American farmers, having in mind the rich valleys of the Red, James, and other wheat-region rivers, had deemed unfit for cultivation; nor could it be profitably cultivated with their extravagant methods; but its Russian owner, in 1897, put one hundrel and sixty acres into wheat that yielded him eighteen bushels to the acre, forty more into flax and potatoes, and enclosed the remainder with a wire fence as a pasture for his two hundred head of cattle. On the open range he herded a flock of sheep, and from the free prairie meadows he cut one hundred tons of hay, which he hauled home and stacked for winter use.

His stables and out-buildings, low but thick-walled and warm, form two sides of a square that opens to the south, while his dwelling and adjacent granaries form the third side. Besides owning several teams of fine horses, a herd of cattle, and a flock of sheep, he raises pigs, chickens, turkeys and ducks; sends eggs and butter to market every week, is not in debt to any man, has $1,000 in bank, and is estimated to be worth $10,000 more. Seven years ago, when he located where he still lives, he had less than $500 with which to make his new start in life, and he was fifty miles from a railroad.

soil that he has taken from it. The Russian varies his crops, or allows his land to lie fallow in alternate years, and plows in his straw.

It costs the American about thirty-five cents to raise a bushel of wheat and deliver it to an elevator within a mile from his field. The Russian can raise wheat on poorer soil, haul it fifty miles, and place it on board the cars for several cents per bushel less money. When the latter goes to town he carries provisions with him and sleeps in his wagon; the American puts up at a hotel. The Rusisan rarely eats fresh meat, but his more civilized neighbor must have it three times a day. The American engages in stockraising on a large scale, allows his cattle to pick up their own living on the open range the year round, and loses half of them during a hard winter. His competitor from oversea only raises such stock as he can feed and care for, with the result that even in the severest winter he saves it all. He is narrow-minded and conservative, and his methods are those of the Old World, where of necessity his sphere of operations was limited. The American, especially in the West, brought up with large ideas, scorns a small economy as he does a petty meanness.

SELF-SUPPORT.

Edward Everett Hale, in Christian Register. MISS SYBIL CARTER, who has distinguished herself by her successful work among the Ojibwa Indians, has now made one of her visits, only too brief, in Massachusetts. Miss Carter is the lady who has succeeded so remarkably in teaching the Indian women, not to say the Indian men, how to make lace in the old cushion fashion, as it was done by the maidens of Spain and Belgium and Holland, perhaps before written history began.

Miss Carter showed, at a pleasant party at Chestnut Hill last week, some specimens of the very beautiful lace made by her pupils. Among the Ojibwa Indians -cousins, be it remembered, of our Massachusetts Indians—there are now nearly two hundred families who are self-supported by the industry of their own women, assisted in winter by the industry of some of the men, in these beautiful fabrics.

Miss Carter has thus solved, for one particular region, the problem of self-support. She has solved it with a curious success, where no one without her enthusiastic forelook would have dared attempt it. If anything needs delicacy of touch and absolute cleanliness, it is certainly the making of fine laces. If there are any people of whom we are in the habit of saying that they are dirty, it is the race of North American. Indians. Yet here is Miss Carter, who has superin

The prime causes of success among these foreign-tended the manufacture of large and elegant bedborn farmers with lands that Americans had declared only fit for grazing are thrift and frugality. They protect from the weather their expensive farm machinery while the native-born nearly always leaves his in the fields where it has been used, from one season to another. The American wheat-farmer exhausts his rich lands by planting them in the same crop year after year, burning his straw, and restoring nothing to the

spreads in her beautiful lace-work, and who showed us the other day some of the finest and most delicate laces which can be well imagined, who assures us that since she began till now she has never had a piece of lace laundered. She has never had a piece of lace brought to her, when finished, which was not as clean as the thread was which she had given out for its manufacture. It is fair to say, therefore, that the in

struction in lace-making becomes an education in cleanliness. And the reader of this column ought to know how near cleanliness is to godliness.

It is almost of course that such success among the Ojibwa people should interest the friends of the Indians in other parts of the country. Miss Carter has been obliged to turn aside, on the right hand and on the left, to provide teachers for lace-making in five or six tribes who know nothing of the Ojibwas, not even of their language, and who live in entirely different parts of this country. One of her schools is in Oklahoma, and there are others even further West. lace is so good that the market for it is steady; and she has therefore rescued from the dreariness of winter life in an Indian wigwam all these workingwomen, and has given them the encouragement which waits on the fair reward of good work.

The

Some one said at a meeting at Mohonk that we were wrong in speaking of "the Indian problem," and that the truth is that there are one hundred and ten Indian problems. This means that there are so many different centres of life among our Indian tribes, in each one of which the tribe needs to be handled in its own way. There are places-Alaska is one of them— where are men as ready to go to work as any Yankee. Now, in these places, nothing is needed but capital and direction to set these good fellows upon canning salmon or upon preparing wood for market or the other industries of the frontier. Here are these women among the Ojibwa who are willing to go to work in making elegant laces for the use and adornment of elegant women.

Now, out of the two hundred and fifty thousand

Indians in America, Miss Carter has, if I may say so, disposed of her problem, so far as two hundred families-let us say as far as twelve or thirteen hundred people are concerned. If two hundred Indian societies, in different parts of America, would each of them do the same thing, the Indian problem would be settled. Does not such a success as hers suggest to people who are in the direction of the different clubs and societies which are seeking to improve the condition of our Indian tribes the importance of advising proper industries for those tribes? It may be raising cattle there. It may be tanning leather somewhere else. It might be carving knives and forks, as the mountaineers of Switzerland carve them for us. But, in all our speculation about their fate, certainly the providing of industries which may be of use in the general markets of the world is a very central duty.

TEMPERANCE SHIPS.-This is the name by which the vessels owned by Carlisle & Co., of London, are known. "Not only are not malt or spirituous liquors allowed on board, but their masters, before being given. command by the owners, are required to take an oath and sign documents pledging themselves not to partake of any intoxicants. As a guarantee of good faith As a guarantee of good faith they must deposit with the owners a bond for £100, which is forfeited in case of any breach of this ironclad rule. Two of these ships, the Clandeboyc, Captain Hay, and Cabral, Captain Kettey, were recently in Philadelphia."

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THE VALUE OF CATNIP.

An armful of fresh green catnip was taken to Lincoln Park, Chicago, to try the effects of the green stuff on the feline members of the zoo. This herb, which does not grow, so far as is known, in the haunts of the cousins of the cats, created a great sensation at the zoo. The scent of the plant filled the whole place, and as soon as it had reached the parrot's corner the two gaudily attired macaws set up a noise that drowned thought and made for the side of the cage, poking their beaks and claws through. When the catnip was brought near them they became nearly frantic. They were given some and devoured it, stem, leaf, and blossom, with an avidity commensurate with the noise of their voices.

The keeper and the catnip-carrier then made for the cage of Billy, the African leopard. Now, Billy, so far as is known, had never before smelled or seen a leaf of the plant. Before the front of his cage was reached he had bounded from the shelf whereon he lay, apparently asleep, and stood expectant. The man with the catnip purposely waited a few minutes before he poked any of the green leaves and yellowishwhite flowers of the plant through to the big cat.

Finally, a double handful of catnip was passed through to the floor of the den. Never was the prey through to the floor of the den. of this African dweller in his wild state pounced upon more rapidly or with more absolute savage enjoyment. First Billy ate a mouthful of the catnip, then he lay flat on his back and wriggled his sinuous length through the green mass until his black-spotted yellow hide was permeated with the odor of the plant. Then Billy sat on a bunch of the catnip,

caught a leaf-laden stem up in either paw and rubbed his cheeks, chin, nose, eyes and head. He ate an additional mouthful or two and then jumped back to his shelf, where he lay, the very picture of satiety and

contentment.

In the tiger's cage there is a very young but fullgrown animal, captured within eighteen months in the jungles of India. When this great, surly beast inhaled the first sniff of the catnip he began to mew like a kitten. Prior to this the softest note of his voice had been one which put the roar of the bigmaned South African lion to shame. That vicious tiger and his kindly dispositioned old mate fairly revelled in the liberal allowance of the plant which was thrust into their cage. They rolled about in it and played together like six-weeks-old kittens. They mewed and purred, evidently discussing the question as to what this strange plant was which gave them a variety of pleasure never before experienced. They tossed it about, ate of it, and, after getting about as liberal a dose as had Billy, the leopard, they likewise leaped to their respective shelves and blinked lazily at

The big lion, Major, was either too dignified or too lazy to pay more than passing attention to the bunch of catnip which fell to his lot. He ate a mouthful or two of it and then licked his chops in a "that's not half-bad" way, and then went back to his nap. The three baby lions quarrelled over their allowance and ate it every bit.-Chicago Times-Herald.

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