people who were moving about the room. as the purring of a cat, or of anything more worthy of admiration in animal habit than the neat, compact, and elegant manner in which the cat adjusts itself at the fireside, or in a snug, cozy place, when it settles down for a long, quiet sleep. Every spare moment that a cat has before lying down to rest is occupied in carefully cleaning itself. Would that men and women were more alive to habitual cleanliness, even the cleanliness of cats! The kindly and gentle animal gives them all a lesson. Then, nothing can be more beautiful in animal action than the exquisitely precise and graceful manner in which the cat exerts the exact amount of effort requisite to land it at the height and spot it wishes to reach at one bound. The neat and delicately precise manner in which When he began to use his hands he chose cats use their paws when playing with those the left so constantly that his father said to who habitually treat them with gentle kindhim once, "I fear you will be an awkwardness is truly admirable. In these respects, fellow in everything that requires handiness cats are entitled to the most kindly regard." in life." But the father lived to see him one of the most skillful men in the use of his hands in England, using one as well as the other. Mr. Nasmyth again recurs in this connection to his father, of whom he always loves to speak: "My father, when a boy, made occasional visits to some of his ancestors. One Like other small boys, he enjoyed sliding of them was an old bachelor. He had the down the balusters. "One day," he says, "I Nasmyth love of cats. Being of pious habits, lost my grip, and suddenly fell off. The he always ended the day by a long and audisteps were of stone. Fortunately, the ser- ble prayer. My father and his companions vants were just coming in, laden with car-used to go to the door and listen to him. He pets which they had been beating. I fell into their midst, and knocked them out of their hands. I was thus saved from cracking my poor little skull. But for that there might have been no steam hammer,—at least of my contrivance.' When he was only a little lad the soldiers came back from the battle of Waterloo; and he was taken on a balcony to see them. "It was a grand sight. The redcoats wedged their way through the crowd amid the ringing of bells and the cheers of the spectators. Every window was in a wave of gladness, and every house-top was in a fever of excitement. As the red line passed our balcony, with Col. Dick at its head, we saw a sight that can never be forgotton. The red-and-white plumes, the tattered colors riddled with bullets, the glittering bayonets, were seen amid the crowd that thronged round the gallant heroes, amid tears and cheers and hand-shakings and shouts of excitement. At last they passed, the pipers and drummers playing a Highland, march, and the Fortysecond slowly entered the Castle." prayed that the Lord would help him to forgive his enemies and all those who had done him injury, and then with a loud burst, he concluded, except John Anderson o' the Toonhead, for he killed my cat, and him I'll ne'er forgive.-Christian Register. (To be continued.) EARLY CHRISTIAN EPITAPHS. To perpetuate, by means of sepulchral inscriptions, the memory of relatives and friends, and to record the sentiments of love and esteem, of grief and hope, in the face of death and eternity, is a custom common to all civilized ages and nations. These epitaphs are limited by space, and often provoke rather than satisfy, curiosity; but contain, nevertheless, in poetry or prose, a vast amount of biographical and historical information. Many a graveyard is a broken record of the church to which it belongs. The catacombs abound in such monumental inscriptions, Greek and Latin, or strangely mixed (Latin words in Greek characters), often rudely written, badly spelled, mutilated, All the Nasmyth family were fond of cats. and almost illegible, with and without sym'My father had always one or two of such bolical figures. The classical languages were domestic favorites. Their quiet, companion- then in a process of decay, like classical able habits made them very acceptable com- eloquence and art, and the great majority of pany, when engaged in his artistic work. I Christians were poor and illiterate people. know of no sound so pleasantly tranquilizing | One name only is given in the earlier epitaphs, sometimes the age, and the day of burial, but | dead to pray for the living. From these renot the date of birth. "Homely phrases, but each letter Of the Here and the Hereafter." More than fifteen thousand epitaphs have been collected, classified, and explained, by Cavalier De Rossi, from the first six centuries in Rome alone, and their number is constantly increasing. Benedict XIV founded in 1750 a Christian museum, and devoted a hall in the Vatican to the collection of ancient sarcophagi. Gregory XVI and Pious IX patronized it. In this Lapidarian gallery the costly pagan and the simple Christian inscriptions and sarcophagi confront each other on opposite walls, and present a striking contrast. Another important collection is in the Kircherian Museum in the Roman College, another in the Christian Museum of the University of Berlin. Hence, while the heathen epitaphs rarely express a belief in immortality, but often describe death as an eternal sleep, the grave as a final home, and are pervaded by a tone of sadness, the Christian epitaphs are hopeful and cheerful. The farewell on earth is followed by a welcome from heaven. The symbol of Christ (Ichthys, the fish) is often placed at the beginning or end to show the ground of his hope. Again and again we find the brief but significant words "in peace;" "he" or "she sleeps in peace;" "live in God," or "in Christ;"" live forever." "He rests well." "God quicken thy spirit." Weep not, my child; death is not eternal.' "Alexander is not dead, but lives above the stars, and his body rests in this tomb." "Here Gordian, the courier from Gaul, strangled for the faith with his whole family, rests in peace. The maid-servant Theophila erected this." At the same time, stereotyped heathen epitaphs continued to be used (but, of course, not in a polytheistic sense) as "sacred to the funeral gods," or to the departed spirits. The laudatory epithets of heathen epitaphs are rare, but simple terms of natural affection very frequent, as "My sweetest child;"" Innocent little lamb;” “ My dearest husband;" "My dearest wife;" "My innocent dove;" "My well-deserving father," or "mother;" A and B " lived together" (for 15, 20, 30, 50, or even 60 years) "without any complaint or quarrel, without taking or giving offence." Such commemoration of conjugal happiness and commendations of female virtues, as modesty, chastity, prudence, diligence, frequently occur also on pagan monuments, and prove that there were many exceptions to the corruption of Roman society as painted by Juvenal and the satirists. Some epitaphs contain a request to the quests there was but one step to requests for intercession in behalf of the departed when once, chiefly through the influence of Pope Gregory I. purgatory became an article of general belief in the Western Church. But such requests are not found in the first four or five centuries, the overwhelming testimony of the oldest Christian epitaphs is that the pious dead are already in the enjoyment of peace, and this accords with the Saviour's promise to the penitent thief, and with St. Paul's desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. Take but this example: "Prima, thou livest in the glory of God, and in the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ.". Prof. Philip Schaff in the S. S. Times. A CHECK TO POVERTY. Nothing is clearer than the fact that where a country has wealth enough for all, no able, sober, industrious person need to want for a fair share of the necessaries and comforts of life, if the laws regulating the distribution of property are just and wise. There is no more necessity for the existence of a destitute class in a wealthy nation than there is for the deck passenger on a well-provisioned ship to die of starvation. Obvious as this is our philanthropists are in complete ignorance upon the subject, and they weary heaven with prayers and men with applications for money to relieve poverty, without a thought of taking steps to prevent poverty by securing such distributive laws as shall check the accumulation of immense wealth at one end of the social scale. Such accumulation as certainly leads to destitution, as supplying umlimited provisions to be squandered and wasted in the cabin would entail starvation between decks on a passenger ship. Strange to say that what has not reached the intelligence of the older settled parts of the world has become clear to the people on the far-away colony of New Zealand. There the legislature are contemplating a system of insurance in cases of sickness and old age, a national system by which every family may be saved from coming to want when its head is unable to work. Under the proposed plan every man will be taxed by law £66, which must be paid before he is twenty-three years of age; if unable to pay this "lump down," he must pay two shillings a week for twelve years. In return for these payments, he will receive during sickness fifteen shillings a week, or if married twentytwo shillings and sixpence a week; on reaching the age of sixty-five he has a superannuation allowance of ten shillings a week while he lives. Wages of workmen will, under the ordinary operations of things, regulate themselves to meet this extra outlay. At present, where capital has labor entirely dependent upon it, the laborer gets as much in wages as will find him and his family in coarse food and clothing; but when the two shillings a week tax is required, as well as the food and clothing, that must be supplied, or the starved laborer will be unable to work and the capitalist, being dependent upon labor, would soon | be in poverty also. This system compels capital to pay labor not only sufficient for support of health and strength, but also in sickness and old age, which is just. On the poor law plan capital has to support the helpless in a way that degrades the recipient. On the New Zealand plan that support assumes the form of wages, and so leaves the independent feeling of the recipient intact; his allowance in sickness and old age is the honest product of his own toil. There is matter in all this worthy of the attention, not only of the philanthropist, but of the statesman and politican.-Grocer's Price Current. hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers; And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Think not of them: thou hast thy music too; While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Orsinking, as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. -John Keats. A VOICE FROM THE SICK ROOM. I ask Thee not this sickness to remove; For all Thy love bestows, I bless my lot; TOTAL ABSTINENCE. In an address on the temperance cause, Dr. Eliot, of St. Louis, said in regard to total abstinence: "I speak with absolute confidence, when I say that total abstinence is the only assured course of safety for ourselves and our families. I do not care how strong we may be, or how confirmed in habits of moderation, or how fixed in religious or moral principle, we are not perfectly safe while the use of intoxicants as a beverage continues. "I have seen all safeguards and barriers and resolutions and bonds give way, time and time again. I can show you graves which neither religion, nor morality nor self-interest, nor self-respect, nor love of kindred, could prevent from being the drunkard's resting place. I can show you, this day, men of intelligence, of good sense, of extended influence, of wealth, living in homes of refinement, surrounded by loving and faithful friends, in positions of trust and honor,-on the bench, at the bar, in the command of armies, in the council chamber, at the merchant's desk, in the mechanic's workshop, in the office of the editor, in the pulpit itself where righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come are preached, in the halls of Congress, in the National Cabinet, and in the Presidential Mansion; in all places of honor and usefulness have I seen men walking with unsteady steps, speaking with ill-considered words, and with all the marks of unmanliness that disgrace the foolish ones who put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains. “And yet not one of them all but could remember the time when he was 'perfectly safe,' 'quite able to control himself," able to use his liberty without abusing it.' "Alas! there is in the intoxicating cup a mysterious power, which overcomes all resoMUCH of "the evil of our lot" is the pun- lutions, and with which no wise man will ishment of our misconduct. trifle. Flee from it as from the face of a serpent, for, if thou comest too near it, it will bite thee: the teeth thereof are as the teeth of a lion, slaying the souls of men.' "Look at the records in every day's journals, and you will see how fearfully true are those words of warning. "Then, too, consider the household, the family of which you may be the head or directing influence. How shall the children escape? In the households where intoxicants are used, in how great peril are they daily kept! Whether it is the taint of heredity, or, what is almost the same thing, of early parental example, how common it is, not to say universal, for the growing boy to acquire a taste for intoxicants, which grows with his growth and strengthens with his strength, until it becomes abnormal, and, if not uncontrollable, is yet a constantly recurring and dominant appetite, which nothing but stimulants will satisfy! Henceforth, the whole discipline of life is complicated and made more difficult to him. He may, by vigorous effort, come off victorious; but, over and over again, it is a struggle for life, and until he learns for himself the wisdom and necessity of total abstinence, which he should have been taught in the nursery and at the fireside, the struggle is continually renewed. Whatever may be the law of society, total abstinence, and prohibition should be the law of the household, if not for our own sake, for the sake of our children and of all who depend upon us. "But if we rest only on the minor considerations, sufficiently serious in themselves, of physical and mental health, the lesson of practical wisdom would still be the same. If anything can be clearly proved by medical science and experience, it is unquestionably certain that the use of intoxicants is always hurtful to the young, never beneficial to the healthy, young or old. As a medicine, they may have a rightful place, although it is, in the judgment of best physicians, becoming more restricted every day, by substitution of more efficient and less dangerous drugs; but, as a beverage, it is conceded to be, at best, a more or less harmful luxury, sowing invisible seeds of disease, aggravating wrong constitutional conditions both of body and mind, creating or increasing tendencies to organic disorders, lessening the powers of endurance, and lowering the general tone of physical and mental health. "I beg of you to observe, that, while speaking earnestly, I am standing only on the ground of practical wisdom, of common sense. I am appealing to no religious sanctions nor commands, nor to the eternal laws of retribution, to enforce my words by that divine authority, in which, nevertheless, I firmly believe. All I have said stands sure, if we look | only to our own present interests, social, moral, physical, and financial, and to the welfare of our children and our homes. The common and cheap cry of fanaticism may hold good against some of the arguments of temperance men, but certainly not against those which I am using to-day. NATURAL HISTORY STUDIES. Climate and Vegetation of South Australia. -Dr. R. Schomburgk, Director of the Botanic Garden and Government Plantations of Adelaide, in his recently published report on the condition and progress of the institutions under his charge, gives some interesting and not very generally known data respecting the climate and vegetable resources of his neighborhood. The period of summer, which comprises the months of December, January, and February, is characterized by excessive heat, hot winds, and dryness. No rain falls often for six or eight weeks, and the "ground becomes so hot and cracked that even the occurrence of a fall of rain serves only to clear the leaves from dust, as it again evaporates in a very short time." The thermometer not infrequently rises to 110° in the shade, and from 140° to 150° in the sun. These figures have been greatly exceeded on several occasions, as on the 9th of January, 1862, when the thermometer registered in the shade 116°3′; on the 14th of the same month, when the reading was 115° in the shade and 165° in the sun; and in December, 1876, when 114° and 162° were indicated respectively for the shade and sun. The maximum temperature recorded was on the 18th of January of last year (1882), when the thermometer marked the prodigious figure of 180° in the sun, a point removed only thirty-two degrees from the temperature of boiling. The temperature of the shade for the same day was 112°, or still twentyone degrees below the heat experienced by the unfortunate Ritchie in the oasis of Mourzouk, and forty-four degrees below the doubtless incorrectly observed 156° claimed by Du Chaillu for Western Equatorial Africa. The autumn season in Australia includes the months of March, April, and May, when the thermometer in the region of Adelaide falls to 70°-80°, with a mean of 64°6′. This is stated to be one of the genial and beautiful parts of the year, when the indigenous vegetation "awakens to new life, and trees, shrubs, and herbage put forth fresh growth, while the leaves of the European deciduous trees get the autumnal tints and drop." The rainy season-winter-marked by frequent rains and strong winds, sets in with June and continues throughout the months of July and August. Heavy frosts frequently occur during the night, and the thermometer has been known to descend to 28° (minimum). The spring season, described as being unsurpassed in any other part of the world, includes the months of September, October, and November, with a mild and genial mean temperature of about 60°-70°. "At this time of the year, the gardens are in their best floral beauty; trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, emulate each other in regard to their flowers, which are of such a size, richness in color, and perfection, as a Northern gardener can scarcely imagine." The average annual fall of rain over the plains is twenty-one inches, or considerably below that of our Eastern cities. The wide extremes of summer and winter temperature, and the prevalence of long droughts, taken in connection with the mixed character of the flora, render the vegetation peculiarly sensible to climatic inroads. Tropical and alpine plants suffer, not only from the dry atmosphere, but the former also from the winter's cold. Many of the European and North American forest trees, such as the oak, lime, birch, horse-chestnut, and maple, thrive at best but very slowly; while in the case of the beech and most conifers all attempts at successful cultivation on the plains have failed. The elm, plane, ash, poplar, and willow, on the other hand, thrive vigorously.-American. AN English journal gives an account of a plan recently proposed by an English engineer for founding "deep-sea light-houses." As explained to the London Society of Engineers, this plan proposes the construction of a hollow cylinder of riveted ironwork, two hundred and ninety feet long, to consist of two sections, the upper part to be one hundred and forty feet long, destined to rear its head above the waves and fitted as an ordinary light-house, while the remaining portion of the tube is to be ballasted so as to sink below the water line, and counteract the force of wind and waves on the exposed part. The whole apparatus is to be anchored in deep water by heavy steel cables. The inventor claims that it would be easy to tow such a structure to the spot selected for it; and then, by admitting water to the lower section, it would assume an upright position. and ride the waves like a bottle. The practical use which this is intended to serve is to give notice of approaching storms by means of telegraphic connection with the shore. It is believed to be practical to found a floating telegraph station, say one thousand miles from the coast of England, in mid-ocean, from which comings of approaching storms could be given long before their arrival. TANGLES. Two children were trying to wind a skein of yarn into a ball. The yarn was kinky. The children were careless. Soon there was a little tangle. Then the child who was holding the yarn gave it a fearful jerk and the tangle was made worse. And thereupon the other child cried, ".O dear, how awkward you are," and caught at the skein to get it out of snarl. But the other child, not wanting any interference, gave another jerk, and between the two the skein was all twisted and knotted, so that it was useless to try to wind any longer. The children scolded at each other. Then both began to cry. Then mother came, the patient, gentle mother. She took the tangled skein. She gave each of them an end to hold, and slowly disentangled that knotted and kinky yarn. Kissing the tears from the children's faces, she said, "My dears, when you get into a tangle, don't jerk." How often have I been reminded of that even in my childhood. O how many tangles there are in this world of kinky people, and how often do we make them worse by our efforts to disentangle them! Again and again have I seen troubles in homes and in churches that might have been easily healed at the beginning, but which, by injudicious meddling, were so aggravated that they became like the Gordian knot. They had to be cut, and left many hearts bleeding. Thinking of these things, I have felt like sending out to all my readers the pithy exhortation of that patient mother: "when you get into a tangle, don't jerk." | Is there a little misunderstanding, or difference of opinion, or collision of interest in the home? Does the young husband think that his young wife has been slightly careless of his comforts or oblivious of his preferences? Does he feel vexed? Is he tempted to say something bitter or to do something ugly? Let him stop and think before he speaks or acts. Perhaps there will be a reason, or at least an excuse, for what was done that would satisfy him; if he knew it. Perhaps it was done inadvertently and without any thought of grieving him. It is not wise to begin with a jerk. Be patient, say kindly and gently what you think you ought to say, and you w find in ninety cases out of a hundred that all will be smooth again. But if you are hasty and fretful, you irritate instead of soothe. There is a perverse element in the most amiable heart. And if this is aroused by what seems to be unkindness and uncharitable treatment, bitterness is repaid with bitterness, and the end may be a lifelong alienation. Many a separation, blighting two lives, many a divorce suit, feeding the world's morbid appetite for scandal, has grown out of a little will |