FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY. WORK AND WORRY.-It is not work that kills men, it is worry. Work braces up their muscles into healthy strength. Worry snaps or slackens them. LOVE IS GOD'S GREAT LOAF. We may come to him every morning, saying, "Give us this day our daily bread," for he has enough and to spare. THE LOVE OF GOD is like that of a WOOD WILL FLOAT ON WATER, ex-loving mother, for he wipes away our cept it has been soaked in water, and tears, and kisses our offences into then it sinks. Some people are so everlasting forgetfulness. soaked in care and anxiety that they cannot float, but become water-logged and sink. NOTHING IS MORE DEVILISH than a mean man taking advantage of a nobleminded man when he is in adversity. It is the ass braying over the dead lion. A WHISPER TO MOTHERS. - Your child begins to feed from your bosoms, and then leaves off; but it will never leave off feeding from your heart. Gems. LIVE BY FAITH IN CHRIST, and then your ransomed spirit, touched by the finger of the Eternal, will become a harp tuned for endless praise. EVERY DROP in the bitter cup which the Great Physician puts in thy trembling hand, christian, is mixed and measured by thy Father in heaven. WHEN A CHRISTIAN departs, his friends, standing around his couch, say, "he is dead;" but the angels whisper, "he is born." Do WE CALL IT DYING when the bud bursts into flower? No: and why call it dying when the soul bursts its shell and enters into glory. CHRIST'S LOVE is greater now he is in heaven, not less. On earth it was but in bud; it is in full-blown blossom in heaven! THROUGH THE WEEK we toil in the valley of care and shadow. Our sabbaths are hills of light and joy. Climb them, and you will catch a sight of glory. EVERY ONWARD STEP We take in the way to heaven requires another. Stopping or turning aside right or left wont do. Turning back is to perdition. Go on. HAPPIEST OF MORTALS they who, when dying, can say, "Lord, thou didst send me to sow life-seeds in thy garden, and here is a basket of soulflowers." Poetic Selections. HOW TO WALK. On, in thy journey, With trembling and fear; And temptations within, Christian! walk humbly Exult not in pride; All that thou hast Is by Jesus supplied; He directeth thy ways, Christian! walk stedfastly For thy moments are few! Christian! walk hopefully Trouble and pain, Cease when the haven Of the Judge, thy reward, The joy of thy Lord!" THE CHILDREN'S CORNER. The Children's Corner. BILL AND FRED. THESE two lads worked at the same paper mill in a midland county. One week evening after work, they met in the street of the town in which they lived, and began to talk 66 Well, Bill, where are you for to-night?" "Oh, I am going into the school-room here; there is a prayer- | meeting to-night. Will you go with me?" "No: prayer-meetings are only for old or badly folks. They are not for young chaps like us." "Well, Fred, I think they are. We may die as well as old or badly folks. John who worked with us was as young as we are, and you know he soon died of fever." "I know he did, and I was very sorry for him. But to tell you the truth, Bill, I like to go where there is some fun going on. And it always seems so dull and stupid to be—” (At this moment the singing of "Come let us join our cheerful songs," in a lively tune, was heard from the school-room.) 66 There, Fred, is that dull and stupid? Come and go in with me. I think when it is over you will be glad you went." Fred, though only half willing, went. Singing and prayer went on, and at last an aged man got up and said a few words about young people making good use of their time, not wasting it in what they call pleasure, but using it in seeking the salvation of their souls. He then said, "God loves you young people, and has sent Jesus Christ to save you from your sins. Come to him in your youth as I did, and he will help you all your days, as he has me." Fred felt this. He could not help it, for he knew that the speaker was a good and happy old man. When going home the two lads had more talk. Bill lent Fred a copy of "Pike's Persuasives to Early Piety," which he stopped at home to read. The end of this is, that both of them are now walking in the ways of God, and, as fathers of families, are happy themselves, and making others happy. J. C. THE SUNDAY SCREW. THIS is a nick-name; invented by pleasure-providers and pleasure-seekers, to ridicule those who wish to keep the sabbath sacred to rest and worship for every man, as one of the greatest blessings-a blessing which human wisdom neither devised nor discovered, for the knowledge of which we are indebted to the Bible alone. A writer in "Sunday in Many Lands" observes" It has been a fashion latterly among a certain class of writers, who may probably suppose (we should say pretend) that they are advocating the interests of the labouring classes, to stigmatize all efforts made to promote the observance of the fourth commandment, under the general designation of the Sunday Screw.' These writers are fond of describing a London Sunday as the most melancholy spectacle to be met with on the face of the civilized earth. They are eloquent on the gloom and silence of the streets -on the closing of such places of public recreation as the National Gallery, the British Museum, and the Sydenham Palace; and they would repeal all laws that shut the public out of these places on the Sunday, and invite the people in to enjoy them at their leisure, and improve their faculties by the contemplation of the works and wonders of nature and of art. The writer of this paper has a perfect faith in the existence of the Sunday Screw; it has screwed him personally hard enough in times past, and he is therefore in a condition to testify to its nature and operation. He knows where to look for it, because he happens to have been screwed, which these writers never have. We propose, therefore, to show you plainly enough what is the Sunday Screw, that you may know it when you see it, and not be foolishly led to suppose that it is ever found in connection with the honest endeavours of those who plead for rest on 'the day of rest.' Suppose you have risen early some Sunday morning, and been walking as far as the Lambeth Road-or, it may be, the Whitechapel Road-or Whitecross Street-or any other place famous for Sunday morning traffic; what will you see there? The tumult and hubbub of a crowded market assail your ear as you approach, and guide you to the spot. The late dawn of a winter's THE SUNDAY SCREW. The day breaks upon a scene comparable more to a country fair than anything else. For half a mile or more along the line of way, the shops are open on either side; the footways are thronged by a dense multitude, struggling in adverse directions; the road is a confused encampment or squatting ground, strewed everywhere with heaps of vegetables, with pots, pans, and crockeryware, with cooking utensils and household articles, and all but impassable by a multitude of buyers and sellers and hoarse-voiced hawkers of wares, who have yet their Sunday's dinner to earn. butcher in blue uniform is cutting, carving, and weighing his meat, bawling the while to his customers without a moment's pause, eager and anxious, if possible, to drive a dozen bargains at once. The baker, who has been up half the night-a lean apparition of a man-is dealing out his hot loaves right and left, and sweeping coppers into his till. The grocer's shop is full to the doorway, and he and his assistant, besieged by a constant stream of applicants, are half bewildered by the din of clamorous tongues, and weary with the labour of satisfying their demands. The slop-seller, buried alive in corduroy, velveteen, shoddy, and fustian, is fitting coats, pants, and vests, to the sinewy limbs of the week-day workers. The linendraper is measuring cottons and prints and yards of ribbon, and dealing out hose and gloves and kerchiefs and shawls to mothers and daughters. The currier, whose shop at any rate, one would think, might be shut, holds a levee of pale-faced sons of St. Crispin, who with hard hands are pulling over sole-leather and bristles, heel-ball and flax, and purchasing materials for next week's labour. Whichever way you turn, bargains are driving, and traffic, under the impetus of assumed necessity and brief opportunity, is the order or disorder of the day. This unseemly spectacle continues till the bells ! ring out for church, and then only gradually subsides; and it is not till the morning service is nearly over that the baker and butcher get back to their beds; the grocer and his assistants turn in again to finish their night's rest; the shops are shut up; and the hawker's and squatters disappear with the crowd of buyers from the street. This is a specimen of the real Sunday Screw. The butcher is screwed, the baker is screwed, the grocer is screwed, and a long list of stallkeepers and shopkeepers besides are screwed, to the forfeiture of their Sunday's rest, by that notable screw-driver, the late paymaster, who will not send the working man with his THE SUNDAY SCREW. money into the market early enough on the Saturday night to enable him then to provide for Sunday's wants. But take another direction. Go at any time along the omnibus routes that traverse the city-north, south, east, and west; look at the drivers and conductors and ostlers, who having wrought for sixteen hours during each of the six days of the week, work also for sixteen hours on the day of rest, for the sole sake of administering to the ease and luxury of all who choose to spend a few pence in riding. Then look at the cabs and cabmen on a hundred stands-seven-day labourers-men whose homes are more out of doors than in, and who can rarely look upon their children's faces save when their infant eyes are closed in sleep. Are not these also samples of the Sunday Screw's work? and is not the screw-driver, in their case, the holiday-making public, who, because it must ride in its coach on the Sunday, turns Sunday employer, and compels a legion of slaves of the whip and the foot-board to toil for its gratification? Then glance at the shops, which are to be found everywhere, but chiefly in the second-rate and retired streets, open all day long on the Sunday. They are, as you know, chiefly trash-shops, sweet-stuff shops, confectioners and tobacconists shops; to which you may add a number of chemists and druggists driving a Sunday trade in delectables, lozenges, and refreshing beverages. Talk to the owners of these shops, and you will find, in the generality of cases, that though they do, and must by keeping open, act as incentives to Sunday trading, they are themselves the victims of the Sunday Screw, because they consider themselves to be driven, by the custom which the Sunday pleasuretakers have established, to do the chief part of their week's business on the day of rest, which, often to their unspeakable disgust and mortification, has no rest for them. 'I take about £4 a week in this shop,' said once a poor widow with a family to maintain, but I take over £3 of it on the Sunday, and nearly all for things that are consumed for the Sunday's eating. If I were to shut up my shop on the Sunday and go to church, I should soon starve, and my children too, because my neighbours would not shut up; and then my customers would desert me.' She had not courage to do what conscience told her to be her duty, and leave results to Providence. This reasoning is common-so common as to be almost universal; and it stands recorded in evidence given before the House |