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I would as soon attempt to entice a starTo perch upon my finger; or the windTo follow me like a dog—as try to makeSome people do what they ought.

When Washington Irving visited Abbotsford, Sir Walter Scott introduced him to many of his friends and favorites, not only among the neighboring farmers, but the laboring peasantry. "I wish to show you," said Scott, "some of our really excellent plain Scotch people. The character of a nation is not to be learnt from its fine folks, its fine gentlemen and ladies; such you meet everywhere, and they are everywhere the same."

—Smiles.

Never have anything to do with an unlucky man. I never act with them. Their advice sounds very well, but they cannot get on themselves; and if they cannot do good to themselves, how can they do good to me?

—Rothschild.

He that studies books alone, will know how things ought to be; and he that studies men, will know how things are.

Wise men care not for what they cannot have.

Young people are very apt to overrate both men and things, from not being enough acquainted with them.

The trouble with most young men is that they do not learn anything thoroughly, and are apt to do the work committed to them in a careless manner. The business world is full of such young men, content in simply putting in their time somehow and drawing their salaries, making no effort whatever to increase their efficiency and thereby enhance their own as well as their employers' interests.

—Unknown.

The Clemency of a Queen.—It is related that during the first few days of the reign of Queen Victoria, then a girl between nineteen and twenty years of age, some sentences of a court-martial were presented for her signature. One was death for desertion. She read it, paused, and looked up to the officer who laid it before her, and said:—"Have you nothing to say in behalf of this man?" "Nothing; he has deserted three times," answered the officer. "Think again, Your Grace," was the reply. "And," said the gallant veteran, as he related the circumstance to his friends—(for he was none other than the Duke of Wellington)—"seeing her majesty so earnest about it, I said—'He is certainly a badsoldier, but there was somebody who spoke as to his good character, and he may be a goodmanfor aught I know to the contrary.'""Oh, I thank you a thousand times!" exclaimed the youthful queen, and hastily writing 'Pardoned' in large letters on the fatal page, she sent it across the table with a hand trembling with eagerness and beautiful emotion.

—Hodgins.

Mercy's door should open to those who knock.

When there is doubt, lean to the side of mercy.

—Cervantes.

When the Omniscient Giver of all life,In His eternal council first conceivedThe thought of man's creation, forth He call'dInto His presence three bright ministers—Justice, and Truth, and Mercy, that foreverHad hovered around His throne—and thus He spoke;"Shall we make man?" Then stern Justice replied:"Create him not, for he will trample onThy holy law;" and Truth, too, answering, said,"Create him not, O God! he will polluteThy sanctuary!" When forth Mercy came,And dropping on her knees, exclaimed: "O God!Create him! I will watch his wandering steps,And tender guide thro' all the darksome pathsThat he may tread." Then forthwith God made man,And said: "Thou art the child of Mercy; go:In mercy with thy erring brother deal."

—Judge Crittenden, of Ky.

Think not the good,The gentle deeds of mercy thou hast done,Shall die forgotten all; the poor, the prisoner,The fatherless, the friendless, and the widow,Who daily owe the bounty of thy hand,Shall cry to Heaven, and pull a blessing on thee.

—Nicholas Rowe.

He that showeth mercy when it may be best spared will receive mercy when it shall be most needed.

I would not enter on my list of friends(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,Yet wanting sensibility) the manWho needlessly sets foot upon a worm.An inadvertent step may crush the snailThat crawls at evening in the public path;But he that has humanity forewarn'd,Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.Ye, who love mercy, teach your sonsTo love it too.

—Cowper.

It is beautifully said that the veil of futurity is woven by the hand of mercy.

—Bulwer-Lytton.

We pray for mercy, Let that same prayer teach us to render The deeds of mercy.

—Shakespeare.

Merit does not always meet its due reward.

Merit and good-breeding will make their way everywhere.

All are not merry that dance lightly.

—Herbert.

When I dinna ken what I say, Sandy,And ye dinna ken what I mean—that's metaphysics.

—Scotch.

Method will teach you to win time.

—Goethe.

Perhaps one of the most noteworthy characteristics of Methodists is the spirit of clannishness which runs through the whole body. Is any sick, the rest are eager to pray; is any merry, the rest are delighted to sing psalms; and they will not only pray and sing in sympathy, which is comparatively easy, but they are ready to spend, and to be spent, for the brethren to almost any extent. Men may know that they are Methodists from the love they have one to another.

Through whatsoever ill betideFor you I will be spent and spend:I'll stand forever by your side,And naught shall you and me divide,Because you are my friend.

—Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler.

Where might is right, right is not upright.

—From the German.

It is indicative of a weak mind to be much depressed by adversity or elated by prosperity.

A well-governed mind learns in time, to find pleasure in nothing but the true and the just.

—Amiel.

Overtasking the mind is an unwise act; when nature is unwilling, the labour is vain.

—Seneca.

Who fills his mind with matters smallFor great things has no room at all.

When the mind is in a state of uncertainty, the smallest impulse directs it to either side.

—Terence.

It cannot be too deeply impressed on the mind, that application is the price to be paid for mental acquisitions, and that it is as absurd to expect them without it, as to hope for a harvest where we have not sown the seed.

—Bailey.

Narrowness of mind is often the cause of obstinacy: we do not easily believe beyond what we see.

—La Rochefoucauld.

I am one,Who finds within me a nobility,That spurns the idle pratings of the great,And their mean boast of what their fathers were,While they themselves are fools effeminate,The scorn of all who know the worth of mindAnd virtue.

All who know their mind do not know their heart.

Entire and perfect happiness is neverVouchsafed to man; but nobler minds endeavorTo keep their inward sorrows unrevealed.With meaner spirits nothing is concealed.Weak, and unable to conform to fortune,With rude rejoicing or complaint importune,They vent their exultation or distress.Whate'er betides us—grief or happiness—The brave and wise will bear with steady mind,The allotment, unforeseen and undefined,Of good or evil, which the Gods bestow,Promiscuously dealt to man below.

—Theognis, Greek.Translated by Frere.

Life will always be, to a large extent, what we ourselves make it. Each mind makes its own little world. The cheerful mind makes it pleasant, and the discontented mind makes it miserable. "My mind to me a kingdom is" applies alike to the peasant as to the monarch.

The face is the index of the mind.

—Crabbe.

It is not position, but mind, that I want, said a lady to her father, when rejecting a suitor.

Those who visit foreign countries, but who associate only with their own countrymen, change their climate, but not their customs; they see new meridians, but the same men, and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home, with travelled bodies, but untravelled minds.

Youthful minds, like the pliant wax, are susceptible of the most lasting impressions, and the good or evil bias they then receive is seldom if ever eradicated.

Little minds are hurt by little things; great minds rise above them.

Noblest minds are easiest bent.

—Homer.

My friends, the chief duty of the ministers of God, is, that they should help their brethren to the best of their fallible knowledge and feeble power. When there is a spirit of repentance; when men truly seek the means of grace; when they have ceased to be insolent and defiant in sin; when they do intend—were it but ever so faintly—to lead a new life—then

Our commission is to heal, not harm;We come not to condemn, but reconcile;We come not to compel, but call again;We come not to destroy, but edify;Nor yet to question things already done;These are forgiven; matters of the past;And range with jetsam, and with offal, thrownInto the blind sea of forgetfulness.

—F. W. Farrar, D. D.

One ounce of mirth is worth more than ten thousand weight of gloominess.

Man is no match for woman where mischief reigns.

—Balzac.

Most just it is that he who breweth mischief should have the first draught of it himself.

—Jemmat.

Constantine the Great, born 274 A. D., in order to reclaim a miser, took a lance and marked out a space of ground the size of a human body and said to him: "Add heap to heap, accumulate riches upon riches, extend the bounds of your possessions, conquer the whole world, and in a few days, such a spot as this, will be all that you will have."

A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.

—Shenstone.

Misers.—If I knew a miser, who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow citizens, for the sake of accumulating wealth; "Poor Man," I would say, "you pay too much for your whistle."

—Benj. Franklin.

No thoroughly occupied man was ever miserable.

—Dutch.

'Tis time enough to bear a misfortune when it comes without anticipating it.

—Seneca.

Learn never to repine at your own misfortunes, or to envy the happiness of others.

Any man may make a mistake; none but a fool will stick to it.

—Cicero.

Better a mistake avoided, than two corrected.

I will not quarrel with a slight mistake,Such as our nature's frailty may excuse.

—Roscommon.

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.

—Swift.

No lessons are so impressive as those our mistakes teach us.

Young heads are giddy, and young hearts are warm,And make mistakes for manhood to reform.

—Young.

People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.

—Goldsmith.

He that holds fast the golden mean,And lives contentedly betweenThe little and the great,Feels not the wants that pinch the poor,Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door.

—Cowper.

'Tis not enough the voice be sound and clear,'Tis modulation that must charm the ear.

The abundance of money ruins youth.

I almost grow to believe there is a sort of curse on money which is not earned, even when it is bestowed by father on son or daughter. It cripples individual development, and I think only when it is earned is it blest.

A' complain o' want o' siller (money): nane o' want o' sense.

—Scotch.

Your money cannot change your blood,Although you strut as though it could.

He serves you in the present tense;He lends you in the conditional mood;Keeps you in the subjunctive;And is apt to ruin you in the future!

—Addison.

The love of money is the root of much devotion.

A man's money is either his master or his slave.

Money doesn't make happiness. There is many a heart-ache behind plenty of money!

—Nettie S. Murphy.

He who finds no money in his own purse, is still less likely to find it in that of others.

Agassiz said, "I have no time to waste in making money. Life is not sufficiently long to enable a man to get rich and do his duty to his fellow man at the same time."

No bees, no honey; no work, no money.

Money will purchase occupation;It will purchase all the conveniences of life;It will purchase variety of company;It will purchase all sorts of entertainments;It can change men's manners; alter their conditions!How tempestuous these slaves are without it!O thou powerful metal! what authorityIs in thee! thou art the key of all men'sMouths; with thee a man may lock up the jawsOf an informer, and without thee, heCannot open the lips of a lawyer.

—Broome.

Mention money and the world is silent.

How like a queen comes forth the lonely moonFrom the slow opening curtains of the clouds;Walking in beauty to her midnight throne!

—G. Croly.

See yonder fire! it is the moonSlow rising o'er the eastern hill.It glimmers on the forest tips,And through the dewy foliage dripsIn little rivulets of light,And makes the heart in love with night.

—H. W. Longfellow.

With morning cool reflection comes.

—Sir Walter Scott.

The morning hour has gold in its mouth.

—Dr. Franklin.

The Princess of Wales has trained her children so carefully in habits of obedience and veracity that they are most trustworthy little persons. Before her royal highness started on her trip round the world with her husband, she drew up a list of rules to be observed in the nursery, and added a series of light tasks to be fullfilled by each one of the youngsters before the date set for her return.

The rules were to be enforced by the nurses. The performance of the tasks was left to the honor of the children, and in addition there was a list of things they must not do.

There were occasional lapses of memory as regards the forbidden things, and some carelessness in carrying out the tasks, for royal children, despite the severity of their training, are children still. But in the main they respected their mother's wishes and commands, and took no advantage of her absence. Upon one occasion, however, they were sorely tempted. This was when their loving and beloved grandmother, Queen Alexandria, brought them a big box of bonbons. But when the sweets were offered to them, one child after another reluctantly but firmly declined to take any.

"We like them, but mother has forbidden us to eat them," explained the eldest prince.

"You can have the sugar-plums if I say you may," said the indulgent queen. "I will tell mama all about it when she returns."

Prince Eddie wavered momentarily, then reiterated his refusal.

"We'd like them," he sighed, "but that's what mother said."

The queen was slightly annoyed by this opposition.

"But if I say you may—" she said.

Prince Eddie stood his ground, a hero between two fires—the wishes of his adored mother, and those of his almost equally adored grandmother. His sister and his brothers followed his lead. When the queen went away she put the bonbons on the nursery table and there they stayed for months untouched, a handsome monument to the thoroughness of the princess' training and the respectful love and devotion of her children.

—The Youth's Companion.

Better the child should cry than the mother sigh.

—Danish.

In Scotland a peasant woman had a child a few weeks old, which was seized by one of the golden eagles, the largest in the country, and borne away in its talons to its lofty eyrie on one of the most inaccessible cliffs of Scotland's bleak hills; the mother, perceiving her loss, hurried in alarm to its rescue, and the peasantry among whom the alarm spread, rushed out to her aid; they all came to the foot of the tremendous precipice; the peasants were anxious to risk their lives in order to recover the little infant; but how was the crag to be reached? One peasant tried to climb, but was obliged to return; another tried and came down injured; a third tried, and one after another failed, till a universal feeling of despair and deep sorrow fell upon thecrowd as they gazed upon the eyrie where the infant lay. At last a woman was seen, climbing first one part and then another, getting over one rock and then another, and while every heart trembled with alarm, to the amazement of all, they saw her reach the loftiest crag, and clasp the infant rejoicingly in her bosom. This heroic female began to descend the perilous steep with her child; moving from point to point; and while everyone thought that her next step would precipitate her and dash her to pieces, they saw her at length reach the ground with the child safe in her arms. Who was this female? Why did she succeed when others failed? It was The Mother of The Child.

—Cumming.

The Rev. George Crabbe when describing the funeral of "The Mother," in his passing glance at the half-interested spectators, says:—

Curious and sad, upon the fresh-dug hillThe village lads stood, melancholy still.

and in his description of the return to the house:—

Arrived at home, how then they gazed around.In every place where she no more was found;The seat at table she was wont to fill;The fireside chair, still set, but vacant still;The garden walks, a labor all her own;The latticed bower, with trailing shrubs o'ergrown:The Sunday pew she filled with all her race—Each place of hers, was now a sacred place,That while it called up sorrows in the eyes,Pierced the full heart, and forced them still to rise.

—From the Eclectic Magazine.

Children, look in those eyes, listen to that dear voice, notice the feeling of even a single touch that is bestowed upon you by that gentle hand. Make much of it while yet you have that most precious of all good gifts, a loving mother. Read the unfathomable love of those eyes; the kind anxiety of that tone and look, however slight your pain.

In after-life you may have friends, fond, dear, kind friends; but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows. Often do I sigh in my struggles with hard, uncaring world, for the sweet, deep security I felt when, of an evening nestling in her bosom, I listened to some quiet tale, suitable to my age, read in her tender and untiring voice. Never can I forget her sweet glances cast upon me when I appeared asleep, never her kiss of peace at night. Years have passed away since we laid her beside my father in the old church yard; yet still her voice whispers from the grave, and her eye watches over me, as I visit spots long since hallowed to the memory of my mother.

The mother's heart is the child's school-room.

He who takes the child by the hand, takes the mother by the heart.

Who ran to help me when I fell,And would some pretty story tell,Or kiss the place to make it well?My mother.

Each mother is a historian; she writes not the history of empires or of nations on paper, but she writes her own history on the imperishable mind of her child. That tablet and that history will remain indelible when time shall be no more. That history each mother shall meet again, and read, with eternal joy, or unutterable grief, in the coming ages of eternity.

That it is the mother who moulds the man is a sentiment beautifully illustrated by the following recorded observation of a shrewd writer:—

"When I lived among the Choctaw Indians, I held a consultation with one of their chiefs respecting the successive stages of their progress in the arts of civilized life; and among other things he informed me, that at their start they made a great mistake,—they only sent boys to school. These boys came home intelligent men; but they married uneducated and uncivilized wives, and the uniform result was, the children were all like their mothers. The father soon lost all his interest both in wife and children. 'And now,' said he 'if we would educate but one class of our children, we should choose the girls; for, when they become mothers, they educate their sons.'"

Can'st thou, mother, for a moment thinkThat we, thy children, when old age shall shedIts blanching honors on thy weary head,Could from our best of duties ever shrink?Sooner the sun from his high sphere should sink,Than we, ungrateful, leave thee in that dayTo pine in solitude thy life away,Or shun thee, tottering on the grave's cold brink.Banish the thought!—where'er our steps may roam,O'er smiling plains, or wastes without a treeStill will fond memory point our hearts to thee,And paint the pleasures of thy peaceful home;While duty bids us all thy griefs assuageAnd smoothe the pillow of thy sinking age.

—Henry Kirke White.

My mother! when I learned that thou wast dead,Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?I heard the bells tolled on thy burial day,I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away;And, turning from my nursery window, drewA long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu!Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went,Till, all my stock of infant sorrow spent,I learned at last submission to my lot:But though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot.

—Cowper.

An ounce of mother is worth more than a pound of clergy.

—Spanish Proverb.

It was a judicious resolution of a father, as well as a most pleasing compliment to his wife, when, on being asked by a friend what he intended to do with his girls, he replied: "I intend to apprentice them to their mother, that they may learn the art of improving time, and be fitted to become wives, mothers, heads of families, and useful members ofsociety." Equally just, but very different, was the remark of an unhappy husband—his wife was vain and thoughtless—"It is hard to say, but if my girls are to have a chance of growing up good for anything, they must be sent out of the way of their mother's example."

My son! my son! I cannot speak the rest—Ye who have sons can only know my fondness!Ye who have lost them, or who fear to lose,Can only know my pangs! none else can guess them;A mother's sorrows cannot be conceivedBut by a mother!

Pomponius Atticus, who pronounced a funeral oration on the death of his mother, protested that though he had resided with her sixty-seven years, he was never once reconciled to her; "because," said he, "there never happened the least discord between us, and consequently there was no need of reconciliation."

Is there, when the winds are singingIn the happy summer time—When the raptured air is ringingWith earth's music heavenward springing,Forest chirp and village chime—Is there, of the sounds that floatUnsighingly, a single noteHalf so sweet, and clear, and wild,As the laughter of a child?

—Laman Blanchard.

A True Estimate of a Mother.—To a child, there is no velvet so soft as a mother's lap, no rose so lovely as her smile, no path so flowery as that imprinted with her footsteps.

The following simple, beautiful lines contain an unadorned statement of a fact in the experience of a friend, who is fond of wandering in the Scotch highland glens:

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