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As I came wandering down Glen Spean,Where the braes are green and grassy,With my light step I overtookA weary-footed lassie.She had one bundle on her back,Another in her hand,And she walked as one who was full loathTo travel from the land.Quoth I, "my bonnie lass!"—for sheHad hair of flowing gold,And dark brown eyes, and dainty limbs,Right pleasant to behold—"My bonnie lass, what aileth thee,On this bright summer day,To travel sad and shoeless thusUpon the stony way?"I'm fresh and strong, and stoutly shod,And thou art burdened so;March lightly now and let me bearThe bundles as we go.""No, no!" she said, "that canna be,What's mine is mine to bear,Of good or ill, as God may will,I take my portioned share.""But you have two and I have none;One burden give to me;I'll takethatbundle from thy backThat heavier seems to be.""No, no!" she said; "this, if you will,Thatholds—no hand but mineMay bear its weight from dear Glen Spean'Cross the Atlantic brine!""Well, well! but tell me what may beWithin that precious loadWhich thou dost bear with such fine careAlong the dusty road?"Is it some present rareFrom friend in parting hour;Perhaps, as prudent maidens wont,Thou tak'st with thee thy dower?"She drooped her head, and with her handShe gave a mournful wave;"Oh, do not jest, dear sir—it isTurf from my mother's grave!"I spoke no word; we sat and weptBy the road-side together:No purer dew on that bright dayWas dropt upon the heather.

As I came wandering down Glen Spean,Where the braes are green and grassy,With my light step I overtookA weary-footed lassie.

She had one bundle on her back,Another in her hand,And she walked as one who was full loathTo travel from the land.

Quoth I, "my bonnie lass!"—for sheHad hair of flowing gold,And dark brown eyes, and dainty limbs,Right pleasant to behold—

"My bonnie lass, what aileth thee,On this bright summer day,To travel sad and shoeless thusUpon the stony way?

"I'm fresh and strong, and stoutly shod,And thou art burdened so;March lightly now and let me bearThe bundles as we go."

"No, no!" she said, "that canna be,What's mine is mine to bear,Of good or ill, as God may will,I take my portioned share."

"But you have two and I have none;One burden give to me;I'll takethatbundle from thy backThat heavier seems to be."

"No, no!" she said; "this, if you will,Thatholds—no hand but mineMay bear its weight from dear Glen Spean'Cross the Atlantic brine!"

"Well, well! but tell me what may beWithin that precious loadWhich thou dost bear with such fine careAlong the dusty road?

"Is it some present rareFrom friend in parting hour;Perhaps, as prudent maidens wont,Thou tak'st with thee thy dower?"

She drooped her head, and with her handShe gave a mournful wave;"Oh, do not jest, dear sir—it isTurf from my mother's grave!"

I spoke no word; we sat and weptBy the road-side together:No purer dew on that bright dayWas dropt upon the heather.

—John Stuart Black.

When we are sick, where can we turn for succor,When we are wretched where can we complain?And when the world looks cold and surly on usWhere can we go to meet a warmer eyeWith such sure confidence as to a mother?

Is there a heart that music cannot melt?Alas! how is that rugged heart forlorn.

—Beattie.

Music loosens a heart that care has bound.

No music is so charming to my ear as the requests of my friends, and the supplications of those in want of my assistance.

—Caesar.

His very foot has music in't,As he comes up the stair.

—Burns.

For art may err, but nature cannot miss.

—J. Dryden.

Our nature exists by motion; perfect rest is death.

Good-nature, like a bee, collects honey from every herb. Ill-nature, like a spider, sucks poison from the sweetest flower.

Good-nature is the beauty of the mind, and, like personal beauty, wins almost without anything else.

—Hanway.

If you want to keep your good looks, keep your good nature.

No ordinance of man shall overrideThe settled laws of nature and of God;Not written these in pages of a book,Nor were they framed to-day, nor yesterday;We know not whence they are; but this we know,That they from all eternity have been,And shall to all eternity endure.

—Sophocles, born 495 B. C.

Every one follows the inclinations of his own nature.

—Propertius.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,There is a rapture on the lonely shore,There is society where none intrudes,By the deep sea, and music in its roar:I love not man the less, but nature more,From these our interviews, in which I stealFrom all I may be, or have been before,To mingle with the universe, and feelWhat I am can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

—Lord Byron.

Who can paintLike nature? Can imagination boast,Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?

—J. Thomson.

Tender handed stroke a nettleAnd it stings you for your pains;Grasp it like a man of mettle,And it soft as silk remains;Thus it is with vulgar natures,Use them kindly, they rebel:But be rough as nutmeg graters,And the rogues obey you well.

—Aaron Hill.

Where is there a sharper arrow than the sting of unmerited neglect?

'Tis wisely saidTo know thyself: equally profitable it isTo know thy neighbors!

Say not unto thy neighbor, Go, and come again, and to-morrow I will give; when thou hast it by thee.

—Proverbs 3, 28v.

Very Few Live by Choice.—Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly co-operate; and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own.

—Dr. Johnson in Rasselas.

We ought to do at once and without delay whatever we owe to our neighbors; to make them wait for what is due to them, is the essence of injustice.

It wins my admirationTo view the structure of this little work—A bird's nest. Mark it well, within, without;No tool had he that wrought; no knife to cut,No nail to fix, no bodkin to insert,No glue to join; his little beak was all;And yet how neatly finished!—What nice hand,And every implement and means of art,And twenty years' apprenticeship to boot,Could make me such another? Fondly thenWe boast of excellence, whose noblest skillInstinctive genius foils.

—Hurdis.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

—Ecclesiastes 1, 9v.

He knocks boldly at the door who brings good news.

The most ridiculous nicknames are often the most adhesive.

—Haliburton.

Coolness and counsel come in the night, and both are of God.

—Arab Proverb.

Quiet night, that bringsRest to the laborer, is the outlaw's day,In which he rises early to do wrong,And when his work is ended, dares not sleep.

—P. Massinger.

Night is the time for rest;How sweet, when labors close,To gather 'round an aching breastThe curtain of repose.Stretch the tir'd limbs and lay the headDown on our own delightful bed!

—Jas. Montgomery.

Learn to say No! and it will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.

—Spurgeon.

Duty.—A wise man who does not assist with his counsels, a rich man with his charity, and a poor man with his labor, are perfect nobodies in a commonwealth.

—Swift.

Nobody likes to be nobody;But everybody is pleased to think himself somebody.And everybody is somebody:But when anybody thinks himself to be somebody,He generally thinks everybody else to be nobody.

By doing nothing we learn to do ill.

—Watts.

The young are fond of novelty.

So easily are we impressed by numbers, that even a dozen wheelbarrows in succession seem quite imposing.

—Richter.

Lord Elibank, the Scotch peer, was told that Dr. Johnson, in his dictionary, had defined oats to be food for horses in England, and for men in Scotland. "Ay," said his lordship, "and where else can you find such horses and such men?"

Deuteronomy xxi, 20.—"This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice."

"I well remember," says a writer on Christian education, "being much impressed by a sermon about twenty years ago, in which the preacher said, were he to select one word as the most important in education, it should be the word, obey. My experience since has fully convinced me of the justice of the remark. Without filial obedience everything must go wrong. Is not a disobedient child guilty of a manifest breach of the Fifth Commandment? And is not a parent, who suffers this disobedience to continue, an habitual partaker in his child's offense against that commandment?"

Obedience.—Obedience, promptly, fully given, is one of the most beautiful things that walks the earth.

—Dr. Raleigh.

Wise, modest, constant, ever close at hand,Not weighing, but obeying all command,Such servant by a monarch's throne may stand.

An extraordinary haste to discharge an obligation is a sort of ingratitude.

—La Rochefoucauld.

Most men remember obligations, but not often to be grateful for them. The proud are made sour by the remembrance, and the vain silent.

To John I ow'd great obligation,But John unhappily thought fitTo publish it to all the nation:Sure John and I are more than quit.

—Prior.

People newly emerged from obscurity, generally launch out into indiscriminate display.

—Jean Ingelow.

Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a plausible motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for the tenacity of reason or conscience.

—Amiel.

Thrice happy they who have an occupation.

—Byron.

An oil-jar can be used again for nothing but oil.

(A man should follow what he was bred to.)

—Chinese.

Others may use the ocean as their road,Only the British make it their abode:—They tread the billows with a steady foot.

—Waller.

To call people peculiar is only a polite way of calling them disagreeable.

—W. S. Murphy.

Time to me this truth has taught('Tis a treasure worth revealing,)More offend by want of thoughtThan by want of feeling.

—Charles Swain.

A dog's obeyed in office.

—Shakespeare.

A bad man in office is a public calamity.

—French.

Omissions, no less than commissions, are oftentimes branches of injustice.

—Antoninus.

It has been shrewdly said, that, when men abuse us, we should suspectourselves, and when they praise us,them.

No liberal man would impute a charge of unsteadiness to another for having changed his opinion.

—Cicero.

Men often lose opportunities by want of self-confidence. Doubts and fears in the minds of some rise up over every event, and they fear to attempt what most probably would be successful through their timorousness; while a courageous, active man, will, perhaps with half the ability, carry an enterprise to a prosperous termination.

Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period or other, when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own. Past opportunities are gone; the future may never come to us.

—Colton.

To let slip a favorable opportunity is the greatest proof of imbecility.

He loses all who loses the right moment.

Master of human destinies am I;Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait,Cities and fields I walk; I penetrateDeserts, and seas remote, and, passing byHovel, and mart, and palace, soon or late,I knock unbidden once at every gate.If sleeping, wake; if feasting, riseBefore I turn away. It is the hour of fate,And those who follow me, gain every stateMortals desire, and conquer every foeSave Death, but those who doubt, or hesitate,Condemned to failure, penury, and woe,Seek me in vain, and uselessly implore.I answer not, and I return no more.

—U. S. Senator John J. Ingalls, of Kansas.

There is no man whom Fortune does not visit at least once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.

—Cardinal Imperiali.

Didn't Know the Place.—A young man who left his native city to study medicine in Paris, and had been applying his time and the paternal remittances to very different purposes, received a visit from his father, who intended making a short stay in the capital to inspect its wonders. During an afternoon stroll together, the day after the elder's arrival, the father and son happened to pass in front of a large colonnaded building. "What is that?" said the senior, carelessly. "I don't know, but we'll inquire," answered the student. On the query being put to an official, he shortly replied: "That? It is the School of Medicine."

The opportunity is often lost by deliberating.

—Syrus.

We must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

—Shakespeare.

Four things come not back.The spoken word,The sped arrow,The past life,And the neglected opportunity.

To-day is the opportunity for enjoyment and work; knowest thou where thou wilt be to-morrow? Time flies swiftly away, and we with it.

—Gleim.

There are sharks in the ocean, and wolves in the forest, and eagles in the air, and tyrants on thrones, and tormentors in cottages.

—Dr. J. Hamilton.

All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth.

—Shakespeare.

Ambitious parents sometimes try to make lawyers, doctors,preachers and statesmen out of boys nature meant for plowmen. How often do we find misfits! There is nothing more pitiable than to see a man whose mind and heart are completely wrapped up in one thing and yet condemned by circumstances to do another.

The cavalry captain Kurtzhagen was invited to dine with King Frederick II. "From what noble house are you descended?" asked the king. "From none whatever," replied Kurtzhagen. "My parents are only poor country people, but I would not exchange them for any other parents in the world." "Well said," replied the king. "Woe to him who is so mean as to be ashamed of his parents."

"Father," said a young man on his death-bed, "you have been very good to me. You have given me a fine education, and you have placed me in a fine social position; you have done everything for me in a worldly sense; but, dear father, you never told me much of a hereafter. Now I am dying."

If any one toil for a parent, it is not fitting to bear remembrance of the toil.

The good conduct of the father and mother is the blessing of the children.

A little Boston girl was encouraged by her parents to study so much that her brain gave way, and she is now an idiot. This is a sad result, but the parents must find some consolation in the thought that they have made their daughter like themselves.

It so falls out, that,What we have we prize, not to the worth,While we enjoy it; but being lack'd and lost,Why, then, we rack the value, then we findThe virtue that possession would not show us,Whilst it was ours.

—Shakespeare.

Note: Applicable to one's parents.

We twain have met like the ships upon the sea,Who hold an hour's converse, so short, so sweet;One little hour! and then, away they speedOn lonely paths, through mists, and cloud, and foam,To meet no more.

—A. Smith.

When forc'd to part from those we love,Though sure to meet to-morrow;We yet a kind of anguish prove,And feel a touch of sorrow.But oh! what words can paint the fearsWhen from those friends we sever,Perhaps to part for months—for years—Perhaps to part for ever.

Control your passion or it will control you.

—Horace.

Nothing overcomes passion sooner than silence.

—French.

Remember, three things come not back;The arrow sent upon its track—It will not swerve, it will not stayIts speed; it flies to wound or slay;The spoken word, so soon forgotBy thee, but it has perished not;In other hearts 'tis living still,And doing work for good or ill;And the lost opportunityThat cometh back no more to thee.In vain thou weep'st, in vain dost yearn,These three will never more return.

Let by-gones be by-gones; let the past be forgotten.

—Dr. Webster.

Every one utters the word "past" with more emotion than "future."

—Richter.

The beaten path is the safe one.

—From the Latin.

A pearl is often hidden in an ugly shell.

—Chinese.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

—Cervantes.

An old peasant in a German village had to leave his children alone in the house for the day. "If a thief comes," he said to them, "do not cry 'Thief!' For everybody will be afraid and will say to himself: 'After all, it's not my property that's being taken.' No, my children; shout 'Fire!' The whole village will run to help you, for everybody will be afraid the fire will spread."

—Saturday Evening Post.

Perfection none must hope to findIn all this world—in man or woman-kind.

As the sun's shadow shifts, so there is no permanence on earth.

—Chinese.

By persevering, mountains will often become only mole hills.

Scottish perseverance has itself become proverbial; we remember to have met with a story which is said to be connected with the foundation of an opulent mercantile house which has flourished for some generations. Saunders, the traveler, entered a shop in London and enquired for the head of the house; one of the clerks asked what he wanted; the answer of Saunders was, as usual, a question, "Want ye aught in my line, sir?" "No," was the prompt reply, accompanied by a look of contempt at the itinerant Scotch merchant. "Will ye no tak' a look o' the gudes, sir?" was Saunders' next query. "No, not at all; I have not time. Take them away—take them away!" "Ye'll aiblins (perhaps) find them worth your while, and I doubt na but ye'll buy," said Saunders; and he proceeded to untie and unstrap his burden. "Go away—go away!" was reiterated more than once by the clerk, but the persevering Scot still persisted. The master of the establishment overheard all that had taken place, and now he stepped forward, and, moved by some compunction for the treatment the traveler had received, and some admiration, too, for the patience and perseverance of the man, he consented to look over thecontents of the pack, found them to be exactly the goods he was in want of, purchased them all, and gave a very large order; and thus, says Chambers, who tells the story, assisted in the foundation of a large mercantile house.

But is not this the stuff of which also the Livingstones and the Macleods are made? Was not this the spirit which set the brave Sir Walter Scott to work, when sinking into his later years, to overtake his fearful loss of one hundred thousand pounds? Is it not a commentary upon that especial proverb which we have said so illustrates the Scottish character, "He that tholes (or endures) overcomes?"

—Chambers Journal.

Better ask twice than lose your way once.

Petitions not sweeten'dWith gold, are but unsavoury, oft refused;Or if received, are pocketed, never read.

—Massinger.

Jenny Lind was frequently known to pass unobserved from her residence, as if to make a visit, and had been traced to the back lanes and cottages of the poor, whose wants she ascertained and relieved. Several times she had been remonstrated with, and warned by her intimate friends against being imposed upon. She always replied, "Never mind; if I relieve ten, and one is worthy, I am satisfied."

A philanthropist, when a candidate for the ministry, was traveling on one occasion from Strasbourg. It was in thewinter time. The ground was deeply covered with snow, and the roads were almost impassable. He had reached the middle of his journey and was among the mountains; and by that time was so exhausted that he could stand erect no longer. He was rapidly freezing to death, and sleep began to overpower him. He commended himself to God, and yielded to what he felt to be the sleep of death. He knew not how long he slept, but suddenly became conscious of some one rousing him. Before him stood a wagon-driver in his blue blouse, and the wagon not far away. His rescuer gave him a little wine and food, and the spirit of life returned. He then helped him upon the wagon, and brought him to the next village. Oberlin, the philanthropist, was profuse in his thanks, and offered money, which his benefactor refused. "It is only a duty to help one another," said the wagoner; "and it is the next thing to an insult to offer a reward for such a service." "Then," said Oberlin, "at least tell me your name, that I may have you in thankful remembrance before God." "I see," said the wagoner, "that you are a minister of the Gospel. Please tell me the name of the Good Samaritan." "That," said Oberlin, "I cannot do; for it was not put on record." "Then," replied the wagoner, "until you can tell me his name, permit me to withhold mine."

A Sensible Answer.—A story is told about Wendell Phillips—a story that must have made even the serious-minded Abolitionist laugh heartily: He was in a hotel in Charleston, had breakfast in his room, and was served by a slave. Mr. Phillips spoke to him as an Abolitionist, but the waiter seemed to be more concerned about the breakfast than about himself. Finally Mr. Phillips told him to go away, saying that he could not bear to be waited upon by a slave.

The other remonstrated: "Scuse me, massa, but I's obliged to stay yere, 'cause I's 'sponsible fo' de silverware."

A lady sent for me in haste to come and see,What her condition for a cure might be.Dear me! a patient—what a happy tone,To have a patient, and one all my own—To have a patient and myself be feed,Raised expectations very high indeed—I saw a practice growing from the seed.

—Wm. Tod Helmuth.

Fretting is the doctor's best friend all over the whole world.

Temperance and toil are the two real physicians of mankind.

The purse of the patient frequently, alas! protracts his cure.

—Zimmerman.

Physic, for the most part, is nothing else but the substitute of exercise and temperance.

—Addison.

To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.

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