VARIETIES.
A Word to Pride.
Say to thy pride, “’Tis all but ashes for the urn;Come, let us own our dust, before to dust we turn.”
Say to thy pride, “’Tis all but ashes for the urn;Come, let us own our dust, before to dust we turn.”
Say to thy pride, “’Tis all but ashes for the urn;Come, let us own our dust, before to dust we turn.”
Say to thy pride, “’Tis all but ashes for the urn;
Come, let us own our dust, before to dust we turn.”
The Silent Lover.
Silence in love bewrays more woeThan words, though ne’er so witty;A beggar that is dumb, you know,May challenge double pity.—Raleigh.
Silence in love bewrays more woeThan words, though ne’er so witty;A beggar that is dumb, you know,May challenge double pity.—Raleigh.
Silence in love bewrays more woeThan words, though ne’er so witty;A beggar that is dumb, you know,May challenge double pity.—Raleigh.
Silence in love bewrays more woe
Than words, though ne’er so witty;
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity.
—Raleigh.
Musical Criticism.—There are two kinds of people who ought to give their opinions about music; those who know enough about it to give an opinion which is really valuable, and those who simply say what they like and what they don’t like, and no more.
A Strengthening Medicine.
A Parisian chemist recently advertised his strengthening medicine for delicate people in the following terms:—
“Madame S. was so weak at the time of her marriage that she could hardly stand upright at the altar. Now, after using several bottles of my medicine, she is capable of throwing the smoothing iron at her husband without missing him once.”
A Generous Nature.—Generosity is in nothing more seen than in a candid estimation of other men’s virtues and good qualities.—Barrow.
Saving Habits.—Take care to be an economist in prosperity; there is no fear of not being one in adversity.
The Mind’s Sweetness.
Let thy mind’s sweetness have his operationUpon thy body, clothes, and habitation.—George Herbert.
Let thy mind’s sweetness have his operationUpon thy body, clothes, and habitation.—George Herbert.
Let thy mind’s sweetness have his operationUpon thy body, clothes, and habitation.—George Herbert.
Let thy mind’s sweetness have his operation
Upon thy body, clothes, and habitation.
—George Herbert.
By Fits and Starts.
The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise,And even the best by fits what they despise.—Pope.
The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise,And even the best by fits what they despise.—Pope.
The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise,And even the best by fits what they despise.—Pope.
The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise,
And even the best by fits what they despise.
—Pope.
What is Wit?
True wit is nature to advantage dressed,What oft was thought but ne’er so expressed.—Pope.
True wit is nature to advantage dressed,What oft was thought but ne’er so expressed.—Pope.
True wit is nature to advantage dressed,What oft was thought but ne’er so expressed.—Pope.
True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought but ne’er so expressed.
—Pope.
Self-knowledge.—It is not until we have passed through the furnace that we are made to know how much dross is in our composition.
Fluent Speech.—The common fluency of speech in most men and most women, says Dean Swift, is owing to a scarcity of matter and scarcity of words; for whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common speakers have only one set of ideas and one set of words to clothe them in, and these are always ready at the mouth. So people come faster out of church when it is almost empty than when a crowd is at the door.
An Objection to Hatred.—Plutarch says, very finely, that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies; for if you indulge this passion on some occasions it will rise of itself on others.—Addison.
Amusement for the Wise.
Amusement is not an end, but a means—a means of refreshing the mind and replenishing the strength of the body; when it begins to be the principal thing for which one lives, or when, in pursuing it, the mental powers are enfeebled, and the bodily health impaired, it falls under just condemnation.
Amusements that consume the hours which ought to be sacred to sleep, are, therefore, censurable.
Amusements that call us away from work which we are bound to do are pernicious, just to the extent to which they cause us to be neglectful or unfaithful.
Amusements that rouse or stimulate morbid appetites or unlawful passions, or that cause us to be restless or discontented, are always to be avoided.
Any indulgence in amusement which has a tendency to weaken our respect for the great interests of character, or to loosen our hold on the eternal verities of the spiritual realm, is so far an injury to us.
Fish against Fry.
The followingjeu d’espritwas suggested by an action at law some years ago, in which the parties were a Mr. Fry and a Mr. Fish:—
“The Queen’s Bench Reports have cooked up an odd dish,In action for damagesFryversusFish;But sure, if for damages action could lie,It certainly must have beenFishagainstFry.”
“The Queen’s Bench Reports have cooked up an odd dish,In action for damagesFryversusFish;But sure, if for damages action could lie,It certainly must have beenFishagainstFry.”
“The Queen’s Bench Reports have cooked up an odd dish,In action for damagesFryversusFish;But sure, if for damages action could lie,It certainly must have beenFishagainstFry.”
“The Queen’s Bench Reports have cooked up an odd dish,
In action for damagesFryversusFish;
But sure, if for damages action could lie,
It certainly must have beenFishagainstFry.”
Wise Words on Reading.
One of the common errors of the day is indulgence in indiscriminate reading. The greater the number of books the more careful readers ought to be in the choice of them, and as a guide to their value nothing could be better than the following wise words of Southey:—
“Young readers, you whose hearts are open, whose understandings are not yet hardened, and whose feelings are neither exhausted nor encrusted with the world, take from me a better rule than any professors of criticism will teach you.
“Would you know whether the tendency of a book is good or evil, examine in what state of mind you lay it down. Has it induced you to suspect that what you have been accustomed to think unlawful may after all be innocent, and that that may be harmless which you have hitherto been taught to think dangerous? Has it tended to make you dissatisfied and impatient under the control of others, and disposed you to relax in that self-government without which both the laws of God and man tell us there can be no virtue, and consequently no happiness? Has it attempted to abate your admiration and reverence for what is great and good, and to diminish in you a love of your country and of your fellow creatures? Has it addressed itself to your pride, your vanity, your selfishness, or any of your evil propensities? Has it defiled the imagination with what is loathsome, and shocked the heart with what is monstrous? Has it distracted the sense of right and wrong which the Creator has implanted in the human soul?
“If so—if you have felt that such were the effects it was intended to produce—throw the book into the fire, whatever name it may bear upon the title-page. Throw it into the fire, young man, though it should have been the gift of a friend; young lady, away with the whole set, though it should be the prominent furniture in the rosewood bookcase.”
Taught by a Robin.—I am sent to the ant to learn industry, to the dove to learn innocence, to the serpent to learn wisdom, and why not to the robin redbreast, who chants as delightfully in winter as in summer, to learn equanimity and patience?
Hands and Feet.
Hands are no more beautiful for being small than eyes are for being big; but many a modern girl would ask her fairy godmother, if she had one, to give her eyes as big as saucers and hands as small as those of a doll, believing that the first cannot be too large nor the last too small. Tiny hands and feet are terms constantly used by poets and novelists in a most misleading manner. It cannot be possible that they are intended by the writers to express anything but general delicacy and refinement; but a notion is encouraged that results in the destruction of one of the most beautiful of natural objects—the human foot.
This unfortunate notion, that the beauty of the foot depends upon its smallness, leads to the crippling of it, till it becomes in many cases a bunch of deformity. It is a most reprehensible practice, alike revolting to good taste and good sense, to put the foot of a growing girl into a shoe that is not only too short, crumpling the toes into a bunch, but, being pointed, turns the great toe inwards, producing deformity of general shape, and, in course of time, inevitable bunions, the only wonder being that steadiness in standing or any grace of movement at all is left.
Girls and their Mothers.—A writer in a contemporary calls attention to the very objectionable sharpness with which some girls speak to their mothers. “In a railway carriage on our journey north,” she says, “the window seats at one end were occupied by two ladies, evidently mother and daughter. The latter appeared to be out of temper. The former mildly remarked, ‘Do you not think we had better have the window up?’ the reply was, ‘Most certainly not,’ delivered in F sharp key. If I were a modern Cœlebs in search of a wife, I should very carefully observe the young lady’s manner to her mother before asking the momentous question, for a girl must be vixenish at heart and unamiable indeed, when she can address her own mother with such careless rudeness as one too often hears.”
Modesty.—Modesty is the appendage of sobriety, and is to chastity, to temperance, and to humility, as the fringes are to a garment.—Jeremy Taylor.