MEDICINE FOR THE SOUL. emulate their brave ancestors in the valor and energy with which they furthered national interests, and in their devotion to the service of their country. If they were faithful to their trust he did not doubt that the Welsh national sentiment would continue to live amidst the political changes of modern Europe. Who knew whether the old prophecy uttered by a Welsh chieftain to Henry II. when he questioned him as to his belief about the future of the Welsh nation, might not come true, "Sire, this people have often been sore oppressed and borne down and all but crushed, and yet they will never be destroyed by the act of man. If God be not angry with them they will never be swept from the face of the earth. I do not believe that, whatever may come to pass, any other than the Welsh nation will answer for this corner of God's earth in the great day when the last trump shall sound and when all the nations upon earth shall be assembled before the judgmen throne." (Cheers.) "MEDICINE FOR THE SOUL." BY MRS. JENNIE H. JONES, CINCINNATI OHIO. [Read before the Cambro-American Society Cincinnati, Ohio.] "Books," said Plato, "are the food of the soul," and over the entrance to a library in ancient Thebes was the inscription, "Medicine for the Soul." Upon these two expressions are mainly based the few thoughts contained in this paper. "A healthy body," says a distinguished modern thinker, "is good, but a soul in right health is the thing beyond all others to be prayed for the blessedest thing this earth receives of Heaven." "A sound mind in a sound body," is a maxim which has been approved by all educators, ancient and modern, and everyone is ready to admit that 329 no education is worthy of the name which ignores the importance of securing for the individual the most perfect physical development. advocate ardently and earnestly an education which seeks to secure for every girl and every boy a symmetrically developed, well proportioned, and therefore, beautiful body a broad chest, sound lungs, an erect and graceful carriage, an elastic step, and a well modulated voice. But regarding man as a dual organism, as body and soul of the theologian, or as body and mind of the scientists. If soul, mind, ego spirit, that which is immortal, and not material, be the nobler part, it is fair and logical to infer that he who best promotes the healthy, symmetrical development of the human soul, is the greatest benefactor of his race. In the vast and ever-widening fields of literature is to be found much of what the soul requires for its healthy growth and sustenance. In the preparation and production of this soulsustaining aliment, are employed the great army of writers, authors, essayists, poets, journalists--and upon the intelligence, honesty, faithfulness and nobleness of purpose with which each and all of these fulfill their obligations, will depend very largely the moral and intellectual health of the community. Those who have been endowed with the divine genius of the poet, are able to administer that which is to the soul not only most alluring, but most enduring. Truth clothed with the rich imagery of poetic inspiration, becomes to the recipient thereof an everlasting possession. "Poetry," says Matthew Arnold, "is simply the most beautiful and most widely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance." Coleridge writes, "Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward. It has soothed my af flictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me." For the expression of sentiments sublime, inspiring and ennobling, as well as for tender pathos which soothes the sick and weary soul, the creations of the true poet are incomparable. What imagination that fully realize the cheering comfort and sustaining solace brought to many a burdened storm-tossed soul by the musical Psalm of David, the sweet melodies of a Tom Moore, or the tender lyrics of a Robert Burns. "If I may make the ballads of a country," said some one, "I care not who makes the laws." Parents and teachers should include among their sacred obligations that of having their children's minds well supplied with good poetry; not the barren, frivolous doggerel which often usurps the name, and the only merit of which lies in its metrical measure and jingling rhyme, but selections which embody in every line the grand and soul-stirring sentiments of poetic inspiration. Emerson says, "The only letter of good news is the poet. When he sings, the world listens, with the assurance that now a secret of God is to be revealed." Few poets are born, and none are made, and it is a matter much to be regretted that any who are not born poets should be inflated with the delusion that the weak imitations which they produce bear any relationship to that highest type of human expression, poetry. There may be plausible excuse for writing bad prose; there can be no possible excuse for writing bad poetry. And for those who are not poets there is much compensating comfort in the declaration of Longfellow : "Of equal merit with him who writes a If grand poem, is he who reads it grandly." "Everyone," says Carlyle, "who can read a poem well, is a poet.' Certain it is that no one can comprehend and reproduce well the thoughts depicted by the imagination of the poet without exercising his own. How imperative, then, should be the demand for good reading; not only the the ability to gain silently from the printed page all that the author designed to teach, but the ability to read so as to instruct and entertain others. What is popularly called elocution is not always identical with good reading, and there is often as wide difference between them as between an Indian war song and the pure, musical notes of the finished musician. Vociferation, mouthing an affected pronunciation, constant gesticulation, tearing a passion to tatters and sawing the air, are by no means necessary to good reading. all young people were taught to read according to the standard of excellence laid down by Carlyle and Longfellow, good poetry would become fascinating to them, and their souls would delight to linger at its healing fountains. Prominent among the many causes of failure on the part of the so-called reader of to-day, is a lack of repose. The advice of Hamlet, "Suit the action to the word," is interpreted, "Let every word be accompanied by an action," and hence the ceaseless gesticulation and ludicrous perpetual motion of the ordinary reader or reciter. The absurdity reaches its culmination when employed by the reader whose eyes are intently fastened upon book or manuscript. The greater the power exerted by the understanding and voice of the reader, the greater will be his repose. That harp of a thousand strings, the human voice, has, when properly attuned, wondrous power in the expression of thought. Unceas MEDICINE FOR THE SOUL. ing and unnecessary action not only detracts from this power, but subjects the acrobatic performer to just criticism and deserved ridicule. Let the schools teach repose. Let them aim at a more thorough cultivation of the voice, and of the power of thought analysis. Let them teach the principles that underlie graceful and appropriate action. Let it be an inexorable law, that gesture is to be used only when the voice is inadequate, and that an unsuitable or a made-to-order gesture is not a help, but a hindrance, and therefore a defect in the art of delivery. 331 ture intended for children's libraries is made to sell rather than to educate. Many of these volumes neither stimulate the intellect nor quicken the imagination, and their moral effect is, to say the least, a matter of the gravest doubt. Such erroneous guides to esthetics, morals and religion have, more than once, found their way into even Sunday school libraries. Whatever is worth reading, must awaken in the adult reader the consciousness that he is receiving benefit therefrom, and although he may not be able to formulate with exactness the amount of nutriment he has gained, he If in the intellectual development of must on closing the volume, realize that an individual, there is one thing of he has been fed and strengthened. Who greater importance than another, it is could read carefully and thoughtfully the judicious selection of what he Plutarch's Lives, or Buckle's History reads. He who reads without selec- of Civilization in England, or Locke's tion, is like a mariner without chart or Essays on the Human Understanding, compass. He drifts aimlessly along and kindred works, without knowing in the great ocean of literature, in con- that he was receiving that mental exstant danger of disaster from rocks, ercise which is a fundamental condishoals and quicksands. You who are tion of his soul's development? All able to answer wisely the question, reading should be promotive of power "What would you advise me to read?" in three directions. It must bring to you who are able to recommend, espe- the reader a realizing sense of increascially to the young reader, a properly ed mental and moral strength; it must graded, and at the same time attrac- stimulate him to reach higher planes tive course in reading, are in possession of thought, and nobler fields of acof a mighty power for good. What a tion; it must also leave him better change would be effected in the moral prepared to dispense with tongue or condition of society if the reading of pen, light and truth to those of his its young people could be fully and fellows who may be brought under his wisely controlled. The omnivorous influence. "The proper object of reader, or he who reads just what he reading," says John Morley, "is not supposes is popular, rarely receives the to dip into everything that wise men materials best suited to his soul's have written, but rather, in the cogent growth and nourishment. Children words of Cardinal Newman, who says, should be judiciously directed to those "The object of literature is to open wholesome intellectual foods which are the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to suitable to their particular, immediate enable it to comprehend and digest needs. The power of the youthful knowledge, to give it power over its reader to select and discriminate, will own faculties, application, method, grow in proportion to the care and critical exactness, sagacity, and exability with which it is guided and pression." Parents and teachers should cultivated. It is a matter to be deep- remember that the wise direction of ly deplored that so much of the litera- reading should begin with the child's. first book, that the best book is never too good for a child, and that whatever is not the best, is never good enough for a child. Would that every mother could be made to feel that her whole duty is not fulfilled when she has supplied only the bodily needs of her children. Would that every father could realize that his obligations do not begin and end with toiling for the physical well-being of his sons and daughters. Not only every city, town and village, but every family, however humble, should be supplied with a well-selected, though often necessarily small, library. Babes should be nursed in the atmosphere of good books, which under proper guidance, should become to them objects of loving care as well as of genuine, healthful enjoyment. Their mental food should be provided, regulated, and adapted to their growing needs and changing conditions, with at least as much care as is exercised in connection with food for the body. "A home without books," says Henry Ward Beecher, "is like a house without windows, dark, desolate, comfortless." Hawthorne's Wonder Book, Irving's Sketch Book, Arabella Buckley's Fairy Land of Science, Jane Andrew's Stories Mother Nature told his Children, Charles Kingsley's Madam How and Lady Why, Winchell's Walks and Talks in the Geological Field, and scores of others, may be made so fascinating and so satisfying to John and Mary, that there will be neither room nor desire for such pernicious productions as The Wild Brigand of Texas or Deadwood Dick of the Black Hills. Such vile trash as that contained in the Fireside Companion and the Police Court Gazette, produces the girls that are loud and coarse in speech, bold in manner, and weak in character. It sows in the boy's mind the seeds of daring, robbery, vandalism, and every other speakable and un speakable crime. Such pestilential serials must be crowded out by the Youth's Companion, Harper's Young People, and St. Nicholas, in which there will be no poison either detected or concealed. (To be concluded in next number.) GWEN, OR A STORY OF LLANBERIS AND OF THE WEST INDIES. BY MRS. OWEN THOMAS, POOLE. (Founded on fact.) But now that the first shock was over she gently disengaged herself from his arms, and blushed as she remembered what she had done. Harri, however, having surprised her secret was too ardent a wooer to premit the present chance to slip by, and so, seizing her unresisting hand, he poured forth his tale of love; how he had loved her from the first, how he had fought against the passion which was mastering him, and how he had found that he could not live away from the sight of her who now filled his very thought. "Before you commit yourself to the irrevocable," she said, "it is right that you should know my story, and what the woman is to whom you would give your heart. Do you know a woman called Cadi'r Cwmglas, some ten miles from Carnarvon ?" "Yes," was the wondering reply. "Do you remember a case of theft, in which a young girl who had been brought up by Cadi was transported for stealing a skirt off a hedge?" "Yes, I remember the circumstance and the general sympathy felt not only for Cadi, but for her little foster daughter." "Well, I am that girl. I, to whom you have made love, and whom you would wish to call by the sacred name of wife, am a convicted felon, with yet another year of my original GWEN, OR THE STORY OF LLANBERIS AND OF THE WEST INDIES. sentence unexpired. Can you then do aught but look upon me with disgust and abhorence? It costs me more than I care to say to tell you this, but though I know it will drive you from me for ever, I cannot live a lie even for your dear sake-and I will admit, Harri, that I love you. We must part, and forever." "Part!" he cried. "No, never more to part! Think you that the mistake of a foolish girl committed nine years ago shall now stand between me and my life's happiness? No, a thousand times no! His earnest pleadings, backed up by her love, overcame her objections, and she gave herself up to the enjoy. ment of that companionship for which she had yearned but hardly dared to hope. Throwing his arm around her waist he led her home, and after dispatching a party of negroes to convey the body to an outhouse, and having sent a messenger to inform the authorities that no blame might attach to himself, Harri sought the presence of his mistress and induced her to tell him the particulars of her sad story, which she gave as follows: "The planter who hired me from the English Government was a harsh yet just master, and for the first twelvemonth my sentence of hard labor was fully carried out. But I was very strong and healthy, and I bore the strain pretty well. Inspired by my dear 'mother's' last words when leaving Wales, I worked with a will, forgetting the past, which is unusual in a convict I find. In less than twelve months I was promoted, and my master became interested in me and my work. I did my best to raise my fallen companions, telling them of Christ, the friend of publicans and sinners. My master did not object to this. For every convert became a more zealous worker on his planta 333. tion. I then lived at the other end of the island. When I had been there some five years, my master died; and on his death-bed he transferred me to. the care of a dear friend of his, whom I knew very well-the owner of this plantation, who brought me home his. wedded wife. My past history was quite unknown to this people, so that every respect was paid me as mistress of this mansion. For more than two years I was very happy, when, a year ago, great trouble came upon me again, I lost my dear husband! His horse, frightened by the too sudden approach of my overseer, carried him over a cliff, and he was brought home a corpse ! Troubles now came thick and fast. My overseer began to ill treat my people, and one day when he was away on business they came crowding round this house with their various complaints. To appease them (for I had no one to defend me save a couple of faithful servants, and what were they againt so many?) I promised immediate dismissal of Jackson on his return. Just as I was speaking I received the following message from him : "Your father is lying ill at Yam's hut, in the Down Forest. Come at once, alone.' "What could this mean? Could it be true? Quelling all suspicions. I ordered my horse and rode the dozen miles to the West Down Forest. I knew Yum's hut quite well. My husband and I had taken shelter there from a storm last winter. It was in a lonely spot, though. There was a river to cross by means of a narrow bridge, and then a good walk along a narrow, winding path. Jerry could not come over the bridge. I must tie him to a tree on this side. These were my thoughts as I rode along. "Arrived at the hut, I nervously knocked at the door. Jackson opened |