GRIEVE NOT.

BY MISS SALLIE A. LEWIS, CIN., O.

[Verses in memory of Mr. Isaac Edwards, the beloved husband of Margaret Edwards, died July 7th, 1892, at Cin., O.]

Some days I am lonely, weary and sad,
And wonder if ever I will be glad,

When day is done and night her shadows cast,

I rock and think of the days that are past.

How can I forget the love of my life,
My companion and helpmate in the strife:
Five and forty years we walked together,
And now we are parted on earth forever.

No longer the jokes and langhter goes round,
For the chair he filled returns not a sound;
Sometimes like a dream I hear at the door
Hls footsteps coming as in days of yore.

A sadness comes o'er me I can't resist,
Wherever I look his presence is missed,
I felt not that death was clasping his brow
Though he said, "Margaret, I'm going home

now.

Yes, like a star that descends from the sky,
You see the light falling, but can't tell why;
So the spirit left the body of clay,
To live in a house that can not decay.

He would not come back, oh no, if he could,
For now he is with the joyful and good:
Then why drop a tear or sigh for the breast
That knows what it is to enjoy sweet rest.

Your Isaac will wait at the portals gay
And watch for your coming some future day;
The Saviour will lift the cloud away

That darkened your path on life's rugged way.

Why do we sorrow at the thought of the tomb,

When our Lord has known its darkness and gloom,

The shade that lies there He hallowed with love;

The sleeper is watched by angels above.

Then sorrow no more, the starbeam of light Will shine on your pathway by day or by night;

'Tis Jesus that called your loved one away, Then murmur no more but live while you may.

The mystery of death we can't define,
Nor will we know until we cross the line,
Until then we must watch and wait and pray
For the broken links that are over the way.

AN OLD MAN'S DREAM.
Oh, for one hour of youthful joy!
Give back my twentieth spring!
I'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy
Than reign a grey-haired king!

Off with the wrinkled spoils of age!
Away with learning's crown!
Tear out life's wisdom-written page,
And dash its trophies down!

One moment let my life-blood stream
From boyhood's fount of flame!
Give me one giddy, reeling dream
Of life all love and fame!

-My listening angel heard the prayer,
And calmly smiling said,

"If I but touch thy silvered hair,
Thy hasty wish had sped.

"But is there nothing in thy track
To bid thee fondly stay,
While the swift seasons hurry back
To find the wished for day!

-Ah, truest soul of womankind!
Without thee what were life?
One bliss I cannot leave behind-
I'll take-my-precious-wife;
-The angel took a sapphire pen,

And wrote in rainbow dew;
"The man would be a boy again,
And be a husband, too!"

"And is there nothing yet unsaid.
Before the change appears?
Remember, all their gifts have fled
With those dissolving years!"

Why, yes; for memory would recall
My fond paternal joys;

I could not bear to leave them all;
I'll take-my-girl-and boys!
The smiling angel dropped his pen;
"Why this will never do;

The man would be a boy again,
And be a father too!"

And so I laughed - my laughter woke
The household with its noise-

And wrote my dream, when morning broke,

To please the grey-haired boys.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

IN DEFENCE OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE.

In his inaugural Oxford lecture, Mr. Froude speaks as follows of the condition of the masses of the peo.

ple in medieval Europe: "I do not believe that the condition of the people in medieval Europe was as miserable as is pretended. I do not be lieve that the distribution of the necessaries of life was as unequal as it is at present. Of liberty, no doubt, there is a great deal more going now than there used to be. In the middle ages there was little liberty for any one. Kings and peers, knights and vassals, villains and serfs, were held together under strict bonds of obligation. But the one thing certain is that between the lords and their feudatories there were links of genuine loyalty which drew high and low together as they have not been drawn since the so-called chains have been broken. If the tenant gave service, the lord gave protection. If the tenant lived hard, the lord had little luxury. Earls and countesses breakfasted at five in the morning on salt beef and herring, a slice of bread and a draught of ale from a black jack. Lords and servants dined in the same hall and shared the same meal. As to dress, plain leather and woollen served for all ranks, except on splendid ceremonials. Examine the figures of the knights on the ante-chapel in the Temple Church in London. The originals of those forms were not brothers of the order, or bound to poverty. They were the proudest

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and most powerful of the English peers. Yet the armor is without ornament save the plain device on the shield. The cloak is the lightest and simplest. The heavy sword hangs from a leather belt, fastened with an ordinary harness buckle. As those knights lie there, so they moved when they were alive, and when hard blows were going they had an ample share of them: No fact of history is more certain than that the peasants born on the great baronies looked up to those lords of theirs with real and reverent affection-very strange, if one party in the contract had nothing but hardship, and the other was an arbitrary tyrant. Custom dies hard, and this feeling of feudal loyalty has lingered into our times with very little to support it. Carlyle told me once of a lawsuit pending in Scotland, affecting the succession to a great estate, of which he had known something. The case depended on a family secret, known only to one old servant, who refused to reveal it. A kirk minister was sent to tell her that she must speak on peril of her soul. "Peril of my soul," she said, "and would ye put the honor of an auld Scottish family in competition with the soul of a poor creature like me?" -From Froude's Inaugural Oxford Lecture.

ARTHUR, THE BLAMELESS
KING.

The heart of every boy who reads of the daring acts of bravery and the prowess of those famous "Knights of the Round Table," must be stirred with a desire to emulate their deeds, and a feeling of regret that the days

of "knight-errantry" have passed

away.

Let our boys of to day remember however, that to them are offered for the accomplishment of noble deeds, grander opportunities than were ever given to the knights of olden times. Yet there can be no nobler ideal for a boy to keep before his mind's eye (al

ways excepting that one Perfect Man, who was a reality, as well as an ideal) than this same King Arthur of legendary fame.

At fifteen years of age the boy Arthur (as the story runs) was crowned king of the Britons, not without great opposition from the princes of the land; and by the aid of his knights, Drew in the petty kingdoms under him, Fought, and in twelve great battles overcame The heathen hordes, and made a realm, and resigned.

Of his personal appearance, we read that he was "fair, beyond the race of Britons, and of men;" of his bravery, "How meek so'er he seem, no keener hunter after glory breathes. He loves it in his knights more than himself." And of his temper his sister and play mate tells King Leodgrance; "And sad at times he seemed; stern, too, at times, and then I loved him not; but sweet at times, and then I loved him well."

That may be doubtful, but it is quite certain that to a hint from an insect was due the invention of a machine instrumental in accomplishing one of the most stupendous works of modern times, the excavation of the Thames tunnel.

Mark Isambard Brunel, the great engineer, was standing one day, about three-quarters of a century ago, in a ship-yard, watching the movements of an animal known as the terredo navales-in English, the naval woodworm-when a brilliant thought suddenly occurred to him. He saw that this creature bored its way into the piece of wood upon which it was operating by means of a very extraordiat the animal attentively through a nary mechanical apparatus. Looking microscope, he found that it was covered in front with a pair of valvular shells; that, with its foot as a purchase, it communicated a ro

As the latter stands looking over the field where lie so many of his once valiant band, we see him "looking wistfully with wide blue eyes as in a picture.'

And later on, lying faint and dying from the wound inflicted by the traitor, Mordred, his "light and lus

trous curls clotted with blood."

So like a shattered column lay the king.

The secene closes with the cry of the faithful Bedivere: "He passes to be king among the dead."

A life so noble in its purpose cannot be a failure; its great aims live on in the hearts of those who follow after, and who read to learn.-Sel.

TAUGHT BY AN INSECT.

It has been said that the operations of the spider suggested the arts of spinning and weaving to man

to the valves, which acting upon the wood like a gimlet, penetrated its substance, and that as the particles of wood loosened, they passed through a fissure in the foot, and thence through the body of the borer to its mouth, where they were expelled.

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Here," said Brunel to himself, “is the sort of thing I want. Can I reproduce it in an artificial form?" He forthwith set to work, and the final result of his labors, after many failwith which the Thames tunnel was ures, was the famous boring shield excavated.

This story was told by Brunel himself, and there is no reason to doubt its truth. The keen observer can draw useful lessons from the humblest of the works of God.-New York Weekly.

To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.-Cicero.

SOME VERY UNPROFITABLE

THINGS.

It never pays to run in debt for things you do not need.

It never pays to cherish a faultfinding spirit.

It never pays to make professions that you do not live up to.

It never pays to offer God excuses when he calls for living action. It never pays to do wrong with the hope that good may come.

It never pays to rob your stomach to put fine clothes on your back.

It never pays to marry for money or social position.

It never pays to starve the soul to feed the body.

It never pays to join a church that does not require something from you. It never pays to send the boys into the street to secure quiet in the par

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THE best men are not those who have waited for chances, but those who haye taken them-besieged the chance, conquered the chance, and made the chance their servitor. Anon.

A GREAT poem is a fountain forever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight, and after one person, or one age, has exhausted all its divine effluence, which their peculiar relations enable them to share, another and yet another succeeds, and new relations are ever developed, the source of an unforeseen and an unconceived delight.-Shelley.

Loving kindness is greater than laws; and the charities of life are more than all ceremonies.-Talmud. The perfect woman is as beautiful as she is strong, as tender as she is sensible. She is calm, deliberate, She is calm, deliberate, dignified. leisurely; she is gay, grace ful, sprightly, sympathetic; she is severe upon occasion, and upon ochas fancies, casion playful: she dreams, romances ideals.-Gail Hamilton

Moral cowards! I decided that the intuition of that brave young soul was correct. He looked no coward, but brave as a warrior; while he asserted, in vindication of his character, "I'm not afraid of anybody! I don't HAVE to lie!"-Dr. Cuyler.

BOY RELIGION.

Religion in its essential peculiarities will always be the same for boys as for men, but in peculiarities not essential it will show the age of its possessor, even as a stream the soil it runs through. It is correct then to say that there is such a thing as boy religion.

tense interest as

With a boy's religion will be likely to go considerable noise and fun. He will sail his toy ships with as ina man of fifty his grown-up craft. He may play baseball with as much fervor as a philanthropist will run a charitable society. He will pop off his fire-crackers before daybreak on the Fourth, and and sound his fish-horn as long as the police will let him. Old age is not likely to sail toy ships or play base-ball, and its answer to the seductive notes of a fish-horn may be a cotten-stuffed ear; and as for firecrackers, it may like to drown them under five miles of Atlantic sea-water.

Be patient with any boy's religion accompanied by the crudeness and irrepressibility of youth. Religion should be natural. Suggest and train, but don't make the boy Christian an artificial being. It is unwise and wrong to force his experiences into something beyond his years; and, alas! if you try to make an old man of him. When a youth begins to smother his enthusiasm, and cultivate the manners of mid-century, he is in training either for a hypocrite or a namby-pamby saint, and we don't know which is worse.-S. S. Journal.