goes to church. Perhaps the sermon is didactic and argumentative. He gapes.

He yawns.

He twists himself in his pew, and pretends he is asleep, and says: "I could not keep awake. Did you ever hear anything so dead? Can these dry bones live?" Next Sabbath he enters a church where the minister is much given to illustration. He is still more displeased. He says: “How dare that man bring such every-day things into his pulpit? He ought to have brought his illustrations from the cedar of Lebanon and the fir-tree, instead of the hickory and sassafras. He ought to have spoken of the Euphrates and the Jordon, and not of the Kennebec and Schuylkill. He ought to have mentioned Mount Gerizim instead of the Catskills. Why, he ought to be disciplined. Why, it is ridiculous." Perhaps afterward he joins the church. Then the church will have its hands full. He growls and groans and whines all the way up toward the gate of heaven. He wishes that the choir would sing differently, that the minister would preach differently, that the elders would pray differently. In the morning, he said, "The church was as cold as Greenland;" in the evening, " It was hot as blazes." They painted the church; he didn't like the color. They carpeted the aisles; he didn't like the figure. They put in a new furnace; he didn't like the patent. He wriggles and squirms, and frets and stews, and worries himself. He is like a horse, that, prancing and uneasy to the bit, worries himself into a lather of foam, while the horse hitched beside him just pulls straight ahead, makes no fuss, and comes to his oats in peace. Like a hedge-hog, he is all quills. Like a crab that, you know, always goes the other way, and moves backward in order to go forward, and turns in four d'

rections all at once, and the first you know of his where abouts you have missed him, and when he is completely lost he has gone by the heel-so that the first thing you know you don't know anything—and while you expected to catch the crab, the crab catches you.

So some men are crabbed-all hard-shell and obstinacy and opposition. I do not see how he is to get into heaven unless he goes in backward, and then there will be danger that at the gate he will try to pick a quarrel with St. Peter. Once in, I fear he will not like the music, and the services will be too long, and that he will spend the first two or three years in trying to find out whether the wall of heaven is exactly plumb. Let us stand off from such tendencies. Listen for sweet notes rather than discords, picking up marigolds and harebells in preference to thistles and coloquintida, culturing thyme and anemones rather than night-shade. And in a world where God hath put exquisite tinge upon the shell washed in the surf, and planted a paradise of bloom in a child's cheek, and adorned the pillars of the rock by hanging tapestry of morning mist, the lark saying, “I will sing soprano," and the cascade replying, "I will carry the bass," let us leave it to the owl to hoot, and the frog to croak, and the bear to growl, and the grumbler to find fault.

T. DE WITT TALMAGE.

HE

SHE WANTED TO HEAR IT AGAIN.

E sat on a bicycle as straight as an icycle, and she on a tricycle rode by his side.

He talked like a jolly fop, and naught could his folly stop, with all kinds of jolly pop enlivening the ride.

At last, incidentally, more instinctively than mentally, he grew sentimentally saccharine sweet.

And he told with intensity of love's strong propensity, its force and immensity, its fervor and heat.

Just then o'er some hummocks he sprawled out kerflummux, and she thought, What a lummux to tumble just then!

But he climbed to his station, while she said with elation, "Renew your narration-say it over again."

"IN

GRANT'S PLACE IN HISTORY.

N our admiration for the manhood of General Grant -gentle, simple, truthful, yet so strong in every virtue we are almost jealous of the goddess of fame who claims him to adorn her temple. Across the water comes the voice of the Frenchman, saying, 'Place his name next to that of Napoleon, who was greater than Cæsar.' 'No,' says the Englishman, 'put it with Wellington's, who conquered Napoleon.' 'No,' says the

Prussian, his place is next to Frederick's, who resisted a larger combination than ever assailed the French Emperor, and laid the foundations upon which the German empire stands.' 'No,' says the Russian, our Peter was the greatest; his empire is the widest, the firmest, and we gave you the strong hand of sympathy through all your struggle. Peter the Great, Grant the Great, are the names to stand side by side on the walls of the temple of fame.' 'No,' says the Hollander, back through the centuries was one who was the genius of resistance to oppression, one who laid the foundations of modern liberty; such only is worthy of association with Grant; William the Silent, Grant the Silent, must stand side by side and the highest.' 'Not so,' says the Jewish rabbi, 'you must go back not only through ages and centuries, but through cycles of time that have witnessed the rise and fall of empires-back to the period when Jehovah spoke directly to man amid the thunder of Sinai, when the warrior leader and statesman of Israel removed the yoke of slavery from three millions of his countrymen, even as your great captain removed the like yoke from three millions of another race. The name of Grant is worthy to follow that of our own Moses.'

"The American, prouder of the name than a subject of the Cæsars to be a Roman, with blushing appreciation replies: We are grateful for the honor and the place you accord our dead yet living citizen, but we have a temple not made with hands, worthier, holier, more enduring than your temple of fame, whereon the name of Grant is already engraved in love as well as honor, even with those of Washington and Lincoln, in the hearts of his countrymen." "

THE

MR. BEECHER AND THE WAIFS.

Plymouth Church, February 27th, 1887.

HE last Sabbath evening on which Mr. Beecher preached, he lingered for a little, as was his wont, after the congregation had retired. The organist, with one or two others, was practicing "I heard the voice of Jesus say." Just then two little street urchins entered the church and stood listening. Mr. Beecher, laying his hand on the head of one of the boys, turned his face upward and kissed him. Then with his arm about the two he left the scene of his triumphs and successes. It was a fitting close to a grand life-the old man of genius and fame shielding the ignorant wanderers, recognizing that the humblest and poorest were his brothers, and passing out into the night with the nameless little waifs.

The preacher's evening task was done;
The crowd had gone away;

But something pleaded with his heart
A little while to stay.