ALLITERATIVE NAMES.

There is family of alliterative names in Hartford, Maine. Isaac Fuller was the father of nine children, eight boys and one girl. Here are the names but we do not vouch for their order: Ezekiel, Edward, Essac, Eland, Elbridge, Emery, Ellery, Elonzo, and Eliza. There are now two brothers living, and possibly the sister. They were all living in 1883. The youngest over, 60 years, was the first to decease. O. H. L.

The editor of this magazine knew a family in Dunbarton, N. H., the names of the children all beginning with A; and another family in Royalton, Vt., the names of the children all beginning with W.

The editor also knows a man who was given the name Oliver for his Christian name in remembrance of his uncle, but when he arrived at the age of about a dozen years, on account an unfulfilled promise made by the uncle, the young man declared he would bear the name Oliver no longer; he therefore reversed it and has ever since borne the name Revilo.

CELSUS AND PARACELSUS. Celsus was an Epicurean philosopher of the second century. He wrote a book against the Christian religion. It is not extant, but if we may judge from Origen's reply to it, Celsus was a keen disputant, even at the disadvantage of assailing and defending error as he believed.

Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus, Bombast de Hohenheim, was a celebrated Swiss empiric and alchemist, born 1413; for a year or more he filled the medical chair at the University of Basle. He afterwards perigrinated Europe. He taught cosmology, anthropology, pneumatology, magic and astrology, theosophy, philosophy, alchemy, medicine, and the occult sciences. He was conversant with Celsus, and considered himself so far above him intellectually and philosophically that he adopted for himself the name Paracelsus; from para, above, beyond, and Celsus Paracelsus.

ANAGRAMS. One hug is "enough." New door is "one word."

REACHED FOR A NAIL. A Pittsfield man, as proof that plants reason, offers the following account of a vine on his premises. The vine grows in a box on the window ledge. While watering it recently his daughter noticed a delicate tendril reaching out toward a nail in the side casing. She marked the position of the tendril on the wood, and then shifted the nail about an inch lower; Next day the little feeler had deflected itself very noticeably, and was again heading for the nail. The marking and shifting were repeated four or five times, always with the same result, and finally one night the tendril, which had grown considerably, managed to reach the coveted support, and was found coiled tightly about it. Meanwhile another bunch of tendrils had been making for a hook that was formerly used for a thermometer. Just before it reached its destination the young lady strung a cord across the window sash above. It was a choice then between the old love and the new, and as some vines seem to prefer a cord to anything else, it was not long in making up its mind. In a very few hours the pale, crisp, little tendrils, which, by the way, convey a surprising suggestion of human fingers, had commenced to lift toward the twine, and the next day they reached it aud took a firm grip.

A NEWSPAPER 800 YEARS OLD. Besides the paper called the Universal Intelligence, started at Pekin last January, by some enterprising young Chinamen, the empire of China has only six papers printed in the Chinese language. The oldest is the Pekin Gazette which has been running for 800 years. It is printed on engraved blocks of wood, as it always has been, is a pamphlet about three inches wide and eight inches long, and is a quaint example of typography.-Live Matter.

MY SYMPHONY. "To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy not respectable, and wealthy not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open hearts; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never ; — in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This to be my symphony." William Ellery Channing.

"My words are Law, my example is Doctrine, my state is Truth." -Hadis.

"The beginning of wisdom is the beginning of supernatual power."

-Paracelsus.

Prelude to LECTURES ON OLOMBIA. "Call to mind the mythological story of the famous Knot tied by King Gorgius, which was so intricate that there was positively no finding out where the tangle began, or where it ended. An oracle had declared that he who should untie the knot should be master over all Asia. Alexander, fearing his failure to untie it would have a discouraging effect upon his soldiers, took his sword and cut the Knot in two. As the ancients of mythological times had a knotty tangle which defied the skill and ingenuity of all Asia to untie, so has the modern world, at the ending of the nineteenth century a Social, Political, and Religious Gordian Knot, which, rather than waste time in the useless attempt to untie, we now cut with the sword of Truth." Wm. H. Von Swartwout, in Olumbia, or The New Political Economy.

The Olombia Commonwealth Hercules, by Dr. William H. Von Swartwout, editor, gives an epitome of the New Political Economy for the New Millennial Era of Justice, Liberty, Peace and Plenty, with Free Land, Free Habitation, Free Material, Free Production, Free Transit, and a, free use of all the Products of the Earth. The New Age demands New Methods and True Men and Women. The World has had its Golden Age, its Iron Age, and its Dark Ages; then its Age of Reason; and now comes the Glorious Era the Ages have waited for - the long anticipated Millennial Age of OLOMBIA:

"The last great age foretold by sacred rhymes
Renews its finished course; Saturnian times
Roll round again, and mighty years begun
From their first orb; in radiant circles run;

The base, degenerate' iron offspring ends:

A golden progeny from heaven descends."— Virgil.

"Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,

There were no need of arsenal and forts."-LONGFELLOW'

Sines. tangents, secants, radius, cosines.
Subtangents, segments, and all those signs,
Enough to prove that he who read them
Was just as bad as he who made them.

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,

And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so AD INFINITUM;

And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on, While these again have greater still, and grea er still and so on.

-From De Morgan's Budget of Paradoxes.

THE SUFIS. The Traveller in the path of mystic philosophy is the Perceptive Sense, which as it becomes further developed results in Intelligence, not however the intelligence of life, but such as is described in the words of Mahommed: "Intelligence is light in the heart, distinguishing between truth and vanity, not the intelligence of life." After a time our Traveller merges into Divine Light, but of the thousands who start upon the road, scarcely one attains thereunto.

The Goal is the Knowledge of God, and the acquisition of this knowledge is the work of Divine Light alone, Perception or worldly intelligence having no lot or portion therein. The latter is represented as the sovereign of this world, and the perceptive faculties are the executive officers of his rule, to whom both the cultivation and devastation of the face of the earth is due. The idea is suggested by the following passage in the Koran; When God said to the angels, I am about to place a vice-gerent in the earth, they said, wilt thou place therein one who will commit abominations and shed blood? Nay; we celebrate Thy praise and holiness. God answered them, Verily, I know what ye wot not of." (Koran, Sura ii, 28.) Which answer implies that God knew that although that such might even be the conduct of the bulk of mankind, there would still be some who would receive the Divine Light and attain to a knowledge of Him; so that it is clear that the knowledge of the creation of existent beings was that God should be known. Existance was made for man, and man for the knowledge of God. To the same purport is the answer given to David: " David inquired and said, Oh Lord! why hast thou created mankind? God said, I am a hidden treasure, and I would fain become known," (Preliminary Discourse, Sale's Koran, p. 67.)

The business of the Traveller then is to exert himself and strive to attain to the Divine Light, and so to the knowledge of God; and this is to be achieved by associating with the wise. The Sufis say there is no road from man to god, because the nature of God is illimitable and infinite, without beginning or end, or even direction. There is not a single atom of existent

things with which God is not and which god does not comprise Are they not in doubt concerning their union with their Lord? doth he not comprise everything?" (Koran Sura xlii, 54.) Nor is there aught that he does not comprehend with his knowledge: "Verily, God comprehendeth all things with his knowledge." (Koran, Sura xlii, 54.) The Traveller who has not attained to this Divine Light can have no lot or portion with God, but those who have reached it gaze always upon His face; they go not forth by day and retire not to rest at night without ar abashed consciousness that God is present everywhere, for with Him they live, and with Him they act.

The whole universe compared with the majesty of God is as a drop in the ocean; nay, infinitely less than this. But Per ception or Intelligence can never lead to this conviction, or reveal this glorious mystery; that is the province of the Divine Light alone. Such is the Suffiistic explanation of the proposi tion, "There is no road from man to God."

The Law is the word of the Prophet, the Doctrine is the example of the Prophet, and the Truth is the vision of the Prophet. This follows from Hadìs: "My words are Law, my exam. ple is Doctrine, my State is Truth." The Traveller must first learn the theory of the Law, and act up to the practice of the Doctrine, by which means the Truth will become manifest in him. Those who possess all these things are the Perfect, and those are the leaders of the people. The final object of Law, Doctrine, and Truth is that mankind shall speak aright, act aright, and think aright, or, in other words become wise and good.

There are three grades of proximity to God which are out of the reach of human Intelligence; the proximity of Time, Place, and Attributes. We say, for instance, that Mohammed was nearer our own time than Jesus; that the moon is nearer to the earth than the planet Jupiter. "God is with you wherever you are," and alludes to this mysterious proximity." (Koran Sura lvii, 4.) "God is in the East and in the West, and wherever you turn your faces God is there." (Koran, Sura lxvii, 109.)