dying infant, whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten. All these heaped and huddled together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry between them -crammed-in like salted fish in their barrel or weltering like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling to get its head above the others! Such work goes on under that smoke counterpane! But I sit above it all; I am alone with the stars.—CARLYLE.

The Whisky Ring in City Politics.

Great cities are likely to rule the American Republic. They will also ruin it, if they are governed by the whisky ring, as they have been in a majority of cases thus far in our history. The predominant political influence of the whisky ring in great and corrupt cities is incompatible with the success of American institutions, or with safety to life and property under universal suffrage in mismanaged municipalities.-JOSEPH COOK.

Condensed Comments.

The city is the strategic point of our modern life. We shall lose the battle for righteousness if we do not plant our batteries in the city, and man them with our best soldiers. CHARLES C. ALBERTSON.

There Mammon holds high carnival in its gilded palaces while little children hunger, mothers grow faint for food and die, and strong men weep for want of work.—W. T. STEAD.

The city is the most difficult and perplexing problem of modern times.-FRANCIS LIEBER.

COMMON THINGS.

Prayer for Common Things.

Give me, dear Lord, Thy magic common things,
Which all can see, which all may share—
Sunlight and dewdrops, grass and stars and sea;
Nothing unique or new and nothing rare.

Just daisies, knap-weed, wind among the thorns,
Some clouds to cross the blue old sky above,
Rain, winter fires, a useful hand, a heart,
The common glory of a woman's love.

Then when my feet no longer tread old paths
(Keep them from fouling sweet things anywhere),

Write one old epitaph in grace-lit words

"Such things look fairer that he sojourned here.”

ANONYMOUS.

The Common People.

I believe in the people-the average common sense and capacity of the millions-in government of, for and by the people. The most of the people mean right, and in the end they will do right.-Wendell Phillips.

Relief in Common Things.

Sometimes the troubled tide of all the past
Upon my spirit's trembling strand is rolled
Years never mine—ages an hundredfold,
With all the weight those ages have amassed

Of human grief and wrong, are on me cast.
Within one sorcerous moment I grow old,

And blanch as one who scarce his way can hold

Upon a verge that takes some flood-tide vast.

Then comes relief through some dear common thing— The voices of the children at their play,

The wind-wave through the bright meadows, moving fast;

The blue-bird's skyward call, on happy wing;
So the sweet present reassumes her sway;
So lapse the surges of the monstrous past.

EDITH M. THOMAS.

The Common Courtesies of Life.

What silences we keep, year after year,
With those who are most near to us and dear!
We live beside each other day by day,

And speak of myriad things, but seldom say
The full, sweet word that lies just in our reach-
Beneath the commonplace of common speech.
ANONYMOUS.

Martyrs of Common Life.

In their midst I saw

Some who appeared more radiant than the rest,
And asked what meant their bright pre-eminence
In glory. Oriel answered: "These are they
Of whom the Church so often sings-
Some of the martyrs' noble army. These

For Christ gave up their bodies to be burned,

Or bowed their necks unto the murderous sword;
Or, though their names appear not on the scroll
Of martyrologists, laid down their life-

Not less a martyrdom in Jesus' eyes—

For His dear brethren's sake, watching the couch
Of loathsome sickness or of slow decay,

Or visiting the captive in his cell,

Or struggling with a burden not their own
Until their very life-strings wore away.
These, too, are martyrs, brother."

BICKERSTETH.

CONSCIENCE.

God Revealed in Conscience.

I claim it to be the fact of experience (if you doubt, will you try the scientific method of experiment on this subject?) that whenever we submit utterly, affectionately, irreversibly, to the best we know that is, to the Innermost Holiest of Conscience—at that instant, and never before, there flashes through us, with quick, splendid, interior, unexpected illumination, a Power not ourselves. The image of the star or a representation of the sun is found within the chambers of the poor, feeble instrument. You can not have that inner witness until you have that exterior and interior conformity to Conscience; but whoever has these will know by the inner light that God is with him in a sense utterly unknown before.JOSEPH COOK.

Remorse.

The mind that broods o'er guilty woes
Is like the scorpion girt by fire;
In circle narrowing as it glows,
The flames around their captive close;
Till, inly searched by thousand throes,
And maddening in her ire,

One, and a sole relief she knows.

The sting she nourished for her foes-
Whose venom never yet was vain,
Gives but one pang, and cures all pain-
She darts into her desperate brain.
So do the dark in soul expire,

Or live like scorpion girt by fire;

So writhes the mind remorse has riven,
Unfit for earth, undoomed for Heaven;
Darkness above, despair beneath—
Around it flame, within it death.

Hardening Conscience.

The first film of ice is scarcely perceptible.

BYRON.

Keep the water stirring, and you will prevent the ice from hardening it. But once it film over and remain so, it thickens over the surface, and it thickens still. At last it is so solid that a wagon might be drawn over the frozen water. So with our conscience. It films over gradually, and at last it becomes hard, unfeeling; and then it can bear a weight of iniquity.-BISHOP SIMPSON.