MANHOOD. The Quality of Manhood. But the God is all for quality; man is for quantity. immediate need of the world at this moment is not more of us, but, if I may use the expression, a better brand of us. To secure ten men of an improved type would be better than if we had ten thousand more of the average Christians distributed all over the world.-HENRY DRUM MOND. The Training of Manhood. It is a common charge against excessive zeal in religion that it makes a man narrow and one-sided. But did it ever occur to us that civilization may make a man equally narrow and one-sided? On any other than the atheistic theory of life, man is a spiritual being, meant to live mainly and supremely in a spiritual world. He is going to school here, and the things which he touches and sees and acquires here—his banks and railroads and factories; aye, and his books, his art, his æsthetic adornments and surroundings-all these are simply toys with which he is building block-houses in the nursery, until he is ripe enough and mature enough for the life and employments of the future.-H. C. POTTER. The Responsibility of Manhood. All successful business men are men who dare take their own responsibilities. All great teachers have the same quality, whatever their school-whether it be Knox or Carlyle, whether it be Spurgeon or Maurice, whether it be Lyman Beecher or Ralph Waldo Emerson, whether it be Horace Greeley or William Cullen Bryant. They are men of earnest convictions, who dare take the responsibilities of uttering them, whatever others may think and however others may take them.-LYMAN AB BOTT. MARRIAGE. Mistakes in Marriage. There is in all the world some one who was made for you, as certainly as Eve was made for Adam. All sorts of mistakes occur because Eve was made out of a rib from Adam's side. Nobody knows which of his twentyfour ribs was taken for the nucleus. If you depend entirely upon yourself in the selection of a wife, there are twenty-three possibilities to one that you will select the wrong rib. By the fate of Ahab, whose wife induced him to steal; by the fate of Macbeth, whose wife pushed him into massacre; by the fate of James Ferguson, the philosopher, whose wife entered the room while he was lecturing and willfully upset his astronomical apparatus, so that he turned to the audience and said: "Ladies and gentlemen, I have the misfortune to be married to this woman"; by the fate of Bulwer, the novelist, whose wife's temper was so incompatible that he furnished her a beautiful house near London and withdrew from her company, leaving her with the dozen dogs which she enter tained as pets; by the fate of John Milton, who married a termagant after he was blind, and when some one called her a rose the poet said: "I am no judge of flowers, but it may be so, for I feel the thorns daily"; by the fate of an Englishman whose wife was so determined to dance on his grave that he was buried in the sea; by the fate of a village minister whom I knew, whose wife threw a cup of hot tea across the table because they differed in sentiment by all these scenes of disquietude and domestic calamity, we implore you to be cautious and prayerful before you enter upon the connubial state, which decides whether a man shall have two Heavens or two hells -a Heaven here and Heaven for ever, or a hell now and a hell hereafter. -TALMAGE. Sensible Marriages. If you have sensible parents, take them into your confidence in all the affairs of the heart. They will give you more good advice in one hour than you can get from all the world beside in five years. They have toiled for you so long, and prayed for you so much, they have your best interests at heart. At the same time let parents review their opposition to a proposed marital alliance, and see if their opposition is founded on a genuine wish for the child's welfare, or on some whim, notion, prejudice or selfishness-fighting a natural law and trying to make Niagara run up stream. William Pitt, the Prime Minister of England in the reign of George III., was always saying wise things. One day Sir Walter Farquhar called on him in great perturbation. Mr. Pitt asked what was the matter, and Sir Walter told him that his daughter was about to be married to one not worthy of her rank. Mr. Pitt asked: "Is the young man of respectable family?" "Yes." "Is he respectable himself?" "Yes.' "Has he an estimable character?" "Yes." "Why, then, my dear Sir Walter, make no opposition.' The advice was taken, and a happy married life ensued.-TALMAGE. A Good Wife. What you want in a wife, O man! is not a butterfly of the sunshine, not a giggling nonentity, not a painted doll, not a gossiping gadabout, not a mixture of artificialities which leave you in doubt as to where the humbug ends and the woman begins, but an earnest soul— one who can not only laugh when you laugh, but weep when you weep. There will be wide, deep graves in your path of life, and you will both want steadying when you come to the verge of them, I tell you. When your fortune fails you will want some one to talk of treasures in Heaven, and not charge upon you with a bitter "I told you so." As far as I can analyze it, sincerity and earnestness are the foundation of all worthy wifehood. Get that, and you get all. Fail to get that, and you get nothing except what you will wish you never had got.—) TALMAGE. Do Not Look for Perfection. Do not expect to find a perfect man. If you find one without any faults, incapable of mistakes, never having |