Beauty and Defilement -The sense of the beautiful is not a holiday sense; it must be carried into common things, and give a grace to little things. It is for the girl at the washtub as well as for the lady in silken attire. It is to be cultivated with all care; for it is the germ of an as yet undeveloped mental endowment. It is like the lump of coal, a prophecy of the diamond; the lump of clay preluding the burning sapphire.

First, on this round world with its wondrous possibilities, must we learn of the beautiful if we would be at home in that New Jerusalem of which it is said:

Her light was like unto a stone most precious,
Even unto a jasper stone, clear as crystal;
And the building of the wall of it was of jasper,
And the city was of pure gold, like unto clear glass.
The twelve gates were twelve pearls,
Every gate was of one pearl.

The streets of the city were pure gold,
As it were transparent glass.

The gorgeousness of this Oriental description is not the point to be observed; but the immaculate purity implied -the consummation of matter to its finest essence, from

which all impurity is eliminated, only ideal beauty left. Thus does the Book of Books, rightly considered, suggest, not what is gross and sordid, but that which accords with our purest aspirations. We must love the pure, the perfect, if we would be denizens of that City of God which is prefigured by the best of all that we know that is free from stain.

How is it with us? We walk the streets of our cities

warily; for the pave is rife with peach-stones, lemon-peel, apple-cores, dust and defilement. Do we teach our chil

dren that to cast what is offensive to a fine sense before the eyes of others is an immorality, and may endanger life and limb? Do we press home upon the growing mind the sacredness of the beautiful, the holiness of purity? To shrink from defilement is a step to the pure.

Do we lead our little ones into the great temple of Nature, and show them with tender care how she is ever on the alert

to cover up and remove that which is unseemly? making the beetle, the ant, the crow, and the vulture her scavengers, and thus preserving her summer garniture fair and comely; sending down the dew to refresh that which is arid, and calling up the rain-cloud to enliven the woods and the wayside with a timely ablution; and, not content to be clean, she calls up a thousand perfumes to give a fineness and zest to all; more than this, she will not only be pure and odorous, but she will be handsome also; and she paints the rose and the lily and the citron, even the burly beet and trim carrot, with a grace that no art can imitate. She is in love with the beautiful, and doats upon the world of flowers.

They tremble on the Alpine height,
The fissured rock they press;

The desert wild with heat and sand,
Shares too their blessedness;

And wheresoe'er the weary heart
Turns in its dim despair,

The meek-eyed blossom upward looks,
Inviting it to prayer.

More than this; she has made the very air we breathe a medium of joy by the vibrations of music and a tint that softens the senses to content; and when she would give us a holiday, she flings a rainbow banner athwart the dome of her temple.

Once I visited Katahdin, that great solitary peak in the wilderness of Maine, and was the first to make public the rare beauty and grandeur of the scene-one of the first party that ever reached its summit in the shape of a woman.

We had passed a night upon its cold summit, and heard the infinite voices of Nature whispering all the long hours, filling the soul with a sense of its own grandeur, despite the howl of a tempest that threatened to scatter our mortal atoms to the four winds of heaven. It was a period of sublime emotion, a Promethean experience that the wreck of worlds cannot obliterate from the mind.

With the first dawn of light we descended Avalanche

Brook, and made our way to the lovely Lake Katahdin, the banks of a stream issuing from the mountain to swell pure as a bowl of crystal. Saturday morning found us on Katahdin, vast, solitary in the distance. We saw the track We looked back upon of many a wild beast; we heard the cry of the heron answered by its mate in the old primeval forest, had a prequivering through the still air; and the voice of the moose, ternatural loudness and solemnity.

the waters of the Penobscot River.

After the fatigue we had endured our party was soon wrapt in a profound slumber; not so with me-the moon seemed to beckon me forth to commune alone with the soul was at her full, and the stars' white vestals in her pathway of things-to be alone with God there in the wilderness.

Silently leaving our bed of hemlock boughs deliciously pure and odorous, I went down to the river and looked up stars, more ancient than the Magi, but young to the young under the great primeval trees to the deep sky and young voices. The storm had been turbulent in the mountain, in heart, and the needful homily was uttered by myriads of and the cataract roared loudly. Great rocks boomed from steep to steep, and plunged over the falls at my feet. Moses

was said to be alone in the mount with God. It is a sub

lime idea. Daily and hourly should we sing praises to God everlasting hills, answered audibly many questionings of for the mountains. That night in the wilderness, amid the the spirit. It ushered in a Sabbath unutterably beautiful— so calm, so pure, nothing to defile.

There were no singing birds in that dim solitude-the bird loves human companionship; there were no bees and buttercups and gay hummingbirds coquetting with the dainty flowers. These follow human culture; but Nature was very serene here in her vast solemn temple, and it was worth a life to listen to her without the instrumentalities of art. dreamed away the day all of us in almost total silence; truly a Sabbath which is rest.

We

In the morning we were to leave our sylvan retreat; we had garnished it with hemlock and repaired the roof, for it had been built by a surveying party, who had carved their

names upon the trees. We had spread fresh branches upon the floor, and here and there stuck in a tuft of white ameranths (life everlasting), which would look fair long after we were gone, to return no more. We placed birchen cups and forks of wood in a recess for the comfort of those who might come after us, and then went sorrowfully forth.

Turning back to take a last lingering look at our little Paradise, I observed that a branch had slipped from the roof and hung unseemly-wise within, marring the beauty of our bower. I turned back and replaced it with tender reverence, and seeing scraps of paper upon the floor gathered them up and hid them under green mosses, as also the bone of a partridge, and thus Pan and the Wood-Nymphs would find no unsightliness to tell of irreverent vagrants having desecrated their sweet solitudes.

Thus it will forever remain in my mind's eye, fair and pure and beautiful, haunted by lovely spirits, "a lodge in a garden of cucumbers."

I love to remember how sacredly unprofane it looked there in the forest, and to be conscious that the reverence in our hearts was akin to the sweetness, purity, and unfailing conservation of Nature. E. O. S.

Woman's Loquacity.-That Nature does nothing in vain is a very ancient adage. To woman she has given the talent of talking more frequently as well as more fluently than man; she has likewise endowed her with a greater quantity of animation, or what is commonly called animal spirits. Now, why has Nature so eminently distinguished women from men in this respect? For the best and wisest of purposes. The principal destination of all women is to be mothers; hence some qualities peculiar to such a destination must necessarily have been bestowed upon them; these qualities are numerous-a superior degree of patience, of affection, of minute but useful attentions, joined to an almost incessant speaking.

We will confine our remarks to the last conspicuous and eminent accomplishment. To be occupied with laborious offices, which demand either bodily or mental exertions, and not unfrequently both, is allotted to men. These causes, besides their comparative natural taciturnity, totally incapacitate them for that loquacity which is requisite for amusing and teaching young children to speak. But employments of women are of a more domestic kind; household affairs, and particularly the nursing and training of children, are sufficient to engross their attention, and to call forth all their ingenuity and active powers. The loquacity of women is too often considered by poets, historians, unthinking men and others, as a reproach upon the sex. Men of this description know not what they say. When they blame women for much speaking they blame Nature for one of her wisest institutions. Women speak much-they ought to speak much-Nature compels them to speak much, and when they do so they are complying religiously with one of her most sacred and useful laws.

New Ideas of Marriage.-It is indubitable that the girl's ideal of marriage has of late years greatly changed; and the change has been produced in part by what she sees, and in part by what she reads. We entertain no doubt that the

female novelists who have followed in the wake of the late George Laurence have materially modified the ideal of a snitable lover as entertained by many of their sex. "Ouida," Miss Broughton, Miss Annie Thomas, and others, have accustomed them to ferocious lovers-but we will not waste our time in repeating a description of physical pecularities of the Adonis of the Period according to the standard of the female three-volume novel. Everybody knows the sort of Hero, half Ajax, half Paris, of their monotonous pages. Grown-up people may smile at such absurdities, but girls are very impressionable, and when once they have adopted such an ideal, it is not easy to expel it from their minds. The person hardly exists in real life; the nearest approach to it being any or every unprincipled man who is prepared to make "fierce love" to any fool he meets. Obviously this is not a condition of things favorable to marriage; for while it makes girls more prompt, and indeed eager, to flirt, it indis poses them to appreciate attentions of a more delicate, but more practical kind. So much for the change produced in the ideals of women by what they read. The transformation is completed by what they see. While silly novels tell them that a lover, to be worth anything, must rail against heaven and bite the grass with his teeth, the whole arrangements of society keep daily telling them that a husband is no good at all unless he has a great deal of money.

Reaction of the Sexes.-The kitchen is woman's kingdom. Here she works her will-baking, boiling, stewing, frying, mopping, washing, ironing; emphatically ruling the roast. For ages she has reigned and wrought unassisted and unquestioned, save by some meddlesome, tasting Soyer, or cadaverous, bran-and-water-eating Graham. Naturally hating innovation, she has been content to do everything just as her mother used to. It is only within a generation or two that science and invention have secured a place on the hearth-stone; but no sooner there than the hearth-stone is abolished, the fireplace walled up, and the fire enclosed in an iron box. Clumsy and awkward as the boxes doubtless were at first, it would have been long before women, if left to themselves, would have ventured to improve the pattern; yet the secret history of the patent ranges, patent ovens, and the thousand-and-one neat contrivances that adorn the kitchen of to-day, would show that woman's wit, not less than man's wisdom, lies at the bottom of the change. Steam at last lends its magic fingers to aid her in her toil. Monday morning has lost half its terrors; for now, instead of the tub, the corrugated board and the bended back, the sole agencies used by our foremothers, a crank is turned, and lo! the scrubbing is finished; another crank, the clothes are wrung; while another returns them ironed. Leave the kitchen and ascend the parlor. One of its neatest pieces us the sewing-machine. The days of never-done, cyes-aching, sewing, extending from mother Eye to the time of Elias Howe, are over at last. A buzz of wheels, a rattle of the shuttle, and a yard of seam is done. Women probably invented sewing by hand; men taught them to sew by for One can easily believe that woman first learned of the angels to sing; men made the beautiful piano to accompany her. Now let us just take one glance at the other side. Visit sor factory or machine-shop where women never go. Grease.

dirt, and disorder are the leading features. Man, however he may be an ingenious animal, is not an over-neat one; and here his deficiency becomes patent. If men know their true interest they will open every door for the advancement of woman to equal knowledge and skill with themselves, and in every department will profit by her keen instinct, as much as by their own vaunted science.

The Lawn, and What we ought to see Upon it. Home and society are very suggestive words. The true home is a place where we can find our very best society; and what purer sentiment is there than the love of home? Literature renders no higher service than stimulating and intensifying our devotion to the spot whereon we live; and those who love home as they love no other spot, will read with the keenest relish all suggestions that may be made about ways and means of beautifying it.

How to warm it in winter, how to keep it cool and inviting in summer, how to spread the table with appetizing dishes at a cost that shall bring them to the cottage as well as to the mansion-all such topics are alive with interest to home-loving people.

The proper arrangement and ornamentation of the grounds will always be an interesting question. The man whose mansion stands in the midst of broad acres will, of course, call in the services of a landscape gardener; but mansions are not always homes. Indeed, I have sometimes wondered if those good words,

When I can read my title clear To mansions in the skies,

did not almost hint to some who heard them, that heaven was fitted up with special reference to the tastes and habits of those who have been accustomed to mansion life on tarth. Homes, however, very far outnumber mansions on this side of the river; and the owner of a home, with its modest bit of ground, may and often does take more solid comfort in its cultivation and adornment than the owner of the brownstone front. I can remember when a lawn was

comparatively unknown. There were "front door yards;" but lawn was not a current word. A thick carpet of closelycut green grass is a more beautiful sight than the lavish splendors of the field of cloth-of-gold. You form your impression of a room, not merely from its frescoed ceilings and carved woodwork, but also from the furniture and its arrangement. The beauty of a lawn is inconceivably heightened by what we see upon it, if we see only just what ought to be there. Trees are among our dearest friends, and no lawn is complete without them. As I look out of the window from the room where I am now writing, I can see several fine specimens that my own hands have planted. There is, for instance, a fine hickory, taken from Michigan woods when not larger than a whipstalk. It is a slow grower; but its leaves are peculiarly beautiful. A richer green cannot easily be found. The black walnut is a fine shade tree. In addition to their rich luxuriant foliage, there are so many pleasant associations connected with nut-bearing trees that we ought to have them around us.

They are perpetual reminders of holiday tramps in the woods after nuts, and they not unfrequently attract the squirrels to a temporary sojourn among their branches. Then there is the cut-leaf or white birch, one of the loveliest trees

that ever graced a lawn. The trunk is pure white, and the limbs change gradually in color from white to green. The leaves are exquisitely delicate, and as the branches droop nearly to the ground, the trees look almost as if covered with lace embroidery. Of course, in a short article like this, it is impossible to do more than describe a very few of the attractive features that a lawn may be made to present, and certainly one of the most attractive features that I have ever seen is a living arbor of evergreens, and I like best of all evergreens, the Norway Spruce. They may be arranged in two ways, depending upon the size of the proposed arbor. Plant them in threes triangularly, the intervening spaces on the sides four and a half feet each, and that of the base four feet; or for one of larger size, in fives also triangularly, making the intervening spaces on the sides four feet each, and

that at the base four and a half feet.

By careful, even trimming along the outside, perfect uniformity of growth can be secured. They may be allowed to grow from fifteen to twenty feet high, and should be so trimmed as to bring them nearly to an edge, like the roof of a house at the top. At the entrance, the cutting away should be after some neat pattern, and the interior should be cut away quite extensively to make room for seats around the sides. In a few years you will have an arbor that will be a thick mass of evergreen, far exceeding in beauty some elaborate pavilions that have taxed the skill of the carpenter and painter as well as the purse of the owner. Nature builds the evergreen arbor for you. She builds it slowly, but she gives you at last a finished piece of work.

E. L. B.

Intimacy. There is a distinct boundary to all intimacy between men, transcending which we run the risk of falling into unpleasant familiarity; but it is not every one that pos sesses tact and delicacy enough to recognize that boundary. Even the most solid friendship has often been broken down by overstepping the subtle barrier which exists between intimacy and undue familiarity, the latter almost invariably degenerating into contempt.

The "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," Oliver Wendell Holmes, wisely illustrates this deep principle when he gives each man a latch-key to the secret side-door of his existence, which latch-key cannot with safety be entrusted to any hand but that of the owner.

Cowper, in his "Ode to Friendship," well says:
The man who hails you Tom or Jack,
And proves, by thump upon your back,
How he esteems your merit,

Is such a friend that one has need
Be very much his friend indeed
To pardon or to bear it.

Curious Statistics of Marriage.-It is found that young men from fifteen to twenty years of age marry young women averaging two or three years older than themselves; but, if they delay marriage until they are twenty or twenty-five years old, their spouse average a year younger than themselves; and henceforward this difference steadily increases, till in extreme old age, on the bridegroom's part, it is apt to be enormous. The inclination of octogenarians to wed misses in their teens is an every-day occurrence, but it is amusing to find, in the love-matches of boys, that the statistics bear out the satires of Thackeray and Balzac.

The Oldest Inhabitant Gone.-The Hon. Joseph Potter, of Westerly, Rhode Island, died on Thursday, March 4th, 1880, at the advanced age of 93 years. Judge Potter was the oldest inhabitant, and one of the best-known citizens of Westerly, having by his energy, his integrity, his truthfulness, and religious consistency, won the universal esteem of the people with whom and among whom he lived and moved. He was born at Potter Hill (a village which took its name from his family), in the town of Westerly, on the 4th of August, 1787, and Potter Hill has been his home for the nearly ninety-three years of his life. His connection with the military, political, and general business interests of the community in which he passed his life has been an intimate and eventful one. He was captain of a company during the war of 1812, and when the British bombarded Stonington and threatened Westerly, he was stationed at Lotteryville to aid in preventing the hostile forces from coming up the Pawcatuck River. He represented his native town for several years in the General Assembly of his State as well as in the Senate. He also for a time occupied the position of judge on the bench, and aided greatly in the introduction of reforms in the judiciary system of Rhode Island. He took a warm interest in whatever concerned the pecuniary, social, and religious interests of the community in which he lived, his piety being a marked feature, not only in his church and family relations, but in the walks of his daily business life.

The usual tribute of respect was paid to the deceased by a large concourse of friends and relatives, who followed his remains to their last resting place. Thus, one by one, are toppling the oaks that have withstood the storms and blasts of four-score-and-ten.

Non-Alcoholic Stimulants.--Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, in a recent address before the New York Business Men's Moderation Society, commented upon the craving for stimu lants experienced by all hard workers. He believed at one time, he said, in total abstinence; but now recognized the need of light stimulants for over-worked humanity. For this opinion the great divine has been severely taken to task by the total abstinence people, who maintain that our physical welfare revolts against stimulants of all kinds. This is no doubt an extreme view; there are moments of weariness and lassitude during the heated term of summer which require the use of stimulants to revive and refresh; but need the stimulant be alcoholic? Professor E. N. Horsford, late professor in Harvard University, and a chemist of eminence, has given the subject much earnest study, and, after a series of careful experiments, has produced a preparation called "Horsford's Acid Phosphate," which furnishes an answer to the above inquiry, both conclusive and of great practical benefit to the whole American people. It is designed to take the place of alcoholic stimulants for those accustomed to their use, while at the same time superseding lemonade

| and other nerveless compounds as a refreshing, delicious summer drink. Based upon the well-known vital properties of the phosphate salts, it is recommended for headache, mental and physical exhaustion, prevention of sunstroke, and other ills incident to the sultry season. It is not a medicine, but a food tonic, indorsed by many of the highest medical authorities in the country. Temperance and antitemperance druggists, grocers, and general dealers may "pool their issues" upon this preparation, combining as it does all the virtues claimed for liquors, and more than all those for the drink of teetotalers. The Rumford Chemical Works, of Providence, Rhode Island, have undertaken its manufacture upon an extensive scale, and have met with generous encouragement by the wholesale drug and grocery trade East and West in their efforts to secure the prompt in. troduction of this already celebrated preparation.

Executive Ability.-Very few men are blessed with the talent of doing more than one thing well. In the economy of nature our gifts, as a rule, are few. One may be able to plan but cannot execute, while his neighbor's executive ability is his strong point. The man is good at the wheel, but lacks financial ability; another one can design china and earthenware of superior style, but falls short of success as a business manager. Similar experiences are met with in every trade. Men may succeed in the routine of designing, and in other departments of potting, but when their success in any one of these encourage them to essay manufacturing, they are all at sea, simply because the latter position calls for the exercise of entirely different qualifications. Now and again we find notable exceptions to this rule. We meet occasionally with men who possess a combination of different and varied excellencies, superior wherever they are placed; but, on the whole, such instances are rare-so rare, in fact, that the exception only proves the rule. Such men are successful. They must be, for they possess every requisite in the whole range of mechanical ability. Other men, who know nothing, practically, about the details of construction and qualities of material, sometimes succeed, but they have an executive power well developed, and, supported by a clear judgment trained by experience, they master all difficulties. One class of men may not know how to draw the simplest pattern, but, on the other hand, they may possess good taste, which will enable them to de cide whether a design is good or bad, and their discerument foretells its reception with the trade. Give them a basis and a plan, and they will complete the structure. On the other hand, those who have the practical routine thoroughly by heart, but lack the executive power, generally fail in their attempt to do business. What we wish to impress is the inportance of executive talent. It is the all-powerful lever, It is not always a gift. In nearly every man there is a germ, which, with proper cultivation, will develop this trait to a certain degree. Young men learning the business shoald