The Stoic.

THE stoic, and a block of ice, are the only known elements that do not absorb heat.

Frozen water is useful as a refriger ator. The stoic is frozen self, and useful as an object lesson.

Failure.

THE failure of a modest man is more tolerable than the luck of a coxcomb.

National Defense.

THERE can be no reliable, security or advantage in any device, system, or method of national defense, which can be used with facility in aggression.

The Voice.

THE Voice, the face, and the hand, are nature's open books, known and read of all men.

The sharp, rasping voice is that of a petty tyrant; while a gentler, lower key indicates gentle manners and a good disposition.

The face is a whole volume, and is not always correctly translated, even by the student; while others are read by a child.

The size, shape, and general texture of the hand, if studied, will give the observer a very fair outline of the mental make-up of its owner.

Thus, nature has written the book so plainly that "He may run who readeth."

Light and Heat.

SINCE the advent of our race on this planet, men have, with earnest brain and loyal hearts, paid willing homage to the king of day; and held their frigid hands to catch the heated arrows from the glowing quiver of yonder shoreless Sun. A deity more ancient, and a philosophy more universal than that of solar radiation, I do not recall. Such has been the faith of the sage, the logic of the learned, and the rule of the wise of all nations and ages, namely: That which is termed solar light and heat to be matter thrown off, or radiated from the Sun's disk. And, so far as the unity of human opinion is concerned, the same may be said of the

unity of judgment as to the shape of the earth, so late as the fourteenth century.

Yet this reasoning was sadly at fault; and no more so than is the present accepted theory of solar radiation.

To part with a faith so universal, ancient, and honorable, without a struggle, is not to be expected; for next to our faith in a Deity is an older and, to many, a more tangible faith: the doctrine of radiated light and heat. Our faith in the latter is no more emphatic than is the theory of solar radiation without foundation in fact; and yet I can conceive nothing more naturally plausible, nor more absolutely irrational and illogical.

So late as the seventeenth century, Sir Isaac Newton immortalized himself by formulating a theory of a solar radiation

of seven different colored rays of light, with their relative degrees of heat.

At a later day Dr. Young elaborated the theories of Hooke and Huygens; and, still later, Professor Tyndall has undertaken to reconstruct the Newtonian theory of Light in some of its details, leaving the conditions in principle but little changed.

A study of the formula presented and indorsed by Professor Tyndall, teaches a theory of solar Light, wholly predicated upon a supposed existence of what he calls "inter-stellar ether."

What this supposed, intangible "ether" really is, does not appear. We are told, however, that it fills the universe; that it has a wave of undulatory motion, moving in every direction with a speed next to that of thought.