AVARICE.

with the sin of blood on his brazen mail.His crimson scarf is rent; his scarlet banner dripping with gore; his step like a flail on the threshing floor.-Longfellow.

The leaves in autumn do not change color from the blighting touch of frost, but from the process of natural decay. They fall when the fruit is ripened, and their work is done. And their splendid coloring is but their graceful and beautiful surrender of life when they have finished their summer offering of service to God and man. one of the great lessons the fall of the leaf teaches, is this: Do your work well, and then be ready to depart when God shall call.-Tryon Edwards.

And

The tints of autumn-a mighty flower garden, blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.- Whittier.

Who at this season does not feel impressed with a sentiment of melancholy ?Or who is able to resist the current of thought, which, from the appearances of decay, so naturally leads to the solemn imagination of that inevitable fate which is to bring on alike the decay of life, of empire, and of nature itself?-A. Alison.

AVARICE.-Avarice is the vice of declining years.-Bancroft.

The lust of avarice has so totally seized upon mankind that their wealth seems rather to possess them, than they to possess their wealth.-Pliny.

We are but stewards of what we falsely call our own; yet avarice is so insatiable that it is not in the power of abundance to content it.-Seneca.

How quickly nature falls into revolt when gold becomes her object.-Shakespeare.

Poverty wants some things, luxury many, avarice all things.- Cowley.

It is one of the worst effects of prosperity that it makes a man a vortex instead of a fountain, so that instead of throwing out, he learns only to draw in.-H. W. Beecher.

Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children, and like Priam survives them all.

It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead, and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven than the martyr undergoes to gain it.— Colton.

As objects close to the eye shut out larger objects on the horizon, so man sometimes covers up the entire disc of eternity with a dollar, and quenches transcendent glories with a little shining dust.-E. H. Chapin. Avarice increases with the increasing pile of gold.-Juvenal.

Worse poison to men's souls, doing more

murders in this loathsome world than any mortal drug.--Shakespeare.

Avarice is to the intellect and heart, what sensuality is to the morals.—Mrs. Jameson. The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless, the last corruption of degenerate man. -Johnson.

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.Johnson.

Study rather to fill your mind than your coffers; knowing that gold and silver were originally mingled with dirt, until avarice or ambition parted them.-Seneca.

The avaricious man is like the barren sandy ground of the desert which sucks in all the rain and dew with greediness, but vields no fruitful herbs or plants for the benefit of others.-Zeno.

All the good things of the world are no further good to us than as they are of use; and of all we may heap up we enjoy only as much as we can use, and no more.-De Foe.

O cursed ald! when for thy sake the fool throws üp us interest in both worlds, first starved in this, then damned in that to come.—Blair.

Avarice, in old age, is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end?-Cicero.

How vilely has he lost himself who has become a slave to his servant, and exalts him to the dignity of his Maker! Gold is the friend, the wife, the god of the moneymonger of the world.-Penn.

Avarice reigns most in those who have but few good qualities to commend them : it is a weed that will grow only in a barren soil.-Hughes.

Some men are thought sagacious merely on account of their avarice; whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.Shenstone.

The avarice of the miser is the grand sepulchre of all his other passions as they successively decay; but unlike other tombs it is enlarged by reflection and strengthened by age.-Colton..

Avarice is always poor, but poor by its own fault.-Johnson.

Because men believe not in providence, therefore they do so greedily scrape and hoard. They do not believe in any reward

AWKWARDNESS.

for charity, and therefore they will part with nothing.-Barrow.

AWKWARDNESS.-Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it is generally thought to be: it often occasions ridicule, and always lessens dignity.-Chesterfield.

An awkward man never does justice to himself; to his intelligence, to his intentions, or to his actual merit.-A fine person, or a beauteous face are in vain without the grace of deportment.-Churchill.

B.

BABBLERS. (See "GOSSIP.")

They always talk who never think.Prior.

Fire and sword are but slow engines of destruction in comparison with the babbler.-Steele.

Talkers are no good doers, be assured.We go to use our hands and not our tongues.—Shakespeare.

BABE. Of all the joys that lighten suffering earth, what joy is welcomed like a new-born child?—Mrs. Norton.

A babe in the house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of peace and love, a resting place for innocence on earth, a link between angels and men.-Tupper.

A sweet new blossom of humanity, fresh fallen from God's own home, to flower on earth.-Massey.

Some wonder that children should be given to young mothers.-But what instruction does the babe bring to the mother !– She learns patience, self-control, endurance; her very arm grows strong so that she holds the dear burden longer than the father can.-T. W. Higginson.

Living jewels, dropped unstained from heaven.-Pollok.

A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.-Byron.

The coarsest father gains a new impulse to labor from the moment of his baby's birth.-Every stroke he strikes is for his child. New social aims, and new moral motives come vaguely up to him.-T. W. Higginson.

Good Christian people, here is for you an inestimable loan. Take all heed thereof, and in all carefulness employ it.-With high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be required back.—Carlyle.

Could we understand half what mothers say and do to us when infants, we should be filled with such conceit of our own

BACHELOR.-I have no wife or children, good or bad, to provide for; a mere spectator of other men's fortune's and adventures, and how they play their parts; which, methinks, are diversely presented unto me, as from a common theatre or scene.-Burton.

Because I will not do the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust none; I will live a bachelor.-Shakespeare. A man unattached, and without a wife, if he have any genius at all, may raise himself above his original position, may mingle with the world of fashion, and hold himself on a level with the highest; but this is less easy for him who is engaged.-It seems as if marriage put the whole world in their proper rank.-Bruyere.

A bachelor's life is a splendid breakfast; a tolerably flat dinner; and a most miserable supper.

BALLADS.-Ballads are the vocal portraits of the national mind.—Lamb.

Ballads are the gipsy children of song, born under green hedge-rows, in the leafy lanes and by-paths of literature, in the genial summer time.-Longfellow.

Let me write the ballads of a nation, and I care not who may make its laws.-Fletcher of Saltoun.

A well composed song or ballad strikes. the mind, and softens the feelings, and produces a greater effect than a moral work, which convinces our reason but does not warm our feelings or effect the slightest alteration of our habits.-Napoleon.

Ballads and popular songs are both the cause and effect of general morals; they are first formed, and then re-act.-In both points of view they are an index of public morals.-H. Martineau.

BARGAIN.—I will give thrice so much land to any well-deserving friend; but in the way of bargain, mark me, I will cavil on the ninth part of a hair.-Shakespeare.

A dear bargain is always disagreeable, particularly as it is a reflection on the buyer's judgment.

Whenever you buy or sell, let or hire, make a definite bargain, and never trust to the flattering lie, "We shan't disagree about trifles."

There are many things in which one gains

BASENESS.

and the other loses; but if it is essential to any transaction that only one side shall gain, the thing is not of God.-G. Macdonald.

BASENESS.-Every base occupation makes one sharp in its practice, and dull in every other.-Sir P. Sidney.

There is a law of forces which hinders bodies from sinking beyond a certain depth in the sea; but in the ocean of baseness the deeper we get the easier the sinking.-J. R. Lowell.

Baseness of character or conduct not only sears the conscience, but deranges the intellect.-Right conduct is connected with right views of truth.- Collon.

BASHFULNESS.-There are two kinds of bashfulness: one, the awkwardness of the booby, which a few steps into the world will convert into the pertness of a coxcomb; the other, a consciousness, which the most delicate feelings produce, and the most extensive knowledge cannot always remove.— Mackenzie,

Bashfulness is more frequently connected with good sense than with over-assurance; and impudence, on the other hand, is often the effect of downright stupidity.-Shenstone.

Bashfulness is a great hindrance to a man, both in uttering his sentiments and in understanding what is proposed to him; it is therefore good to press forward with discretion, both in discourse and company of the better sort.-Bacon.

Conceit not so high an opinion of any one as to be bashful and impotent in their presence.-Fuller.

Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.-Aristotle.

Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.-Johnson,

We do not accept as genuine the person not characterized by this blushing bashfulness, this youthfulness of heart, this sensibility to the sentiment of suavity and self-respect. Modesty is bred of self-reverence.-Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds.-None are truly great without this ornament.-A. B. Alcott.

We must prune it with care, so as only to remove the redundant branches, and not injure the stem, which has its root in a generous sensitiveness to shame.-Plutarch.

BEARD. He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath none is less than a man.-Shakespeare.

BEAUTY.-Socrates called beauty a short-lived tyranny; Plato, a privilege of nature; Theophrastus, a silent cheat; Theocritus, a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom; Aristotle, that it was better than all the letters of recommendation in the world; Homer, that it was a glorious gift of nature, and Ovid, that it was a favor bestowed by the gods.

The fountain of beauty is the heart, and every generous thought illustrates the walls of your chamber.

If virtue accompanies beauty it is the heart's paradise; if vice be associate with it, it is the soul's purgatory.---It is the wise man's bonfire, and the fool's furnace.Quarles.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.-Bacon.

Beauty hath so many charms one knows not how to speak against it; and when a graceful figure is the habitation of a virtuous soul-when the beauty of the face speaks out the modesty and humility of the mind, it raises our thoughts up to the great Creator; but after all, beauty, like truth, is never so glorious as when it goes the plainest.-Sterne.

The beauty seen, is partly in him who sees it.-Bovee.

After all, it is the divinity within that makes the divinity without; and I have been more fascinated by a woman of talent and intelligence, though deficient in personal charms, than I have been by the most regular beauty.- Washington Irving.

There is no more potent antidote to low sensuality than the adoration of beauty.All the higher arts of design are essentially chaste. They purify the thoughts, as tragedy, according to Aristotle, purifies the passions.-Schlegel.

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.

Even virtue is more fair when it appears in a beautiful person.- Virgil.

BEAUTY.

purposes; by having something to do and something to live for that is worthy of humanity, and which, by expanding the capacities of the soul, gives expansion and symmetry to the body which contains it.— Upham.

Every trait of beauty may be referred to some virtue, as to innocence, candor, generosity, modesty, or heroism.-St. Pierre.

To cultivate the sense of the beautiful, is one of the most effectual ways of cultivating an appreciation of the divine goodness.Bovee.

No man receives the full culture of a man in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished; and there is no condition of life from which it should be excluded.—Of all luxuries this is the cheapest, and the most at hand, and most important to those conditions where coarse labor tends to give grossness to the mind.- Channing.

To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.-Steele.

If the nose of Cleopatra had been a little shorter, it would have changed the history of the world.—Pascal.

Beauty in a modest woman is like fire at a distance, or a sharp sword beyond reach. -The one does not burn, or the other wound those that come not too near them.— Cervantes.

Beauty is often worse than wine; intoxicating both the holder and beholder.-Zim

merman.

The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth.-For all beauty is truth.-True features make the beauty of the face; true proportions, the beauty of architecture; true measures, the beauty of harmony and music.-Shaftesbury.

How goodness heightens beauty !—Hannah More.

Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue.— Every natural action is graceful; every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.-Emer

son.

The soul, by an instinct stronger than reason, ever associates beauty with truth. Tuckerman.

No woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more than she can be witty by only the help of speech.-Hughes.

Beauty is like an almanack: if it last a year it is well.-T. Adams.

There are no better cosmetics than a severe temperance and purity, modesty and humility, a gracious temper and calmness of spirit; and there is no true beauty with

out the signatures of these graces in the very countenance.—Ray.

The common foible of women who have been handsome is to forget that they are no longer so.—Rochefoucauld.

How much wit, good-nature, indulgences, how many good offices and civilities, are required among friends to accomplish in some years what a lovely face or a fine hand does in a minute!-Bruyere.

Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but if it light well, it makes virtues shine and vice blush.—Bacon.

Beauty is an outward gift which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.— Gibbon.

A woman who could always love would never grow old; and the love of mother and wife would often give or preserve many charms if it were not too often combined with parental and conjugal anger. There remains in the faces of women who are naturally screne and peaceful, and of those rendered so by religion, an after-spring, and later an after-summer, the reflex of their most beautiful bloom.-Richter.

Beauty is the first present nature gives to women and the first it takes away.-Méré. If you tell a woman she is beautiful, whisper it softly; for if the devil hears it he will echo it many times.—Durivage.

An appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility, is almost essential to beauty.— Burke.

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good; a shining gloss that fadeth suddenly; a flower that dies when it begins to bud ; a doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower, lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.Shakespeare.

What tender force, what dignity divine, what virtue consecrating every feature around that neck what dross are gold and pearl!— Young.

BED.

lessens.-There is therefore, something in true beauty that corresponds with right reason, and is not the inere creation of fancy.-Greville.

Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false.— Cecil.

By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.-Howard.

In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are his gift to all alike.-H. B. Stowe.

Beauty attracts us men; but if, like an armed magnet it is pointed, beside, with gold or silver, it attracts with ten-fold power.-Richter.

There should be as little merit in loving a woman for her beauty, as a man for his prosperity, both being equally subject to change.-Pope.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting-a wayside sacrament.-Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.-Emerson.

Beauty of form affects the mind, but then it must not be the mere shell that we admire, but the thought that this shell is only the beautiful case adjusted to the shape and value of a still more beautiful pearl within. The perfection of outward loveliness is the soul shining through its crystalline covering.―Jane Porter.

O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, by that sweet ornament which truth doth give !-Shakespeare.

BED. (See "SLEEP.")

The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.-Colton.

What a delightful thing rest is !—The bed has become a place of luxury to me.I would not exchange it for all the thrones in the world.-Napoleon.

In bed we laugh; in bed we cry; in bed are born; in bed we die; the near approach the bed doth show, of human bliss to human woe.-Benserade.

Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.-Franklin. Night is the time for rest; how sweet

when labors close, to gather round an aching heart the curtain of repose; stretch the tired limbs, and lay the weary head down on our own delightful bed.—J. Montgomery.

BEGINNINGS.-Let us watch well our beginnings, and results will manage themselves.Alex. Clark.

When the ancients said a work well begun was half done, they meant to impress the importance of always endeavoring to make a good beginning.—Polybius.

Meet the first beginnings; look to the budding mischief before it has time to ripen to maturity.-Shakespeare.

BEHAVIOR.-Behavior is a mirror in which every one displays his image.Goethe.

What is becoming in behavior is honorable, and what is honorable is becoming.Cicero.

A consciousness of inward knowledge gives confidence to the outward behavior, which, of all things, is the best to grace a man in his carriage.-Feltham.

Levity of behavior is the bane of all that is good and virtuous.-Seneca.

Oddities and singularities of behavior may attend genius, but when they do, they are its misfortunes and blemishes.-The man of true genins will be ashamed of them; at least he will never affect to distinguish himself by whimsical peculiarities. -Sir W. Temple.

BELIEF. (See "RELIGION.")

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one's self; for what we wish, that we readily believe.-Demosthenes.

There are many great truths which we do not deny, and which nevertheless we do not fully believe.-J. W. Alexander.

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend, must have a very long head or a very short creed.-Colton.

There are three means of believing, by inspiration, by reason, and by custom.Christianity, which is the only rational system, admits none for its sons who do not believe according to inspiration.-Pascal.

A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believes things, only on the authority of others without other reason, then, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes heresy.---Milton.

Remember that what you believe will depend very much upon what you are.— Noah Porter,