torted and made monstrosities of them to amuse the nobility with; and in cultured Boston there is an association of so-called "respectable men," who have opened thousands of " places of business" for deforming men, women, and children's souls. But we deform ourselves with agencies so pleasant that we think we are having a good time, until we become so changed and enslaved that we scarcely recognize ourselves. Vice, the pleasant guest which we first invited into our heart's parlor, becomes vulgarly familiar, and intrenches herself deep in our very being. We ask her to leave, but she simply laughs at us from the hideous wrinkles she has made in our faces, and refuses to go. Our secret sins defy us from the hideous furrows they have cut in our cheeks. Each impure thought has chiseled its autograph deep into the forehead, too deep for erasure; and the glassy, bleary eye adds its testimony to our ruined character.

The devil does not apply his match to the hard coal; but he first lights the shavings of "innocent sins," and the shavings the wood, and the wood the coal. Sin is gradual. It does not break out on a man until it has long circulated through his system. Murder, adultery, theft, are not committed in deed until they have been committed in thought again and again.

"Don't write there," said a man to a boy who was writing with a diamond pin on a pane of glass in the window of a hotel. "Why not?" inquired the boy. "Because you can't rub it out." Yet the glass might have been broken and all trace of the writing lost, but things written upon the human soul can never be removed, for the tablet is immortal.

"In all the wide range of accepted British maxims," said Thomas Hughes, "there is none, take it all in all, more thoroughly abominable than this one, as to the sowing of wild oats. Look at it on what side you will, and I defy you to make anything but a devil's maxim of it. What man, be he young, old, or middle-aged,

The only

sows, that, and nothing else, shall he reap. thing to do with wild oats is to put them carefully into the hottest part of the fire, and get them burnt to dust, every seed of them. If you sow them, no matter in what ground, up they will come with long, tough roots and luxuriant stalks and leaves, as sure as there is a sun in heaven. The devil, too, whose special crop they are, will see that they thrive, and you, and nobody else, will have to reap them."

We scatter seeds with careless hand,

And dream we ne'er shall see them more;

But for a thousand years

Their fruit appears,

In weeds that mar the land.

JOHN KEBLE.

Theodora boasted that she could draw Socrates' disciples away from him. "That may be," said the philosopher, "for you lead them down an easy descent whereas I am forcing them to mount to virtue an arduous ascent and unknown to most men."

"When I am told of a sickly student," said Daniel Wise, "that he is studying himself to death,' or of a feeble young mechanic, or clerk, that his hard work is destroying him, I study his countenance, and there, too often, read the real, melancholy truth in his dull, averted, sunken eye, discolored skin, and timid manner. These signs proclaim that the young man is in some way violating the laws of his physical nature. He is secretly destroying himself. Yet, say his unconscious and admiring friends, 'He is falling a victim to his own diligence!' Most lame and impotent conclusion! He is sapping the very source of life, and erelong will be a mind in ruins or a heap of dust. Young man, beware of his example! Keep thyself pure;' observe the laws of your physical nature, and the most unrelaxing industry will never rob you of a month's health, nor shorten the thread of your life; for industry and health are companions, and long life is the heritage of diligence."

"How shall I a habit break?"

As you did that habit make.
As you gathered, you must lose;
As you yielded, now refuse.

Thread by thread the strands we twist
Till they bind us neck and wrist.
Thread by thread the patient hand
Must untwine ere free we stand.
As we builded, stone by stone,
We must toil, unhelped, alone,
Till the wall is overthrown.

But remember, as we try,
Lighter every test goes by;

Wading in, the stream grows deep

Toward the centre's downward sweep;
Backward turn, each step ashore
Shallower is than that before.

Ah, the precious years we waste
Leveling what we raised in haste;
Doing what must be undone,
Ere content or love be won!

First across the gulf we cast

Kite-borne threads till lines are passed,

And habit builds the bridge at last.

JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.

"The weak, the leaning, the dependent, the vacillating

Know not, nor ever can, the generous pride

That glows in him, who on himself relies:
His joy is not that he has won the crown,
But that the power to win the crown is his."