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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Exeter Advocate, 1898-6-10, Page 7DEATH OF A PLOTTE Haman Died on the Gallows Which He Had Prepared for Another. Rev. Dr. Talmage Takes This incident to Illustrate a Useful Les., son --Wrongs We Would Do Others Return Upon Ourselves --Wealth and Happiness. Wasbington, ,Tune b.—The doom et arrogance and the reward of ,fidelity are lessons which Dr. Talmage bore draws from elordeoat on horseback and Haman afoot; text, Esther vii, 10, "So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he bad prepared for Mordecai." Here is an oriental courtier, about the most offensive maxi in Hebrew history, Haman by name. lie plotted for the destruction of the Israelitish nation, and T wonder not that in some of the Hebrew synagogues to this day when Hammes statue is mentioned the congregation clinch their fists and stamp their feet end ery, "Let his name be blotted out!" Haman was prime minister in the magni- ficent court of Persia. Thoro:.ghly appre- ciative of the honor conferred, be expects everybody that he paSSOS to be obsequi- ous. • ous. Conning, In one acv at the gate of the palace, the servants drop their heads boner s c in 1 It of his Wilco, but Hebrew , a named Mordecai gazes upon the passing dignitary without bonding his bead or taking off his het ell was a good man and would not bave been negligent of the ordinary courtesies of life, but he felt no respeet either for Raman or the nation from wbicb he bad canto, So he could not be bypooriticai, .and while others made oriental salaam, getting clear down before this prime minister when be Missed, Mordecai, the Hebrew, roilizod zaot a inuselo of his neck and kept his chin olear up. Because of that affront - Raman gets a deeree from .A.basuerus, tbe dastardly king. for the massacre of *lithe Israelites, and Haat, et comae, will include Mordecai. To inake a tang story short, through Queen !':;cher this whole plot was •evealed to her husband, Ahasuerus. One night 'Ahasuerus, who was afflicted with lamellate:, in his sleepless hours nails for his sea'retary to read hint a few passages of Persian buster,-, and so while away the nigh=,•, in the book read that night to the king an account was raven of a conspira.'y, from which Mordecai, the Belem. had saved the king's life and for lehlch kindness Mordecai had never received any reward. Raman, who had been fixing up a nice gallows to hang Morde'..,ai on, was walking outside the door of the king's sleeptug apartment and was called in. The king told him that he had just bad read to him the account of some one who bad saved his (the king's) life, and he asked what reward ought to be given to such a one, Self conceited Haman, supposing that he himself was to got the honor and not imagining for a moment that the deliverer of the king's life was Mordecai, says, "Why, your majesty ought to make a triumph for him and put a orown on him and sot him on a splendid horse, high stepping and full blooded, andthen bave one of your princes load the horse through the streets crying: 'Bow the kneel Here Domes a man who bas saved the king's life,' " Then said Ahasuerus in severe tones to Haman: "I know all about your seoundrelism. Now You go out and make a triumph for Mordecai, the Hebrew, whom you bate. Put the best saddle an the finest horse, and you, the prince', bold the stirrup while Mordecai gets on and then lead his horse throuelt the street. Make haste!" What is spectacle! A comedy and tragedy at one and the same time. There they go! Mordecai, who had boon despised, now starred and robed in the stirrups. Haman, the chancellor, afoot, bolding tho prancing, rearing, champing stallion, Mordecai bends his neck at last, but it is to look down at the degraded prime minister walking beneath him. Huzza for Mordecai! Alas for Haman! But what a pity to have the gallows, recently built, entirely wasted! It is 50 cubits high and built with care, and Haman had erected it for Mordecai, by whose stirrups he now walks as groom. Stranger and more startling than any romance, there go up the stops of the scaffolding, side by side, the bangman and Raman, the ex -chancellor. "So they banged Haman on the gallows that be had prepared for Mordecai." Although so nanny years have passed since cowardly Ahasuerus reigned and the beautiful Esther answered to his whims and Persia perished, yet from the life and death of Haman we may draw living lessons of warning and lnstruo- tion. And first we come to the practical suggestion that when the heart is wrong things very insignifihaut will destroy our comfort. Who would have thought that a groat prime minister, admired and applauded by millions of Persians, would have leen so nettled and harassed by anything. trivial? What more ooulcl the great dignitary have wanted than his chariots and attendants and palaces and bar.tluets. If affluence of circumstances can make a man contented and happy, surely Haman should have been con- tented and happy. No. Mordecai's retusai of a bow takes the glitter from the gold and the richness from the purple and the speed from the chariots. With a heart puffed up with every inflation of vanity and revenge, it was impossible for him to be happy. The silence of Mordecai at tbe gate was louder than the braying of trumpets in the palace. Thus shall it always be if the heart is not right. Circumstances the most trivial will disturb the spirit. It is not the great calamities of lite that oreate the most worriment. I have seen men, felled by repeated blows of misfortune, arising from the dust, never desponding. But the most of the disquiet which men suffer is from insignificant causes, as a lion attacked by some beast of prey turns easily around and slays him. yet runs roaring through the forests at the alighting on his brawny neck of a few insects. You meet some great loss in business with comparative composure, but you can think of petty trickeries inflicted upon you which: arouse all your capacity for wrath and remain in your heart an unbearable annoyance.. If you look back upon your life, you will find that the most of the vexations and dis- turbances of spirit which you felt 'were produced by circumstances that were not worthy of notice. If you want to , be happy, you moat not pare for trifles. Do not be toe minute in your inspootion of the treatment you receive from others. Who cares whether Mordecai bows when you pass or stands erect and sot as a cedar? That woodman would not make luuoh clearing in the forest who sbonld stop to bind up every tittles bruise and serateb he received in the tbicket, nor' will that man acoomplish much for the , world or the church wbo is too watchful , and appreciative of petty annoyances, There are multitudes of people in the world constantly harrowed because they pass their lives not in soarobing out these things which are attractive and deserv- ing, but in spying out with all their z powers of vision to see whether they cannot find a eloraecel, Again, I learn from the Iife of the man under our notico that worldly vaulty and sin are very anxious to have piety bow before them. Haman was a fair emblem of entire warldliuess and Mordecai the renreentative of unflinching godliness. Snell were the usages of sooioty, in ancient tithes that bad this Israelite bowed to the prince minister it would have beau an acknowledgment of resjaeet for his character and nation. elordecai would therefore have shelled against his religion had ho made any obeisance or dropped I his thin hail an inoh before !lemma, Whoa, therefore, printl Kaman attempted .t to compel a homage wbloh was not fain, he only dill what the world ever since bad tried to do when it would force our holy religion in any way to yield to its 1 dictates. Daniel, if he had been a roan of religious oompramiecq, would never have been thrown into the deu of lions. He might have mads some arrangements i with ging Darius whereby be could have retained part of his form of religion with. out making himself so Completely obnoxious to the idolaters, maul might have retained the favor of his rulers and escaped niartyrtiotn if he had only been willing to mix up his Christian faith with a few errors. Ille unbending Christ- , Ian character was taken as an insult. I?agot and rack and halter in all ages have been only the diff=erent ways in Which the world has demanded et:Mettler), • It was once, away up an the top of the temple, that Satan commanded the holy' one of Nazareth to kucrl before him, but it is not now so much on the top of ohurehes as down in the aisle and the pow and the ',pipit that satan tempts tbo espousers or the Cbrlstian faith to kneel before him. Why was it that the Platonic philosophers of eaarly blocs as wall as Toland, Spinoza and Bolingbroke of Inter days were so madly opposed to Christianity? Certainly not because it favored immoralities or arrested civiliza- tion or dwarfed the intellect, The genuine reason, whether admitted or not, was because the religion of Christ paid no respect to their intolleotual vanities. Blount and Boyle and the host of infidels batched out by the vile reign of Charles 11., as reptiles .crawl out of a marsh of slime, could not keep their petionoe because, as they passed along, there were sitting in the gate of the cburch such men as Matthew and Tdark and Lake and John7ewho would not bend an inch in respect to their philo:opbios. Satan told our iirst parents that they would become as gods if they would only reach up and tato a taste of the fruit. They tried it and failed, but their descendants are not vet satisfied with the experiment. We have now many desiring to be as gods, reaoldng up after yet another apple. Reason, scornful of Clod's Word, may foam and strut with the proud wrath of a Haman and attempt to compel the homage of the good. but in the presence of men and angels it shall be confounded. "God shall smite thee, thou whited wall!" When science began to make its brilliaut discoveries there were great facts brought to light that seemed to overthrow the truth of the Bible. The archaeologist with his crow- bar and the geologist with his hammer and the chemist with his batteries charged upon the Bible. Mosas' account of the creation seemed denied by the very structures of the earth. The astronomer wheeled around his telescope until the heavenly bodies seemed to marshal themselves against the Bible as the star:; in tbeir Courses fought against Sisera. Observatories and universities rejoined at what they considered the extinction of Christianity. They gathered now courage at what they considered past victory and pressed on their conquest into the kingdom of nature until, alas for them, they discovered too inuoh! God's Word had only been lying in ambush that, in some unguarded moment, with a sudden bound, it might tear infidelity to pieces. 15 was as when Joshua attacked the pity of Ai. He selected 80,000 men and concealed most of them; then, with a few men. hs assailed the city, which poured out its numbers and strength upon J.oshua's little band. According to previ- ous plan, they fell back in seeming defeat, but after all the proud inhabitants of the city had been brought out of their homes and bad joined in the pursuit of Joshua suddenly that brave man halted in his flight, and, with his spear pointing toward the city, 30,000 mon bounded from the thickets as panthers spring to their prey, and the pursuers were dashed to pieces, while the hosts of Joshua pressed up to the city and, with their lighted torches, tossed it into flame. Thus it was that the discoveriesof science seemed to give temporary victory against God and the Bible, and for awhile the church acted as if she;were on a retreat, but when all the opposers of God and truth had joined in the pursuit and were sure of the field Christ gave the signal to bis oburch, and, turning, they drove back their foes in shame. There was found to be no antagonism between nature and revelation. The universe and the Bible were found to be the work of the same hand, two strokes of the same pen, their authorship the same God. Again, learn the lesson that pride goeth before a fall. Was any roan ever so far up as Haman, who tumbled so .far down? Yes, on a smaller scale every day theworld sees the same thing. Against their very advantages men trip into destruction. When God humbles proud men, it is usually at the moment of their greatest arrogantly. If there be a man in your community greatly puffed up ,with worldly enemies, you bavo but to stand a little while and you will see him dome down. You say, "I wonder that God allows that meta to go on riding oyer others' heads and making groat assump- tions of vetiver. There is no wonder about it. Haman has not yet got to the top, Pride is a commander, well, plumed. and caparisoned, bus It leads forth a dark and frowning host. We have the best authority for saying that "pride goeth before destruction and a, haughty spirit before a fall," The arrows from the Almighty's quiver are apt to strike a man when on the wing. Goliath shakes his spear In defiance, but the small stones front the brook Elah make him etagrire and fall like an ox under the butcher's bludgeon. Ile who is clown cannot fall. Vesselsscudding under bare poles do not feel tho force of the storm, but those with all sails set capsize at the sudden descent of the tempest. Again, this oriental tale reminds us .of the fact that wrongs we prepare cur others return upon ourselves. The gallows that Haman built for Mordecai became the prince minister's strangulation. Robespi- erre, who sent so many to the guillotine, had bis own head chopped off by the horrid instrument, `ihe evil you practice on others will recoil upon your own pate, Slanders come borne. Oppressions come hone, Cruelties coxae home. You will yet be a lackey walking beside the very charger on which you, expected to ride others down. When Charles I., who had cicstr_tyed Stratford, was about to be beheaded, he said, "I basely ratified an unjust sentence, and the similar injustice I am now to undergo is a sensible retribution for the punishment I indicted on an innocent. MU." I.serd Jeffreys after incarcerating many innocent and gold peapio is Lav' don 'Power eras himself imprisoned in tbe same place. c0, whore tbo shades at those whom he had maltreated seemed to haunt hien. so that he kept crylug to his attend- ants, "Beep theca off, gentlemen, f'er God's salve, Imp thein oily' Tile chickens had come bonze to roost. The body of Braciehaw, the English judge who had been ruthless and cruel in his decisions, was taken from hie splendid tomb in Weetnzinster Abbey. and at Tyburn hung on a gallows from moiling until night in the presence of jeering multitude!. Human's gallows mime a little lata, but it cache. Opportunities fly in a straight i line and just touch u. ue they puss from eternily to eternity but the wrongs we do others fly in a viola and however the circle may widen out, they are sure to germ Mede to the point from which they started. There aro guns that kick, Furthermore, let the story of Hainan teach us bow quit'lcly turns the wheel of tortoni). (hire day. excerpting the icing, Haman was the:nigtaeic'st man in Persia, but the next day a taw•iza:y. So wa go up, and ea we sortie down, You seldom and any roan 20 ye:ar.t iu the wine cira'um- i stances. Of those who in petit*eal life ea years ago were the hilt prominent. how few retrain in eonllaeuity! Pal'st.ieal i parries halo certain men da their hard worir dud then, after using them as hacks, turn them out on the commons to oh,. !,very four ye.us there is a complete revolution. and Aleut 5,000 mon who ought certainly to be the next president aro shamefully disappolnted, while some who this day aro obscure and poverty striaaon will ride upon; the shoulders of the people and take their turn at admira- tion and the spoils of office. Oh, how quickly the wheel turns! Ballot boxes are the stops on which men come down as often as they go up. Of those who wore long ago successful in the accumulation of property how few have not mat with reversesl 'While many of these who then Were straitened in circumstances now hold the bonds and the bank keys of the nation. Or all fickle things in the world fortune is tho most nettle. Every day she changes her mind, and woe to the man who puts any confidence in what she promises or proposes! She cheers when you go up, and she laughs when you come down, Oh, trust not a moment your heart's affections to this changeful world 1 Anchor your soul in God. h'rom Christ's companionship gather your satis- faction. Then, conte sorrow or gladness, success or defeat, xiehes or poverty. honor or dim:mice, be.dih or sickness, life or death, time or eternity, all is yours, and ' ye are Christ's, and Christ Is Clod's. Again, this llaman's hhitory shows us that outward possessions and circum• stances cannot make a man happy. While yet fully .vested in authority and the chief adviser of the Persian monarch and everything that equipage and pomp and splendor of residence could do was his, be is an object lesson of wretched - nesse There are to day more aching sorrows under crowns of royalty than under the ragged caps of tbo boneless. Much of the world's affluence and gayety is only misery in colors. Many a woman seated in the street at her apple stand 1s happier tban the great bankers. The mountains of worldly honor are covered with perpetual snow. Tamerlane eon• quered half the world, but could not subdue bis own fears. Abab goes to bed sink because Naboth will not sell him his vineyard. Herod is in agony because a little child is born down in Bethlehem. Great Felix trembles because a poor minister will preach righteousness, temperance and judgment to come. From the time of Louis XII. to Louis XVIII. was there a straw bottomed chair in France that did not sit more solidly than the groat throne on which the French kings reigned? Were I galled to sketch misery in its worst form I would not go up to the dark alley of the poor, but up the high- way over which pranoing Bucephali strike the sparks with their hoofs and between statuary and parks of stalking deer. Wretchedness is more bitter when swallowed from gemmed goblets than from earthen pitcher or pewter mug. If there are young people here who are looking for this position and that circum- stance, thinking that worldly success will bring peace of tbe soul, let them shatter the delusion. It is not what we get; it is what we are. Daniel among the lions is bappier than Ring Darius on bis throne, and when life is closing brilliancy of worldly surroundings will be no solace. Death is blind and sees no differ- ence between a king: •and his clown, between the Nazarene and the Athenian, between a bookloss hue and a national library. The frivolities of life cannot, with their giddy laugh, echoing from heart to heart, entirely drown the voice of a tremendous conscience which says: "I are immortal. The stars shall die, but I am iaum.ortal. One wave of eternity shall drown time in its depths, but I am Immortal. The earth shall have a shroud of Sautes, and the heavens ilea at the glance of the Lord, but I am immortal. From all the heights and depths of my nature sings down and rings pp and rings ` ont the word `immortal.' " A good conscience ana assurance of life eternal through the Lord Jesus Christ are the only seouritios. The soul's happiness is too large a craft to sail up the stream of worldly pleasure. As ship carpenters say, it draws too mush water. This earth is a bubble, and It will burst. This life is a vision, and it will soon pass away. Time! It le only a ripple, and it breaketb against the throne of judgment. Our days! They fly swifter than a shuttle, weaving for us a, robe of triumph or a garment of shame. Begin your life with religion, and for its greatest trial you will be ready. Every day will be a triumph, and death will be only a king's servant calling you to a royal banquet. In olden time the man who was to receive the honors of knighthood was required to spend the previous night fully armed and, with shield and lance, to walk up and clown among the tombs of the dead. Through all the hours of that night his steady step was heard, and when morning dawned amid grand parade and the sound of cornets the honors of knighthood were bestowed. . Thus it shall be with the good man's soul in the night before heaven. Fully armed with shield and sword and beintet, be shall watch and wait until the darkness fly and the morning break, ana could the sound of celestial barpings the soul shall take the honors of heaven amid rhe innumerable throng with robes snowy white streaming, over seas of sapphire. Mordecai will Duly have to wait for his day of triumph. It took all the preceding trial, to matte a proper background far his after successes. The scaffold built for ham makes all the more imposing and pii•; tureeque the horse into whose long white mane he twisted bis Angers at the amounting. You want at least two misfor- tune.. bard as flint, to strike fire. heavy and ., continued snows in the winter are ague of goad (Tope next summer. So mane have yielded wonderful harvests of 1tnC 1 e o and energy lie ause they were for along while snowed under. We menet have a gond many hard fails Lcf+.ra we learn to walk straight, Ie is on the black anvil of trouble that mon hammer out their fortunes. Sorrows take up teen on their s!:oalders and enthrone theta. '.4onies aro' nearly always pitta, glen. like -fruit triee, are barren unless trn':send with sharp kills s. 'thew aro like wheet.-all the Letter for the flailing. It required the prion darkness and chill to make John Ilutmen dream. It took Ilehtware Me and told feet at Valley Form, os and the whiz of bullets to make a '1 , h.ngton. Pani. when ho climbed upon the l.a;zt•h at dellt:a, shivering in his wet cb"be.', was more of a Christian than when the ship struck the breakers. Fret ant, the Metorian, saw better with. out hie eye.' than he mile aver bale seen with theun. M' r'lcoai despised at the gat.i is only i,re.ie t'ssor of Mord:mai grandly sea>untee,. THE UTILITY OF WHISKER$ Sonaecteees Those vi ho :titch. Them Mose Can't ltaiso Them. "I would give cavy years of my life,' said a young attorney who is heardless, "to have your wbielters," '.phis was said to a friend wbo was supplied with abend:am whiskers. "Now, you as a olere: have no use for time bair on your face. It might be better if you did not have it at all. While here ata I wbo need it in my bus bies-a and yet cannot raise a board to save my life. It seems to nue that the per capita circulation of hair is inadequate to the needs of the nation. I have paver had the slightest use for a razor in all my life, and yet such a beard as yours would be worth at least $5,000 a year to me as a lawyer. Strangers hesitate to employ an attorney in an important vaso if he has not a beard. Of course, there are exeoptions to this rule, but It generally holds good just the same. If a man is portly and has a good address it does not so m matter; Mut taking the average lawyer or professional man, the beard cuts considerable figure. "I have a brother who is in business whore abeard i o t a s f t o 'macular benefit and yet he is bearded like a pard. He is taken for a doctor every day. One day last summer when he was walking on the west side a woman rushael out of a house and insisted on bis coming in to see her husband, whom she thougbt dying. The other morning he was coming down t..wn on a North State street oar, when a woman asked the conductor how she should go to St. Luke's hospital. Tho conductor could nos tell her, but he looked around the car and piaked out my brother, and said to him: 'Doctor, what street is St. Luke's hospital on?' Whenever bo goes to a drug store the clerks call hitn `Doc.' and give him a professional discount. I went in with him one day and the clerk was talking to a real doctor about some new and powerful medicine. Ho turned to my brother and said: 'Doctor, what bas been your experience with thrtyjkidlpeke?' Blamed if my brother did not put on a professional voice and talk for five minutes about the medicine, and he didn't know whether it was taken in capsules or to be robbed on the scalp." Chicago Chronicle. Work and Worry. Where work wears out one, worry wears out thousands. There is less happi- ness among the great than among the humble, among tho rich than among the poor. "But it these limitations could only be removed!" "It I did not have to work so hard!" "If I could be my best sell I" "If I could have that for which I know I am fitted!" Ah, greatness of gift always implies greatness of responsibility; if one limitation goes, another comes; that whioh seems to give freedom only increases slavery. Almost all men, like birds, boat themselves against their cages, longing to get into some differeut world, to soar beneath some more splendid skies, ignorant of the abysses in that larger world • and of the storms which sweep those skies. Of the Master it was said: "Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross." The gross preceded the joy, as the mountain climb is before the vision of the earth and sky. The stoic said: "The way to be happy is to pease to desire or aspire;" in other words, deny yourself. Christ's message is: "Tba way to be happy is the way of the Dross. Sacrifice yourself. Make all you possibly can: give every faculty its fullest development; be as beautiful, as cultured, as wise as circumstances will 'permit, not that you may be happy, but that you may use powers, faoulties, gifts, as I have used mine—for bumanity. In that way, and ,that alone, lies happiness." —Amory 11. Bradford, D.D. This Winter in Russia. Not within living memory has there been .knownso abnormally snowless a winter in European Russia as the past season. Throughout .the whole of these southern latitudes (says an Odessa corres- pondent), : and for astretch of nearly 2,000 mills northward, there !s only here and there the merest sprinkling oe snow, while the temperature alternates between a few degrees of frost and crisp spring weather. owe (Do Livor necii coaxing, not crowding. Dr, Apex's Pills stand with- out .a rival as a reliable medicine for liver complaint. They cure constipation, and they cure its consequences, piles,. bi,ioasne n , indigestion, sick headache, nausea, coated tongue, foul breath, bad. taste, palpitation, nervousness, irrita- bility, a d many other hnaladies that have th4ir root in constipation. They are a specific for all diseases of the stomach a .d bowels, and keep the body in a condition of sound health. "I Lave sued Ayet'a Pills for the past thirty years end consider them an invaluable family medicine, I hew of no better remedy for liver troubles, and have always found them a pros pt cure for dy'spep za."-'-Jdg0 QUItiel, 00 Middle Street;Hartford, Cour;. eke A er's Pills tcA t opocift Wood Furnace .QIJR. • . "FAMOUS MAGNET' Made in S :Mae usieg �,¢ end 5 feet we e.t.'i: hen flim mese to 7tw,00U cul:.c feet. 'teary fire•iiex, with rc mn g cions. increasing the heating surface. Entre large firing door anti ash ek. Heavy steel flees with cast beads that will expand vsititart cracking, Belts on maxi :e away ftesta *Cultic: of the fisc. [natant direct or Ir.i lrest draft. Firiug.ret t eecemandclesobaf endear tar: t the trent. (min is .r" sit Made ffar Weir crgame 1csings. ;4.1ig • ri+ 1!a q`^: 20 Q M10H£ST r ruTIMoNbALS FROM ALL DL'ALERS AND USZft$. � '�` . Y L,Q'NI104, !t ONTI:MA ., TtIF',QNTG !The c .: T � -t! $ s NF1) Wi'3NIY'1:4tirdtiANC.01."Yi'sf;. tf ilea' dealer cermet n,srriy, writes our =artist lwnar. You Cott keep yam !acme Rats from meeer to earn; as.ri Ito it Ciseaply. CUTTING THE GRASS. forehead is broad and high and bnlgvs with brain; his mem Is the pronounced pug variety and Ms eyes mirror a spirit Of mischief ant playfulness that made him so dear to the woman who reared biro and so -valued by the one who made hire her by purchase. Mr. Landon spent considerable time in Japan, and received a great deal of attentiou. Lie -Malted the palace of Moto, by invitation, and there saw the kennel of sacred spaniels. /its admiration won for biro a gift--Fu,ii, graudfratber of the mite who is now in Cincinnati. The mother of Fuji, the younger, Is lFinki, beautiful creature, wbo is about half a dozen times the size of bar midget sin. Fuji wee until a few dans ago, the property of UIrs. ,Tames M. Tower, who also owns his mother and two of hie brothers, with whore he romped and was bappy, at No. the West eventy.fiftle street. 'There Mrs. Sattler saw hires admired, and soon purt•based Men for Mr. Toggletou's 1:slier:once With the Sickle and tate Lawn Mower. "'Phis is the time of year," said Mr. Tottgleton, "when you see outside of the stores that sell such things rakes and hoes and spades and so on, and various grass cutting tools, including sickles. 1 owned a sickle once. I lived then in a smeller town in a detaehed house anditad a grass plot in front of It, and I thought I'd cut the grass myself. So I bought a sickle and carried it home, and Booked it over a beans In the cellar, wbich Is the correct and proper place to hang a sickle. I was going to get out in the morning botoro breakfast and cut the grana, making a , gilt-edged lawn of it, and get some exorcise and an appetite for breakfast. "11011, in the morning I went down Dollar and took the :;lckltc off the helatn as thsugh I'd been accustomed to using it all my life, and went out to the front yard and began to cut the grass. I never c made more discoveries in a short time !than 1 did that incmning. I found in the first place that to eat grass well with a sickle one must have the art, or knaarlc, which can he acquired only by praetice; that the novice with a sickle is in constant clanger of cutting off his own legs, and that cutting; grass with a sickle was bank -breaking work. They say there's only one thing more back -breaking, and that is cutting grass teeth a scythe. I never swung a scythe myself, but I no longer wonder why old Father Time looks so tired and worn. "1 never had a dream fade more rapidly than my sickle dream did. I out the grass that morning, after a fashion, and then 1 took the siekle back into the cellar and hooked it over the beam and left it there. "Later in life I lived in a house in the suburbs: There we had a regular lawn, and I bought a lawn mower and a pair of grass shears to trim around the edges with, where you couldn't got in with the mower, For a time I did out this grass, but after a while, as I had done once before, I gave this up and hired a roan to come and cut it. and that was the last of my grass cutting experience, for I live now in the city and far above the grass line."—New York Sun. The Smallest i)og. Fuji challenges the world to prove that he is not the smallest dog in it, and is proud of the feet that he is worth just $88.98 1-3 an ounce on the present price list in the canine market. He weighs only fifteen ounces and is of the royal dog blood of Japan, where those who believe that tbe seven days of the world's construction were in reality seven ages say that his ancestors were snared and pampered beasts in the Mikado's palace 8,000 years ago. Melville D. Landon who brought Fuji's grandfather, of the same name, to this country several years ago, tells tbis story on the authority of the daimio, who Is master of the kenueis in the Mikado's palace in Kioto. Whether it be true to a day or a year or a few oenturios Mr. Landon will not solemnly aver, but Fuji needs no record to prove that when his mistress, Mrs. E. E. Sattler of Garfield place, Cincin- pati, 0., puts bine sitting in her joined palms, fingers pointing upward, his head is the only part of his tiny, furry body that reaches above her Huger tips, Fuji stopped growing a month ago, and nothing artifiolal was resorted to to make him a high priced midget. He is ten months o1d now and as happy a canine gamboller; as ever chased a ball of yarn around a house or worried a doting mistress' millinery to shreds. He gained only an ounce and a half in the last two months of his preparation for his struggle with the world: Fuji is a Japanese spaniel. Iris mark- ings are bleak and wbite. They are beautiful, but it is in kis head that the dog fancier: finds most to admire: His eau., Chico. a blue tan elexe an, who weighs 10 outlive, might train tt:cwn to rivalry with Fuji. Be was on e n icer pruirc:rty of a French ammo:. tont now lives in Chicago.—New York limeald, Spurgeon', Tabernacle. Those who prophesied that moth the death of Mr. oputrtnn would st't in the decline of the organization at the Matzo. politan Tabernacle seem to bass' been sadly mistaken. Not only do the balance sheets of every branch of the church work ! and the institutions connected show something in hand, but despite a very careful revision of the names on the roll there aro now no fewer than 4,212 members in fellowship at the tabernacle. There are twenty missions connected with the church, and there are in all twenty Sunday schools, with 8,847 scholars and 894 teachers. .At the Pastors' college there are at present sixty- five students in training and at the Stockwell orphanage there are nearly 500 children being oared for. Altogether "Pastor Tom" seems to be keeping things "humming" pretty much as his famous father did.—Westminster Gazette. Photographing the Stomach. A new invention is expected to assist in diagnosis of ailments of the stomach, rendering laparotonoany unnecessary. A camera is introduced into the stomach and exposed for a few seconds. A email incandescent lamp attached to it supplies the necessary light for photographing. No pain is experienced. When the camera is introduced the patient easily bolds his breath, preventing movement of the membrane until a picture is obtained. A treat o00 Carrier. A 8,000,000 -gallon tank steamer, built for the oil -carrying track, has just been launched at Sunderland, Eneland. This vessel, which was built for the Standard 011 Company, is said to be the largest and best equipped tank steamer afloat. Philadelphia will be one of the home ports, Tolstuatifted. A condemned murderer wrote to the governor of his state: "if you will let me out of jail, I will err• ganize a company and fight for nay COMP. try ,, The governor was impressed with hie patriotism, but replied: "Sorry, but we want only sound men in the army, and you are threatened' with a eriok in your neck."—Atlanta Constitu- tion. Reasenriug izatormation. "Oh, George," sold a nervous lady to her husband, "do you think we shall have a safe voyage?" "Perfectly safe, my dear," replied George. "I have been talking with the captain, and he tells me he bas never beast drowned yet, though ho has been crossing continually stnco he was a cabin boy,' tm