Bearing Life’s Burdens.
Oh. there are moments for us here,
when, seeing
Life's Inequalities, nnd woe, and care.
The burdens laid upon our mortal being
Seem heavier than the human heart
cun hear.
For there are Ills that come without
foreboding,
Lightnings t lint fall before the thun-
ders roll.
And there are festering cares that, by
corroding.
Eat silently their way into the soul.
And for the evils that our race Inherit.
What strength is given us that we
may endure
purely the Coil and Father of our spirit
Sends not afflictions which he can not
cure!
No! there Is a Physician, there Is heal-
ing.
And light that beams upon life's dark-
est day,
To him whose heart Is right with God,
revealing
The wisdom and the justice of his way.
Heaven,
Remembering whence his blessings
have been sent;
Not him who never lifts his thought to
Nor yet to him are strength and wis-
dom given
Whoso days with profitless scourge
and fust are spent:
But him whose heart Is as a temple holy.
Whose prayer in every act of right is
said—
He shall ho strong, whether life’s ills
wear slowly,
Or come like lightning down upon his
head:
He who for his own good or for another
Ready to pray, and strive, and labor,
stands—
Who loves his God by loving well his
brother,
And worships Him by keeping His
commands.    —Phoebe Cary.
Municipal Temperance Placards.
The following temperance placard
lias been issued by the Southwark
Borough council, London, Eng., and
has been posted up throughout tho
borough. Placards to a similar effect,
with some variations, have also been
issued by other London councils:
PHYSICAL DETERIORATION AND
ALCOHOLISM.
The report of the committee, pre-
sented by parliament by command of
his majesty, states that:
The abuse of alcoholic stimulants is
a most potent and deadly agent of
physical deterioration.
Alcoholic persons are specially
liable to tuberculosis and all inflam-
matory disorders.
Evidence was placed before the
committee that in abstinence is to be
sought the source of muscular vigor
and activity.
Certain insurance tables show that
of 61,215 men, between the ages of 25
and 65, 1,000 die in one year, but in
abstainers only 560 die in the same
period.
The lunacy figures show a large
"nd increasing number of admissions
pf both sexes which are due to drink.
The following facts recognized by
the medical profession are published
in order to carry out the recommenda-
tion of the committee and to bring
home to men and women the fatal
effects of alcohol on physical poison-
ing,
(1) . Alcoholism is a chronic poison-
ing, resulting from the habitual use of
alcohol (whether as spirits, wine, or
beer) which may never go as far as
drunkenness.
(2) . It is a mistake to say that
those doing hard work require stimu-
lants. As a fact, no one requires alco-
hol as either food or tonic.
(3) . Alcohol is in no sense a food
and cannot repair the tissues. It is
really a narcotic, dulling the nerves
like laudanum or opium, but it is more
dangerous than either in that often
its first effect is to weaken a man's
self-control whilst his passions are
excited; hence the number of crimes
which occur under its influence.
(4) . Spirits as usually taken rap-
idly produce alcoholism, but milder
alcoholic drinks, as beer, and even
cider, drunk repeatedly every day,
produce, after a time, alcoholic pois-
oning with equal certainty.
simple questions of trade. The most
successful thing for any party to do
is to touch the pocket nerve of the
American people. Therefore, to make
a winning case for temperance we
must array the commercialism of
America against the liquor traffic.
Considered merely as a question of
dollars and cents the liquor problem
will some day become a burning is-
sue in our politics. The entire
amount received for tariff is approxi-
mately $255,000,000 i>r annum, while
the total output of gold in this coun-
try is something like $80,000,000 per
annum, and the silver product is per-
haps $00,000,000, or, combined, as
much as the annual liquor bill of
New York city, which is estimated
at $1,000,000 per day. As an economic
question neither the tariff nor the
gold nor silver issues is in it with
the drink problem.
The ordinary expense of the United
States government for all departments
is about $600,000,000 annually (in 1895
it was less than $375,000,000). That
is to say, our city’s drink bill is more
than half the amount required to run
the entire government of the United
States.
It is nearly twice as large as our
tariff revenue, more than four times
the amount of our gold product, and
six times as great as the entire value
of tho silver product of the country.
The city’s annual drink bill is more
than one-third our national debt. It
is two-thirds as much as the total re-
ceipts of our national government,
outside of customs, and it is nearly
half the total capitalization of the na-
tional banks of the country.
It is more than twice the salaries
of the teachers in ail the public
schools of the country, and is twen-
ty times the income of all the Prot-
estant foreign missionary societies of
the world, American, European or oth-
erwise.—Rev. Dr. Madison C. Peters.
An Opinion on Social Reform.
“Imagine what a prodigious social
reform, what a bound in advance we
should have made if we could curb
and control this devilish and destruc-
tive liquor traffic; if we could manage
to remove from amongst us what 1
have called on former occasions the
ratal faculty of recourse to the beer
house which besets every man and
woman, and really one may almost
say every child, of the working
classes In England; if we could divert
from that drink and from that source
of expenditure at any rate a consid-
erable portion only of the £100,000,000
or more which this nation thinks it is
necessary at present every year to
spend in drink; if we could direct that
disgust for work, the ruin of families,
the neglect of social duties, misery,
theft and crime. It leads also to the
hospital, for alcohol produces the
most varied and the most fatal dis-
eases, including paralysis, insanity,
diseases of the stomach and liver, and
dropsy. It also paves the way to con-
sumption, and frequenters of public
'louses furnish a large proportion of
the victims of this disease. It com-
plicates and aggravates all acute dis-
eases; typhoid fever, pneumonia, and
erysipelas are rapidly fatal in the sub-
ject of alcoholism.
(6) . The sins of alcoholic paitmts
are visited on the children; if these
survive infancy they are threatened
with idiocy or epilepsy, and many are
carried away by tuberculosis, menin-
gitis, or consumption.
(7) . In short, alcoholism is the
most terrible enemy to personal
health, to family happiness, and to na-
tional prosperity.
Alcohol and Commercialism.
Commercialism is the characteristic
lisense of the American people. Our
presidential campaigns for nearly fif-
expenditure to objects more civilized.
"In town or county, public houses
meet us at every step, inviting and
almost compelling the people to enter,
and I hold it to be certain that in nine
e^es out of ten if the public houses
were not there the people would not
miss it, and would not wish to have
recourse to such an establishment.
“There is an expression which was
much used in former days by those
opposed to licensing reform, an ex-
pression which they rejoiced to roll in
their mouths: ‘You cannot make peo-
ple sober by Act of Parliament.’ No,
you cannot; that is quite true. But
I tell you what you can do, you can
give the people power to make them-
selves sober.
“My belief is this, that the whole in-
stincts of the people are on the side
of sobriety if they had the power to
get their own way. But up to the
present time, if drunkenness exists to
a large degree in England, the blame
cannot fairly be put upon the people,
because they have not the power to
control the number of establishments
for the sale of drink.”—Lord Ran-
dolph Churchill.
Yearly Consumption of Liquor.
For eight years we have been con-
suming not only absolutely, but rela-
tively more spirits than the year be-
fore. The lowest consumption of
1.01 gallons per capita was reached
in 1896. Since that time th.q .consump;
tion has steadily mounted until the
latest figures show 1.48 gallons, an in-
crease of 46 per cent. The consump-
tion of beer in the same time has in-
creased only 18 per cent. In the
same eight years total abstinence has
become more and more regarded as a
business asset. Railroad companies
and commercial houses in constantly
increasing numbers require it, while
the area in which the sale of intoxi-
cants is prohibited by law Is larger
than ever before. Despite the in-
creased consumption of liquor there
is no reason to believe intemperance
has increased.—Detroit Free Press.
No Strength Given by Alcohol.
Mr. J. Hislop, a well-known pedes-
trian, says during a recent walk from
Boulogne to Paris no alcohol was
taken. No man taking alcohol could
walk thirty miles a day.
THE GOOD-NATURED GIRL.
Why is it that girls don’t like to be
called “good-natured”?
I have an idea that they think “good
natured” means lack of will power,
or a foolish willingness to be any one’s
tool or slave.
One girl explained it to me in the
following words:
“It’s just about the last thing you
can say about a girl,” she said. “If
you can’t think of anything else nice
to say about her you call her ‘good-
natured.’ ”
Now, I don’t agree with this girl
at all, for I think one of the greatest
compliments you can pay a girl is to
say she is “good-natured.”—Beatrice
Fairfax in New York Journal.
REFLECTIONS OF A BACHELOR.
The more faith a woman has in her
husband, the more he had better not
try to test it.
It must be an awful lot of fun to be
so rich you can grumble about how
poor you are.
There is more money in not spend-
ing what you make than in trying to
make it to spend.
A woman is sure her husband can
be trusted if he goes down town with-
out being shaved.
It’s a good deal of fun to surprise a
girl into thinking you aren't going to
ii*w her and then doing it.
ART NOT BOUGHT BY THE TON.
involving Contract That MacMonnies
Came Near Making.
Of late years Frederick MacMon-
aies, the sculptor, has had so many
c ommissions to do groups of sculpture
ihat he has made it a rule never to
enter a competition with other artists
for an order, says the World’s Work.
In this connection a story is told of
an American city that asked him to
enter a design for army and navy
groups for a soldiers’ and sailors’
monument. He declined to compete.
The the commission was tendered him
outright. He submitted sketches of
his idea for the groups. The commit-
tee in charge of the monument wrote
aim, asking:
“How many tons of granite do you
intend to use in the base?”
His reply was: “If you are in the
business of buying granite, you may
use as much as you want, one ton or
100,000 tons. I am an artist and I
have never yet heard of art being
bought by the pound.”
The question was dropped until the
contract for the commission was
drawn. When Mr. MacMonnies re-
ceived it, he discovered in it a clause
providing that in case the bronzes
were ever thrown down from their
base for any cause whatever, and any
person or property should be injured,
he an his heirs forever should be
liable for the damage sustained. He
returned the contract without com-
ment, unsigned. When the committee
wrote him asking the reason, his brief
reply was:    “Your lawyers are too
sharp.”
WANTED TO MAKE HEAVY BET.
Jack McAuliffe Went High in the Ani-
mal Scale.
“When Val-d’0r won the Prix Mon-
arque at Maisons-Lafitte, near Paris,
not long ago,” said Francis Brecken-
ridge Douglas, a breeder of thorough-
breds at Lexington, Ky., “I heard the
most remarkable wages ever offered
on a horse. I happened to be near
Representative Timothy D. Sullivan of
New York, and his party of Ameri-
cans. The French bookmakers have
borrowed English slang betting terms,
but they have changed the values.
A ‘pony’ is 500 francs, and a ‘monkey’
is 12,500 francs.
“In the hearing of our party, Will-
iam K. Vanderbilt bet a ‘monkey’ on
Val-d’Or, and William Duke, his train-
er, laid a ‘pony’ on the same horse.
Mr. Sullivan’s friend, Jack McAuliffe,
the former lightweight pugilist cham-
pion of the world, liked another horse.
Also he heard the ‘pony’ and ‘mon-
key’ bets. With his cigar tucked up
in the left corner of his mouth, Jack
strode up to the French bookie, point-
ed at the card and commanded:
“‘Here! I’ll bet you an elephant on
my horse, Finnasseur.’ ”
Not a Policeman.
Gen. Lee, commanding the Depart-
ment of Texas, tells a good story up-
on himself.
Leaving his office one afternoon af-
ter closing hours, he was stopped at
the sally port by one of a large num-
ber of visitors attracted to San An-
tonio by the recent fair.
“Will you please tell what car I
take to the Springs?” asked the dam-
sel.
The General paused, and, with his
customary courtesy, removed his hat
before replying that he was not very
familiar with the destinations of the
various car lines.
“But you ought to know,” said his
fair inquisitor, allowing something of
impatience to appear in her tone.
“Ain’t you a policeman?"
The General replied sadly that “at
one time in his life he had aspira-
tions to become a member of the
force, but he feared it was too late.”
The maiden's look of impatience
gave way to one of admiration as she
contemplated the General’s figure.
And with a sigh she said:    “Well, if
you ain’t a policeman, you sure ought
to be.”