Interesting Selections

JOHi^ NICHOLSON. 455 platform. He is still a member of the High Council. His strong love of justice, outspoken candor and conscientious regard for truth and right, added to his sound judgment, keenness of perception and general intelligence, eminently qualify him for the responsibilities of that sacred and important position. The mellowing spiritual atmosphere of the holy House of God, in which he labors daily, is as congenial to his nature as its influence is manifest in all his ministrations. SELECTIONS OF INTEREST. Important medical and surgical discoveries are reported both in America and from abroad. The news comes from Baltimore of the discovery of an effective serum for the prevention and cure of cholera infantum and kindred diseases, by Dr. Simon Flexner, who is to be chief of staff of the new Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research. No less important is an announcement, published on the day that Helen Keller made her impassioned plea before a leg- islative committee in Boston for the future of the educated blind; a French surgeon has devised an electric apparatus which he says will enable the blind to see, by conveying images directly to the brain, independent of the medium of the eye. The apparatus is being perfected in Paris by Professor Peter Stiens. Physicians assert that the new process is an elaboration of a well-known prin- ciple that by contact of certain substances with nerve centres im- ages more or less defined may be impressed upon the brain.—CoZ- lier's. "A word to the wise"—"I am always afraid to reprove those who misbehave," said a clergyman, deprecatingly, when annoyed by several young people whispering and giggling right in the mid- dle of his "fourthly." "Some years since, as I was preaching, a young man who sat before me was constantly laughing, talking, and making uncouth grimaces. I paused and administered & severe rebuke. After the close of the services a gentleman said to me: 'Sir, you made a great mistake. That young man you re- proved is an idiot.' Since that, I have always been afraid to re- prove those who misbehave themselves in chapel, lest I should repeat that mistake, and reprove another idiot." There was no occasion to reprove any one during the rest of his sermon.