Notes

NOTES. The way to heaven is upward. No one can travel it without effort. Men do not stumble into heaven. "Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceeds in sublimitv the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man, whether those of Brazil, ishere the powers of life are predominant, or those of Terre del Fuego, where death and decay prevail. Both are temples filled with the varied produc- tions of the God of Nature — no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body." Charles Darwin. One of the chief means of protection to the great battleships are huge armor- plates. It is important in these days that there should be armor- plated boys. A boy needs to be iron- clad on: His lips — against the first taste of liquor. His ears — against impure words. His hands — against wrong-doing. His feet— against going with bad company. His eyes — against dangerous and worthless books. His pocket — against dishonest money. His tongue — against evil speaking. The King's Own. Horace Mann says: "You are made to be kind, boys; generous, magnani- mous. If there is a boy in school who has a clubfoot, don't let him know you ever saw it. If there is a boy with ragged clothes, don't talk about rags within his hearing. If there is a hungry one, give him part of your dinner. If there is a dull one, help him to get his lessons. If there is a bright one, be not envious of him; for if one boy is proud of his talents, and another boy is envious of them.

EDITOR'S TABLE. 757 there are two great wrongs, and no more talent than before. If a larger or stronger boy has injured you and is sorry for it, forgive him." If we would increase our happiness and prolong life, let us forget our neigh- bor's faults. Forget the slander we have heard. Forget the temptations. For- get the faultfinding, and give a little thought to the cause which provoked it. For- get the peculiai ^ties of our friends, and only remember the good points which make us fond of them. Forget all personal quarrels or histories we may have heard by accident, and which, if repeated, would seem a thousand times worse than they are. Blot out of memory, as far as possible, all the disagreeable occurrences in life; they will come, but they will grow larger when we remember them, and the constant thought of the acts of meanness or, worse still, malice, will only tend to make us more familiar with them. Obliterate everything disagreeable from yesterday; start out with a clean sheet for today, and write upon it, for sweet memory's sake, only those things which are lovely and lovable. President Roosevelt, in one of his recent messages to Congress, said 'When : ' home ties are loosened when men and women cease to regard a worthy family ; life, with all its duties fully performed, and all its responsibilities lived up to, as the life best worth living, then evil days for the commonwealth are at hand- There are regions in our land, and classes of our population, where the birth rate has sunk below the death rate. Surely it should need no demonstration to show that wilful sterility is, from the standpoint of the nation, from the standpoint of the human race, the one ain from which the penalty is national death, race death; a sin for which there is no atonement; a sin which is the more dreadful exactly in proportion as the men and women guilty thereof are in other respects, in charac- ter, and bodily and mental powers, those whom for the sake of the state it would be well to see fathers and mothers of many healthy children, well brought up in homes made happy by their presence. Mo man, no woman, can shirk the primary duties of life, whether for love of ease and pleasure, or for any other cause, and retain his or her self-respect." How can a man be without religion in this sort of world? It seems barely possible during January; but at least twice a year there ought to be a big sponta- neity of emotion, looking outward and upward for some One to love; in May and June, when everything is full of beauty and sweetness, when the violets and the roses and all the huge trees that fill the lawns and the orchards are breathing fra- grance; and once more in September and October when the harvests are being gathered in, when the apples cover the ground and the corn lies in golden piles about the fields. The spirit of beauty is abroad in June, the ugly has no place. The valleys are alive with gentle emotions; the hills kiss their hands to each other. Whence came those religions that breathe vengeance? They must have been born in deserts, and in either oppressive cold or oppressive heat; they are the children of terror. Let us have the religion of June. Indeed we do have it if we walk with Jesus in the wheat fields, discuss parables of every-day life, or the lilies that toil not nor spin. Some time we shall find the soul of that religion that was born in the spirit of good- will and everlasting fellowship.