7 The Bad 7 ' Habit Of | | Own Weaknesses. Brooding Over Our There is a-spirit in man,--Job Xxxii. 8. Man was created like the other animals from the dust of the earth, but there was a difference. God breathed into him a living divine spirit. The body came possessed with. an immortal soul. It is this spirit in man that directs him and drives him on. It will not suffer hiss to rest contented. It: demands always more struggles, greater sac- rifices, completer victories. Each step gained becomes the basis for a new advance. Three centuries are a little time in which to cre- ate a modern city and the splend- id material civilization which it typifies. A hundred years seem not eneugh in which to produce the marvelous developments and mighty CONQUESTS OF STEAM. The insatiable spirit in man al- lows him but a moment for retro- spect. There are greater things yet to be done. After the conquest of the earth comes the conquest of the air. Beyond the world are the stars and beyond the stars there is infinite space. The body of man has reached its limit. We can by taking thought scarcely add a cu- bit to our stature or a decade to our span of life. But the spirit in man knows not limitation. It has life that is eternal and possibilities that are infinite. The living spirit travels in the direction of greater power. | It multiplies itself by laying hold up- on the forces of nature. It drags energy from secret places and sets it to work. It seeks also to under- stand psychic and moral forces and bend them to its imperious will. The spirit in man travels in the direction of completed knowledge. It must know all things. It sets man to searching our facts of every kind. It honors the explorer, the inventor and the thinker. Nothing is unimportant, if it is REAL AND TRUE. The spirit in man travels in the direction of a more perfect righte- ousness. It strives ceaselessly for a better government, a juster social system, the abolition of poverty and war, a life of happiness. Progress is the law of life. We can neither go backward nor stand still The spirit does not end un- ti! the dissolution of the body, un- til the dawning of an eternal day, when we awake in His Likeness. Thomas Reed Bridges, D.D. THE S. S. LESSON INTERNATIONAL LESSON, MARCH 13. Lesson XI. Two Mighty Works. Matt. 8. 23-34. Golden Text, Matt. 8. 27. Verse 23. He was entered into a boat--Literally, "the boat." Be- cause of the multitude, Jesus had asked for a boat, "to wait on him" (Mark. 8. 9), and subsequently it is referred to as the boat, as if the one placed at his disposal (Mark 4. 36; 6. 32). His disciples followed him--The boat must, therefore, have been of fairly large dimensions, although not as large as the "vessel" (Acts 27. 41) in which Paul suffered ship- wreck. Mark says (4. 36): '"'Other boats were with him," as if they were loath to part with him. 24. There arose a great tempest --A common occurrence, inevitab- ly connected with the situation ot the lake. The storms were sudden and violent, due to the fact that the lake lay so low in its hill-en- circled valley. Throwgh the deep gorges of the watercourses, which converged at the head of the lake, the winds were sucked down with terrific violence from the massive plateaus. He was asleep--the days in Ca- pernaum had been strenuous ones. Jesus lay down in the stern of the boat, with a rough headrest (Mark 4. 38) for his single comfort. 25. Save, Lord; we perish -- A cry inspired, as the next verse shows, by fear rather than faith. Still, there was something in Jesus which inspired in the disciples hope, if only a forlorn one, and their cry unconsciously pays tribute to the wonderiul influence he had gained over them. 26. Ye of little faith--Note, in Matt. 6. 30; 14. 31; 16. 8, how often this word was upon the lips of of Jesus. Even after many other miracles, Jesus had to chide his disciples: "Are ye even yet with- out understanding?' Rebuked the winds and the sea --By addressing to them the words found in Mark's account, "Be muzzled," as if speaking to mad beasts. A striking proof that Jesus considered himself Sovereign of the physical world. There was a great valm--Not the ordi: ary gradual subsidence, mark- 2#8 ed by the long, rolling swell, but a sudden abatement of the disturb- ance. 27, The men--No wonder those in the other boats marveled, when even the bosom friends of Jesus were so cowardly. "The sleep and the outward appearance," said Chrysostom, "showed man, the sea and calm declared him God."' 28. To the other side--The east- ern shore, opposite Capefnaum. See verse 18 of the chapter. Country of the Gadarenes --This cannot have been the neighborhood of Gadata, which lay several miles southeast of the lake; for then the swine must have been compelled to race over mountain, river, and plain a long distance before reach- ing the Sea of Galilee. The best suggestion is that popular usage gave the namie of the chief town to all the east-shore country. Modern Khersa has been accurately identi- fied us the scene of the city (verse 34) near which the miracle» took Trace a line directly across --~fyom Tiberias, and somewhat to the lace. ay ' ath stand the ruins of Khersa, Christ cast them out close to the seashore. . Two possessed with demons--The belief of the Gospels about demon- postession includes these points: (i) There is a kingdom of demons of which Satan is the head; (2) they are incorporeal and generally in- visible; (3) they are the cause of mental and physical -disease; (4) more than one can take possession (5) [an extent that they have embarked of a man at the same time; in his own ; (6), he never treated those éd as wilful sinners; (7) very case-a result of sin, some ®eaz and dumb, some blind, some savage, some abnormally strong, some giv- en to convulsions, raving, or foam- ing at the mouth. All these are signs of epilepsy. (See Hasting's Dictionary of Christ and the Gos- pels; article, "Demon"). Coming . . . out of the tombs-- Near the ruins of Khersa are re- mains of ancient tombs carved out of the face of the mountain. Chris- tianity had not yet come to found asylums for such unfortunates, and they were allowed to roam like beasts. Burial places were their favorite haunts. These two had terrorized the vicinity, so that no mar could pass by that way. 29. A reasonable explanation of their recognition of Jesus, and of his Messiaship and consequent right to be their final Judge, is this: In Capernaum, with the crowds ,they had heard Jesus preach and beheld his wonder-working. But they had not yielded to him, and now, to their diseased minds, he appears to have come as the Messia-Judge to execute vengeance before the time ; that is bfore the last judgment. 30. Many swine--Mark, whose fuller account must be compared with this, says there were two thou- sand, They were feeding, afar off on the mountains above Khersa. 31. The demons besought him -- They feared their doom was at hand, and that he was to consign them to the abyss of hell (Luke 8. 31) As a compromise they entreat- ed him to send them into the herd of sw'ne. 82. Go--More forcibly, with you." Went into the swine--See note above on demon-possession (2). Rushed down the steep into the sea--What made Khersa easy of identification as the scene of the miracle was the fact that at only this point on the eastern shore do ths mountains come at all near the beach, and here "the incline is such that one rushing down would be precipitated at once by the impe- tus into the water." The whole herd . . . perished -- Are not two men of more value than two thousand swine? The de- mons would spare the swine and destroy the men. Not so Christ. 83. They that fed them fled -- Partly because of dread, partly be- cause of their excitement that made them want to tell the news. These madmen had been the talk of the town, and had foiled every attempt to restrain them. 34. They besought him that he would depart--The destruction of 80 many swine would be a great commercial loss, and, perhaps, they feared more. In that case they would seem to care more for their possessions than for the presence of Jesus. Perhaps, however, they were moved by feelings of reveren- tial awe. "Away D2) MUSH AND MILK. Michigan Couple are Making a - Good Income trom It. i The old mortar and pestle used to be employed to hammer up the corn into meal, and after pounding out the family supply, the house- wife would not complain even if it did take all day to make up a batch of mush. Now-a-days things are different ancl life is too short for the aver- age housewife to spend so much time on an article of diet. Conse- quently,| batter cakes and buck- wheat cakes, both of which are not to be despised, and breakfast foods have largely displaced the maize product for the first meal of the day. Recognizing all this, and \know- ing that the appetite for mush was not dead but merely dormant be- cause of a lack of exercise, a mar- ried couple of Traverse City, Mich., have embarked upon a new ven- ture. For some time they have been making mush and 'selling it to their neighbors, so that all that was necessary to do was to fry it or warm it a little for mush and milk. The demand has increased to such upon mush making on a commerci- al scale and their product is now handled by the.various stores of Ae city and is meeting with a ready Sale. . ENGLISH CHURGH YARDS =------ LIVELY SCENES ENACTED IN DAYS GONE BY. Iu Them Bells Were Cast, Stocks Set Up and Cock Fights Took Place. If the old churchyards of Eng- land could tell their own story it would be strange and interesting. quiet spots they now are. Games, dancing, fairs, miracle plays and various other enlivening perform- ances took place in them. Dancing, as an expression of re- ligious emotion, was practised by all the old peoples of the world. Probably the early! Christians. may have desired in all honesty to show their joy in the same manner. The results were not. fortunate. One of the popes had to prohibit dancing in the churches. In 858 the Bishop of Orleans condemned the dancing of women in the Pres- bytery at festivals. In 1209 thea- trical dances in the churches were forbidden, and two church councils not long afterward condemned all dancing in churches or churchyards. DANCING WAS PRACTISED. The practise of dancing on feasts appears to have been almost uni- versal in Wales. The people did not dance on the graves, but on the north. side, where there were no graves. Probably this part of the ehurchyard, being more even ground, would be more conveni- ent for dancers, and possibly, too, the superstition (so common in Lin- colnshire and Yorkshire) that have had some influence. According to the Ecclesiastical Review, the eastern portion of a churchyard is regarded as the most west, and last of all the north, from the belief that in this order the dead will rise. Hence felons and notoriously bad characters were buried on the north side of the church. At a later period morris dancing was associated with churches, and the churchwardens not infrequent- \ly had in their possession certain properties that were necessary for its due performance. The morris dancing was occasionally actually performed in the church (in the nave or at the west end), the mum- mers not going forth on their Whit- suntide round until the first dance |had been given within the church. Is is not difficult to trace the con- nection between the morris dancing and the church. When the fifth crusade succeeded in effecting the capture of Constantinople the La- tins in their joy celebrated the event by solemn dances in the great church of St. Sophia. The almost invariable subject of THE MUMMING. PLAY, as apart from the miracle play, was drawn from the crusading legend of St. George, rescuing a Chris- tian maiden from her Turkish mas- ters; while the joy was invariably celebrated in the morris (i.e., Moor- ish} dance. It is generally agreed that the morris dance was intro- duced into England in the sixteenth century. In the earlier English al- lusions it is called Morisco (i.e., a Mcor), and this indicates its coming from Spain. Miracle plays continue to be re- presented in churchyards for as long a period as they were played in churches, but they were never so popular in the open air as in the church. Easter and Whitsuntide were the great seasons for these performances. On Sundays and holidays the churchyard was a_ public _ play- ground. On those days people went to mass in the morning and devoted the rest of the day to amusements. Centuries have now elapsed since many of the church- yard games were first introduced, but there can be no doubt that they were exceedingly popular for a long period, lingering even to within a century ago. These merrymakings were carried to such excess that prohibitions and condemnations were launched against them. As early as the mid- dle of the tenth century a canon was enacted warning the people not to spend in drunkenness and de- bauchery the season (the wake) specially designed for devotion and prayer. In Scotland the provincial synod enacted in 1225 the "dances and games which engender lasciy- iousness .be not performed in churches and churchyards," and als. that "wréstling matches or sports be not suffered to take place there upon any of the festivals." An act of Edward I. goes further by forbidding FAIRS AND MARKETS: to be held in churehyards. Games and seenlar business in churchyards were forbidden by the Synod of Exeter in 1287: "We strictly en- join on parish priests that they pub- licly proclaim in their churches that no one presume to carry on com- hats, dances or other improper sports in the churehyards, especi- ally on the eves of feasts of saints, or stage plays or farces." In spite of synods games con- tinued to be played in the church- yards. In 1638 one of the enquiries made of the archdeacon of Suffolk, was: "Have any plays, feasts, ban- quets, suppers, church ales, drink- ings, temporal courts, or leets, lay juries, exercise of dancing, stoole ball, football, or the like, or any other profane usage been suffered to be kept in your Church, Chap- pell or Churchyard?" ; 'A game of ball used to be played in a Staffordshire churchyard, The vicar tried to stop the practice, but Time was when they were not the; it | is unlucky to tread on graves may | honored, next the south, then the) was baffled by the perseverance o i the boys. He gave orders that when he died he should be buried in the place where the boys played and that an altar tombstone should be placed on his grave, saying that theugh he had failed to stop the ballplaying in his lifetime he would stop it after his death. He suc- ceeded. be : In the West of England single stick (or. "cudgell playing," as it was there called) was nearly always practised in churechyards, and in Devonshire a favorite amusement in churchyards was THE WRESTLING MATCHES. The boys at Westminster school played a game called nine holes in the cloisters, and many of these holes are still to be seen, although some have been obliterated by the werk of restoration. Fox and geese boards are to be found cut on the cloister benches at Gloucester Cathedral and else- where. There are several. of these on the twelfth century tomb of Lourd Stourton's (so-called) at Sal- isbury and which is now in the nave of that cathedral. On the garth side of the east cloister walk of Salisbury Cathedral there is cut on a bench a '"'chequer" board of six- teen squares. I' is carefully done, and the al- ternate squares are slightly sunk. showing that the squares were played upon and not the points of intersection. The form would ap- pear to suggest something like draughts.: On the bench in the sec- ond bay from the eastern church door in the cloister of Norwich Ca- thedral are eight small holes in a right line, which were probably used in some game, although the nature of it is not now known. Cock fighting was a frequent pas- time indulged in, and this even on Sundays immediately after service. In the days of yore "THROWING AT COCKS" was a popular sport, Shrove Tues- day being especially set apart for it. Stocks for the punishment of of- fenders were sometimes placed in the churchyard, though more _ fre- quently near the village cross or in the market place. From the Yore tenpence was paid "'for a hinging lock to the stocks in the Mynster Yards," and again in 1643 "for re- building the gallows in the Horse fair, and the stocks in the Minster yard, £5 5s. 10d."' The stocks at | Beverly Minister were movable and placed in the yard when required for use. Very frequently bells were cast in churchyards. In the days early bell founders the country roads were little better than miry lanes, full of ruts and holes, and where the moisture of the Winter was not evaporated during the Summer. For this reason bells were often cast in the immediate vicinity of the church or monastery they were going to grace. "Great Tom'? of Lincoln in 1610 and the Great Bell of Canterbury in 1762 were cast in the yards of their re- spective cathedrals. The tapers used in the church services and proces- sicns were made at the wax house, which was often situated in the ehurchyards. Doles of alms were often distri- buted in churchyards. Dare in 1611 (temp. James I.), di- rected that on Christmas Day, Lady Day and Michaelmas Day the church wardens were "to buy, bring and lay on his tombstone three- score penny loaves of good whole- some bread," which were to be dis- tributed to the poor of the parish. William Robinson, at one time Sheriff of Hull, left money to pur- chase a dozen loaves of bread, COSTING A SHILLING EACH, to be given to twelve poor widows at his grave every Christmas Day. As the donor died in 1708, .this be- quest is interesting as giving an idea of the dearness of "bread at that period. A quaint custom is still enacted at St. Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, every Good Friday. The vicar places twenty-one sixpences in a row on a certain lady's grave. The money is picked up by the same number of widows kneeling, who have previously attended service at the church. Another curious cus- tom was that of scrambling for food in the churchyard. This custom was up to the beginning of the last century continued at St. Mary's, Paddington. It originated thus: Two poor sis- ters walked to London to claim an estate. Arriving at Paddington in a weary, hungry and footsore condition their misery aroused sym- pathy and the good folk of Padding- ton gave them relief. Their claim was established and as a token of gratitude they left a bequest of bread and cheese to be scrambled for when thrown from the church tower. A similar charity was that at Barford, Oxfordshire, where the rent of a piece of land, known as the White-bread Close, was spent in buying bread, which was scramb- led for at the church door. There can be no doubt that many of the old English fairs 'owe their origin to the church. The fact that the village (or town) fair usnally took place on the feast of the patron saint of the parish church is clear evidence of this. Else how are we to account for THE VILLAGE: FEAST in so many cases coinciding with the dedication festival of the local church; or being held, as is almost inyariably the case, on saints' days --as the once celebrated and im- aoe fair of Stourbridge, near ambridge, held on the Feast of the Holy Cross, and the great Lam- mas fair held at Exeter and York on Old Lammas Day? The apnu a were often held in the churchyard, especially where shrine or sacred relie to which the Fabric Rolls we find that in 1578 | of | Leonard | the church guarded some famous |' pilgrims resorted. Perhaps the shrine of St. Thomas a Beckett, at Canterbury, was the most celebrat- ed, but the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham almost surpassed it. The common people held the idea that the Milky Way pointed toward Walsingham, accordingly they called it Walsingham way. Glas- tonbury was, by reason of the num- ber and sacredness of its relics, called Second Rome. When the pilgrims had paid their devotions to the relics they needed refresh- ments, and were not adverse to amusement; accordingly traders, caterers, players and the like sup- phed the demand, and the pilgrim- age gradually developed into a fair. Edward I. prohibited such deal- ings and declared that "henceforth no fairs or markets be kept in churchyards," but several hun- dreds of years elapsed before such trading in consecrated places was generally regarded as sacrilege and the prohibition fully observed. i A TIGER AT HIS BATH. A Hunter's Experience in the In- dian Jungle. An interesting account of a tiger- hunt is given by one who had a Wide experience in hunting this most dangerous of beasts. Mounted upon elephants, the writer and his companions had been beating the jungle without making a find, until, as they were about to give up the search, a sudden disturbance among the elephants appeared to betoken a tiger near at hand. Giv- ing directions to the others as to the order of marching their ¢le- phants, the writer ordered his ma- hout to turn into the thick feathery foliage to the left in search of a pool of water which he remember- ed to be there. There was a slight descent to a long but narrow hollow about fifty or sixty yards wide. This was known. length. i was just about to make a re- mark, when, instead of speaking, head as I leaned over the howdah, and by this signal stopped the ele- | phant. | There was a remarkable sight. |About one hundred and twenty yards distant on my left the head and neck of a large tiger, clean surface of the water, while the body was cooling, concealed from view. Here was our friend enjoying his quiet bath, while we had been pounding away up and down the jungles which he had left. "Fire at him," whispered the mahout, "or you will lose him! He will see us and be off." '"'Hold your tongue!"? I answer- ed "He can't see us, for the sun is at our back and is shining in his eyes. See how green they are." At this moment the tiger quietly rose from his bath, and sat up on end, like a dog. I never saw such ia sight. His head was beautiful, 'and the eyes shone like two green | electric lights as the sun's rays re- flected from them; but his huge |body was dripping with muddy | water, as he had_ been reclining upon the alluvial bottom. For quite a minute the tiger sat up in the same position. At last, as if satisfied that he was in safety /and seclusion, he once more lay dawn with only the head and neck exposed above the surface. "Back the elephant gently, but do not turn round," I whispered. Immediately the elephant backed through the feathery tamarisk with- ont the slightest sound, and we found ourselyes outside the jungle. We could breathe freely. "Go on now, quite gently, till I press your head; then turn to the right, descending through the tam- arisk till I again touch your tur- ban." I counted the elephant's paces as she moved softly parallel with the jungle, until I felt sure of my distance. <A slight pressure upon the mahout's head, and the ele- phant 'turned to the right. The waving plumes of the dark-green tamarisk divided as we_ gently moved forward, and in another mo- ment we stopped. There was the tiger in the same position, exactly facing me, but now about seventy- five paces distant. "Keep the elephant quite steady," I whispered; and sitting down upon the howdah seat, I took a rest with the rifle upon the front bar of the gun-rack. A piece of tamarisk kept waving in the wind just in front of the rifle, beyond my reach. The mahout leaned for- ward and gently bent it down. Now all was clear. The t'ger's eyes were like green glass, The elephant. for 'a moment stood like. stone, I touched the trigger. There was no response to the loud report of six drams of pow- der from the "five, seven, seven" rifle, no splash in the unbroken sur- face of the water. The tiger's head was still there, but in a different attitude, one-half below the sur- face, and only one cheek and one large eye still glittering like an emerald above. Upon examination, it proved that there was no hole whatever in the tiger. The bullet having entered the nostril, broken the neck, and run along the body, the animal con-- sequently had never moved, This tiger, when laid out straight, but without being pulled to increase feet and eight inches from nose to tail. ee Renee ECONOMY REQUIRED. 'My doctor told me I would have to quit eating so much meat." "Did you laugh him to scorn?" "T did at first. But when he sent in his bill I found .he was right.?' uh The only things as contagious as vices are virtues. ait nce NOTES OF INTEREST FROM HER BANES AND BRAES. What is Going On in the Highlands and Lowlands of Auld Scotia. A new academy is to erected at Dumbarton to cost $100,000. Kilmarnock, a town of less than 50,000 population, has four public parks. From the Clyde shipyards twelve vessels of 22,793 tons were launched in January. : eee Anworth Kirk Session has distri- buted 29 loads of coal amongst the poor of the parish. A serious outbreak of glanders amongst horses has oceurred in Kilmarnock and district. John McIndoe, wholesale milk dealer, Clydebank, has been fined 8502 for his milk being rather weak, Some Selkirk tweed factory em- ployes have left. for Germany, where a local firm is establishing a branch. It is proposed to put on a new i site the Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow. Expenditures last year $83,135. In Kirkealdy recently a horse took fright and upset. a cab con- taining two men and a coffin with the body of a child. Petitions have been lodged against the Provisional Order of Aberdeen to take a supply of water from the river Avon. Walter Douglas has been appoint- ed Chief Ranger of the Melrose An- cient Foresters. The funds amount filled with clear water for an un-| I gently grasped the mahout by the} and beautiful, reposed above the! to over $4,280. | Campbelltown Shipbuilding Com- pany launched a steamer of 2,200 'tons for J. and P. Hutchinson, Glasgow, recently. The Postmaster General has pur- chased from Mr. W. G. Fleming, | postmaster, Johnstone, the post of- | fiee building, along with the adjoin- ing tenement and ground attached. The death in Hawick in his 88th year is announced of Mr. John Caverns, farmer, who was well known in the Border district. Campbelltown Shipbuilding Com- pany have booked a contract with German owners for a cargo steamer of about 2,000 tons. Owing to the heavy snowfall in | Haddingtonshire the third week of | Japuary, sheep farmers had to re- sort to hand-feeding their stock. General Baden Powell has inti- mated his acceptance of the offer of the Hawick Corporation to con- fer upon him the freedom of the burgh. ' /man referred to continued dullness its length, measured exactly nine} Major James Cusin, linen manu- \facturer, who died at Chapelyard, | Falkland, recently in his 79th year, |was one of the best-known busi- |ness men in the Howe of Fife. He {was a pioneer in the Volunteer | movement. | Of the many collections of manu- |script writings of Robert Burns inone is so intensely interesting as |that in the possession of the Irvine | Burns Club. At the annual meeting of the Ed- 'inburgh, Leith and District Build- jing Trades' Association the chair- 'in the building trade. * SNEEZEOLOGY. It Portends More Than a Coming Cold. Signs and omens.are to be found in every trivial incident by those whe have the superstitious sense, and it is not, therefore, surprising that the sneeze is found to portend more than a coming cold. A sneeze before breakfast indi- cates the reception of a. present before the week is out. A sneeze on Sunday, it is said, is an assur- ance that you will meet true love before the end of the week. On Monday a sneeze portends danger ; on Tuesday that you will be intro- duced to a stranger; on Wednes- day a letter; and on Thursday something better. During the Middle Ages Italy was devastated by an epidemic which seemed to have sneezing as its fatal symptom, and straightway a sneeze was considered evidence of ap- proaching death. Xenophon considered a sneeze from one of his soldiers a signifi- cant prophecy of victory. Theocritus stated that a bride- groonv who. sneezed was sure to be happy and lucky; and Catullus de- clared it.a good omen if two levers sneezed at the same time. In the, olden days, if a man speezed while dressing, he went back to bed again before finishing his toilet; and the captain of a yes- sel would delay his voyage if one of tht sailors sneezed while weigh- ing anchor. a gti BEATING SNAKE'S. FLESH. Ausiralian Natives Count Dish of Snakes as Luxury. Many. African tribes count snake flesh among the delicacies, and John Ward says that with 'the Australi- 'FROM BONNIE SCOTLAND | 'writing: There are MARVELS IN MINUTENESS. ---- sf Writing. There is one exhibition in the Army Medical Museum, at Wash-) ington, says the Chicago Tribune, a specimen of microscopic writing; on glass. This writing consists of the words of the Lord's Prayer,| ard occupies a rectangular space measuring 1.294 by 1.441 of an inch,| or an area of 1,229,654 of a square inch. These lines are about 1,50000 or an area of 1.229,654 of a square, inch. These lines are about 1.50000 some idea of the minuteness of this in the Lord's Prayer 227 letters, and if as here this number occupies the 1.129654" of an inch there would be room on an entire inch for 29,432,459 such letters similarly spaced. The entire Bible, Old and New, Testaments, contains but 3,566,480 letters, and there would, therefore,! be room enough to write the entire. Bible eight times over @a one! square inch of glass in the same, manner as the words of the Lord's Prayer have been written on this specimen. Such a statement stag-| gers the imagination, but the fig- ures are easily verified and-are certainly correct. : Along this same line. of almost incredible minuteness is the story of one Mark Scallot, -a blacksmith,| why in 1578, in the twentieth year, of Queen Elizabeth's reign, made), a lock consisting of eighteen pieces ef steel, iron and brass, with @ hollow key to it, that altogether weighed but one grain of gold. He also made a gold chain, composed. of 43 links, which he fastened to the lock and key. In the presence of the Queen he put the chain about the neck of a flea; which drew it with ease, after which he put the lock and key, flea and chain into) a pair of scales and they together| weighed but 144 grains. This is vouched for by an old writer. | Many instances of mechanical in- genuity really remarkable to us in these days, when we are supposed, to have advanced in learning, are: related by various ancient authors. | The silver sphere, "a most noble; and ingenious performance," which was presented to Sultan Solyman the magnificent by his imperial ma-| jesty, Ferdinand, is mentioned b, Paulos Jovius as showing and keep-, ing time with the motions of the celestial bodies in various configur-| ations. It was carried to Constan- tinople by twelve men. and there put together by the artist that, made it. Mymecides, was so. proficient mechanism that he made an ivory ship, with all its decks, masts, yards, rigging and _ sails, in so small a compass that it might have been hidden under the wing of a fly He also made a chariot with four wheels and as many harnessed horses, which took up scarcely more: room than the ship. George Whitehead, an English-: man, made a ship, with all things) pertaining to it, to move as if it sailed upon a table. "All hands were loft, a woman made good music on a lute, and a little puppy, cried in the midship, all of which! variety," says the old writer, "was 'pleasant and diverting." t an ancient carver, in microscopio, } = BIRTH SHRINKAGE IN FRANCE: Some Striking Figures Contribut-, ed by an Authority. Charles Turquot, who contributes to the Parisian monthly Je Sais Tout, some striking figures on the birth shrinkage in France. During the last five years for, which statistics are available France's population only increased by 330,000, while Germany's rose 4,000,000. The writer puts it this way i "As the average population of a French department is 447,815, Ger-, many has added in one quinquen-' nium to her population a number equalling that of nine French de-' partments, while France has only gained the population of a moder- ate-sized town." According to the writer, Field Marshal Von Moltke spoke the bit- ter truth when he said that "the French lose a battle every day." At the present rate of decline France will occupy in 1950 the low- est place among the European great powers. In 1870 France's military resoure- es were about equal to those of United Germany, but in 1911 Ger- | many can put into the field twice as many men .as Franee. . And yet the soil of France is as rich as any- where in Europe. To give a few examplés, the births during the last six months in the smiling Cote d'Or depart- ment were 2,843 and the deaths 3,- 959, 'In the Yonne department the figures were respectively 2,382 and 3.627. These numbers tell their own tale of depopulation, Neither do Frenchmen emigrate. On the contrary, immigration is on the increase, and at present there is in France one foreigner to every 38 native Frenchmen, The' aver- age mortality rates in France are lower than those of Germany, Au stria and Italy, yet the three last- an natives "a dish of snakes is a much-esteemed luxury." Many | kinds of birds eat snakes. Pigs are | particularly fond of them, as also | are some deer; but in the old days it was undérstood that deer only ate snakes in summer, for which reason their venison was at. that time poisonous, a' sagacious fiction which it was doubtless well to make widely known in times when there was abundant temptation te deer stealing and regulations concerning closed seasons would have been treated with indifferent respect. In religion most people hope to be cured by the doctor's words in- stead of by 'their obedience. named countries grow in popula. tion, while France decreases owing to her low birth rate, which is now in proportion of 2 to 3 compared with its neighbors. The writer suggests no new rem. edy except that he blames the ay- erage French parents for excessive anxiety to leave their limited proge eny well provided for. If, he says, French fathers were more willing te make their sons take their chance in the struggle for life it © would put more backbone into tha Freach nation, apts oe 5 It's little use talking to a mag about his soul when the Lyk stake ena Wonderful Examples of Microscopie : Pe a _ . = ¢ x