POETRY.-ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS. Poetry. HEAVEN. OH! Heaven is nearer than mortals | We pass from the clasp of mourning think When they look, with a trembling At the misty future that stretches on 'Tis no lone isle on a boundless main, Must go to return no more. No, Heaven is near us; the mighty veil The eye that shut in a dying hour Will open the next in bliss; The welcome will sound in the heavenly world Ere the farewell is hushed in this. friends To the arms of the loved and lost; And those smiling faces will greet us there Which on earth we have valued most. Yet oft in the hours of holy thought To the beauteous scenes of Heaven. I know when the silver cord is loosed' Anecdotes and Selections. WHITEFIELD AND THE TEMPEST. On one occasion Mr. Whitefield was preaching in Boston, on the wonders of creation, providence, and redemption, when a violent tempest of thunder and lightning came on. In the midst of the sermon it attained to so alarming a height that the congregation sat in almost breathless awe. The preacher closed his note-book, and, stepping into one of the wings of the desk, fell on his knees, and with much feeling and fine taste repeated ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS. "Let us devoutly sing, to the praise and glory of God, this hymn, 'Old Hundred."" The whole congregation instantly rose, and poured forth the sacred song, in which they were nobly accompanied by the organ, in a style of pious grandeur and heartfelt devotion that was probably never surpassed. By the time the hymn was finished, the storm was hushed; and the sun, bursting forth, shone through the windows to the enraptured assembly a magnificent and brilliant arch of peace. The preacher resumed the desk and his discourse with this apposite quotation: "Look upon the rainbow; praise Him who made it. Very beautiful it is in the brightness thereof! It compasseth the heaven about with a glorious circle; and the hands of the Most High have bended it." The remainder of the services was calculated to sustain that elevated feeling which had been produced, and the benediction with which the good man dismissed the flock was universally received with streaming eyes and hearts overflowing with tenderness and gratitude. THE GOODWIN SANDS.-A vessel in the English Channel was lying to with close-reefed topsails in a heavy gale, anxiously looking out for a pilot. Night was coming on, and they were uncertain of their position, but fully alive to their peril. Hope was dying out from their hearts, when they saw a pilot-boat put out from the harbour of Deal, and stand out towards them. It was a hard struggle in those raging waters, and it seemed impossible to reach the ship. But after a time a signal was made for a rope. In surprise, a buoy was attached to a long rope and paid overboard, which was soon grasped by the eager hands in the boat. How was their surprise and enthusiasm increased when they saw the noble pilot make the rope fast to his person and spring into the boiling deep. Steadily and cautiously the men pulled with a will, and a half dozen hands were ready to grasp him the instant he came alongside. Bounding upon deck and clearing the salt water from his throat, he gasped convulsively as he pointed with shaking hand to the foaming breakers, "The Goodwin Sands, the Goodwin Sands." It was a word to make all hearts quake. That crawling foam hid a cruel, dreadful bar, which had been the death of many a noble ship. Instantly they obeyed the pilot's word, and crowded on all the canvas the ship could bear to speed them away from the treacherous sands. They could not question the word of a pilot who had risked his life to save them. They trusted him, they obeyed him, and were saved. Oh, there are more perilous sand bars in our daily course, on which we are in hourly danger of being wrecked. How shall we know them, how escape them? We have a pilot who not only risked but gave his life to save us. Shall we believe Him, and be guided by Him? If not, these Goodwin Sands of life will be our destruction. THE FIRESIDE. READING AND THINKING.-Bacon asserts that reading makes a full man; but without digestion, fulness is dyspepsia, and creates sleepiness and inert fat, incapable of action. Hazlitt says you might as well ask the paralytic to leap from his chair and throw away his crutch, or without a miracle to take up his bed and walk, as to expect the learned reader to throw down his book and think for himself. He is a borrower of sense. He has no ideas of his own, and must live on those of others. The habit of supplying our ideas from foreign sources enfeebles all internal strength of thought, as a course of dram-drinking destroys the tone of the stomach. The word of God is pre-eminently a book for direct reading, and is never seen in its glory if we will persist in wearing the coloured spectacles of another man's comment. Pure and cool are its streams if we drink immediately from the well-head, but when the precious crystal has long stood in earthern vessels, its freshness is gone; the truth is there, perhaps, but not the life. We should let texts lie on our hearts till they melt into them like snowflakes dissolving the soil. DR. PAYSON once, when travelling, having occasion to call on a lady when she and some of her friends were sitting down to tea, she would have him stay, and treated him very hospitably. When he left he said, "Madam, you have treated me with much kindness and hospitality, for which I sincerely thank you. Allow me to ask you a question before we part. How do you treat my Master?" This led ultimately to the conversion of the lady and her household. The Fireside. OLD MAIDS AND BACHELORS. THERE are men and women who, like some flowers, bloom in exquisite beauty in a desert wild; they are like trees which you often see growing in luxuriant strength out of a crevice of a rock where there seems not earth enough to support a shrub. The words, "Old maid," "Old bachelor," have in them other sounds than that of half-reproach or scorn; they call up to many of your minds forms and faces than which none are dearer in all this world. I know them to-day. The bloom of youth has possibly faded from their cheeks, but there lingers round form and face something dearer than that. She is unmarried, but the past has for her, it may be, some chastened memories of an early love which keeps its vestal vigil sleeplessly over the grave where its hopes went out; and it is too true to the long-departed to permit another to take his place. Perhaps the years of maiden life were spent in self THE PENNY POST BOX. denying toil, which was too engrossing to listen even to the call of love, and she grew old too soon in the care of mother or sister and brother. Now, in these later years, she looks back calmly upon some half-cherished hopes once attractive, of husband and child, but which long, long ago she willingly gave up for present duty. So to-day, in her loneliness, who shall say she is not beautiful and dear? So is she to the wide circle which she blesses. To some she has been all that a mother could have been; and though no nearer name than Aunt" or "Sister" has been her's, she has to-day a mother's claim and a mother's love. Disappointment has not soured, but only chastened; the mid-day or afternoon of her life is full of kindly sympathies and gentle deeds. Though unwedded, her's has been no fruitless life. It is an almost daily wonder to me why some women are married, and not a less marvel why many that I see are not. But this I know, that many and many a household would be desolate indeed, and many and many a family circle would lose its brightest ornament and its best power, were maiden sister or maiden aunt removed; and it may bless the Providence which has kept them from making glad some husband's home. Yonder isolated man, whom the world wonders at for having never found a wife! Who shall tell you the secret history of the bygone time? of hopes and loves that were buoyant and fond, but which death or more bitter disappointment dashed to the ground; of a sorrow which the world has never known; of a fate accepted in utter despair, though with outward calm! Such there are. The expectation of wife or home has been given up as one of the dreams of youth, but only with groans and tears; now he walks among men somewhat alone, with some eccentricities, but with a warm heart and kindly eye. If he has no children of his own, there are enough of others' children who climb his knee or seize his hand as he walks. If he has no home, there is many a home made glad by his presence; if there is no one heart to which he may cling in appropriating love, there are many hearts that go out toward him, and many voices which invoke benedictions on his head. The Penny Post Box. THE GARRULOUS MAN. GARRULITY is the discoursing of much and ill-considered talk. The garrulous man is one who will sit down beside a person whom he does not know, and first pronounce a panegyric on his own wife; then relate his dream of last night; then go through in detail what he has had for FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY. dinner. Then warmed to the work, he will remark how the men of the present day are greatly inferior to the ancients; and how cheap wheat has become in the market; and what a number of foreigners are in town; and that if Zeus would send rain, the crops would be better; and that he will work his land next year; and how hard it is to live; and that Damippus set up a very large torch at the mysteries; and "How many columns has the Odeum?" and that yesterday he was unwell; and "What is the day of the month?"-Theophrastus. Facts, Hints, Gems, and Poetry. Facts. There were 20,000 people who committed suicide in France within five years after the establishment of the late Imperial Government by Louis Napoleon. An old stone has been found at Jerusalem bearing the figure of a god sitting on a throne with priests on both sides, and a Hunyaritish inscription, two lines in length, which had been brought from Yeman, and was offered for sale. The whistle of a locomotive is heard 3,300 yards through the alr; the noise of a railroad train, 2,800 yards; the report of a musket and the bark of a dog, 1,800 yards; an orchestra or the roll of a drum, 1,600 yards; the human voice reaches to the distance of 1,000 yards; the croaking of frogs, 900 yards; the chirping of crickets, 800 yards. Distinct speaking is heard in the air from below up to a distance of 600 yards; from above, it is only understood to a range of 100 yards downward. The Obelisk of Luxor, which stands in La Place Concorde, Paris, has become blanched and full of small cracks during the forty years it has spent in France, while forty centuries in Egypt had not perceptibly altered it. Hints. When anger was in Cain's heart, murder was not far off. It is sweeter, in the hour of death, to have wiped one tear from the cheek of sorrow than to have ruled an empire. Grace to the body is like good sense to the mind. In private, watch your thoughts; in the family, your temper; in company, your tongue. The greater the gain of sin, the greater the loss. The greatest hindrance to success in life is-waiting for something to turn up; the greatest help-setting steadily to work. Gems. Love that has no fear of God in it is always false and weak. Religion is the bread of life. God's glory is His goodness. This, by His own showing. All true ambition and aspiration are without comparisons. God sends experiences to paint men's portraits. Temptations are enemies outside the castle seeking entrance. Ever since the time of Christ, the Divine Helmsman has been steering |