all ideas of vice and virtue are reversed; and the most inviolable laws of society vanish; and all moral discipline perishes; and the government of states and nations has no longer any cement to uphold it; and all the harmony of the body politic becomes discord; and the human race is no more than an assemblage of reckless barbarians, shameless, remorseless, brutal, denaturalized, with no other law than force, no other check than passion, no other bond than irreligion, no other God than self! Such would be the world which impiety would make. Such would be this world, were a belief in God and immortality to die out of the human heart,

JOHN JANKIN'S SERMON.

The minister said last night, says he,
"Don't be afraid of givin';

If your life ain't nothin' to other folks,
Why what's the use of livin'?"

And that's what I say to my wife, says I,

There's Brown, that mis'rable sinner,

He'd sooner a beggar would starve, than give
A cent towards buyin' a dinner."

I tell you our minister's prime, he is,
But I couldn't quite determine,

When I heard him givin' it right and left,
Just who was hit by the sermon.

Of course there couldn't be no mistake,
When he talked of long-winded prayin',
For Peters and Johnson they sot and scowled
At every word he was sayin'.

And the minister he went on to say,
"There's various kinds of cheatin',
And religion's as good for every day
As it is to bring to meetin'.

I don't think much of a man that gives
The loud Amens at my preachin',
And spends his time the followin' week
In cheatin' and overreachin'."

I guess that dose was bitter

For a man like Jones to swaller;
But I noticed he didn't open his mouth,
Not once, after that, to holler.
Hurrah, says I, for the minister-

Of course I said it quiet

Give us some more of this open talk;
It's very refreshin' diet.

The minister hit 'em every time;
And when he spoke of fashion,

And a-riggin' out in bows and things,

As woman's rulin' passion,

And a-comin' to church to see the styles,

I couldn't help a-winkin'

And a-nudgin my wife, and says I, "That's you," And I guess it sot her thinkin'.

Says I to myself, that sermon's pat;
But man is a queer creation;

And I'm much afraid that most o' the folks
Wouldn't take the application.

Now, if he had said a word about

My personal mode o' sinnin',

I'd have gone to work to right myself,
And not set there a-grinnin'.

Just then the minister says, says he,

"And now I've come to the fellers

Who've lost this shower by usin' their friends
As a sort o' moral umbrellers.

Go home," says he, "and find your faults,
Instead of huntin' your brothers';

Go home," he says, "and wear the coats
You've tried to fit the others."

My wife she nudged, and Brown he winked,
And there was lots o' smilin',

And lots o' lookin' at our pew;

It sot my blood a-bilin'.

Says I to myself, our minister

İs gettin' a little bitter;

I'll tell him when meetin's out, that I

Ain't at all that kind of a critter.

-Harper's Bazar.

ENDURANCE.-ELIZABETH AKERS.

How much the heart may bear, and yet not break!
How much the flesh may suffer, and not die!
I question much if any pain or ache

Of soul or body brings our end more nigh.
Death chooses his own time; till that is worn,
All evils may be borne.

We shrink and shudder at the surgeon's knife;
Each nerve recoiling from the cruel steel,
Whose edge seems searching for the quivering life;
Yet to our sense the bitter pangs reveal
That still, although the trembling flesh be torn,
This, also, can be borne.

We see a sorrow rising in our way,

And try to flee from the approaching ill; We seek some small escape-we weep and prayBut when the blow falls, then our hearts are still, Not that the pain is of its sharpness shorn, But that it can be borne.

We wind our life about another life-
We hold it closer, dearer than our own-
Anon it faints and falls in deadly strife,

Leaving us stunned, and stricken, and alone;
But ah! we do not die with those we mourn-
This, also, can be borne.

Behold, we live through all things-famine, thirst,
Bereavement, pain! all grief and misery,

All woe and sorrow; life inflicts its worst
On soul and body-but we cannot die,
Though we be sick, and tired, and faint, and worn;
Lo! all things can be borne.

KATIE LEE AND WILLIE GREY.

Two brown heads with tossing curls,

Red lips shutting over pearls,

Bare feet, white and wet with dew,

Two eyes black, and two eyes blue;

Little girl and boy were they,
Katie Lee and Willie Grey.

They were standing where a brook,
Bending like a shepherd's crook,
Flashed its silver, and thick ranks
Of willow fringed its mossy banks;
Half in thought, and half in play,
Katie Lee and Willie Grey.

They had cheeks like cherries red;
He was taller-'most a head;

She, with arms like wreaths of snow,
Swung a basket to and fro

As she loitered, half in play,

Chattering to Willie Grey.

"Pretty Katie," Willie saidAnd there came a dash of red

Through the brownness of his cheek"Boys are strong and girls are weak, And I'll carry, so I will,

Katie's basket up the hill."

Close beside the little brook,
Bending like a shepherd's crook,
Washing with its silver hands
Late and early at the sands,
Is a cottage, where to-day
Katie lives with Willie Grey.

In a porch she sits, and lo!
Swings a basket to and fro-
Vastly different from the one
That she swung in years agone,
This is long and deep and wide,
And has-rockers at the side.

THE OLD FORSAKEN SCHOOL HOUSE.
JOHN H. YATES.

They've left the school-house, Charley, where years ago we

sat

And shot our paper bullets at the master's time-worn hat; The hook is gone on which it hung, and the master sleepeth

now

Where school-boy tricks can never cast a shadow o'er his brow.

They've built a new, imposing one-the pride of all the town, And laughing lads and lasses go its broad steps up and down;

A tower crowns its summit with a new, a monster bell, That youthful ears, in distant homes, may hear its music swell.

I'm sitting in the old one, with its battered, hingeless door; The windows are all broken, and the stones lie on the floor; I, alone, of all the boys who romped and studied here, Remain to see it battered up and left so lone and drear.

I'm sitting on the same old bench where we sat side by side And carved our names upon the desk, when not by master

eyed;

Since then a dozen boys have sought their great skill to dis

play,

And, like the foot-prints on the sand, our names have passed

away.