POETRY, ANECDOTES, ETC.

From the bleak northern blast may my animals despised.
cot be completely

Secured by a neighboring hill,
And at night may repose steal upon me

THE WORST CALAMITY. FALSE MORALITY. The very worst calamity, I should say, "Never teach false morality. How exwhich could befall any human being quisitely absurd to tell girls that beauty would be this-to have his own way, is of no value, dress of no use! Beauty from his cradle to his grave; to have is of value; her whole prospects and everything he liked for the asking, or happiness in life may often depend upon even for the buying; never to be forced a new gown or a becoming bonnet; and if to say, "I should like that, but I cannot she has five grains of common sense she afford it. I should like this, but I must will find this out. The great thing is to not do it." Never to deny himself, never teach her their just value, and that to exert himself, never to work, and there must be something better under never to want, -that man's soul would the bonnet than a pretty face for real be in as great danger as if he were com-happiness. But never sacrifice truth." mitting great crimes. SYDNEY SMITH.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

To waste nothing, neither money, time, nor talent.

If you have a place of business, to be found there when wanted.

To spare when you are young, that you may spend when you are old.

To bear little trials patiently.

To keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

To learn to say No; it will be of more service to you than to be able to read Latin.

To do all the good you can in the world, and make as little noise about it as possible.

To stick to your own opinion, if you have one, allowing others, of course, the same liberty to stick to theirs.

"Landlord! landlord! the road divides, and there are no sign-boards. Which way do I take to?"

THE GREATEST MAN. The greatest man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully; who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menace and frowns; whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering. DR. CHANNING.

HANGING.

"Why does the operation of hanging kill a man?" asked Archbishop Whately in a company. A physiologist replied, "Because inspiration is checked, circulation is stopped, and blood suffuses and congests the brain." "Bosh!" replied his Grace, "it is because the rope is not long enough to let his feet touch the ground."

GOD'S PLOUGH. The frost is God's plough, which He "Mr. Randolph," said the lately snub- drives through every inch of the ground, bed host, "you have paid your bill-opening each clod, and pulverizing the

COUNTRY ROADS.

FEW things are of greater importance to any community, or a surer test of a high standard of civilization, than good roads. The means of easy and safe communication are indispensable to the prosperity, as they are intimately connected with the growth and progress, of every town. The wear and tear of vehicles and horse-flesh and muscle on a bad road is something enormous, and it constitutes an indirect tax, amounting, in many cases, to very nearly as much as the direct tax upon the people.

It may seem strange, but it must be acknowledged to be true, nevertheless, that public sentiment should need to be educateu up to a full appreciation and to a realizing sense of the difference between good and bad roads. It is plain enough, to be sure, when attention is called to it, that the same power will move a much larger load, and do it with greater ease, with less wear and tear, on a solid, properly constructed road, with a reasonably level road-bed, than on one of an opposite character; but the selectmen of most towns do not seem to admit the truth of the proposition.

The Legislature of Massachusetts made an honest effort a few years ago to bring about a revolution in the system of road making and in the methods of repairing and supervising the public highways. It offered liberal prizes for essays upon the subject, and the result was to bring out about thirty essays written in competition for the prizes offered, and these essays, some of them from scientific engineers and others from practical road-makers and the surveyors of towns, embodied a great amount of valuable information, both of a scientific and practical nature, which, if applied in practice, as they were in many towns, could not fail to be of vast public benefit. Some of these essays went into considerable detail as to the best and most economical methods of mending and taking care of roads, and it is easy to see to this day, in riding through our country towns, just where they were read and heeded and where they were ignored and neglected.

Now, we respectfully ask the selectmen of every town, and if this request does not meet the eye of the selectmen, we ask the farmer, whose eye it is sure to reach, to go to the selectmen and say that Robert B. Thomas requests them to step into the public library and call for Flint's : Agricultural Reports of 1869 and 1870. In the first, the Report of 1869, these prize essays are given in a supplement, page 201, and in the second, that for 1870, at page 20, the road statistics of all the towns in the State are given in full, showing the amount of damage which each town was obliged to pay for defective roads, and how closely the amount of damage is connected with the amounts expended for the care and the keeping of the roads. The towns whicn had neglected their roads, and had taken a miserly and short-sighted course in regard to expenditures for roads, have invariably to pay a far higher percentage of damage than the towns where the expenditures have been liberal and where the money has been intelligently applied.

If those interested in the management and care of roads, like the selectmen of towns, the surveyors, or the road-master, where there is one. will read and study carefully the essays referred to, especially those of them which are full of practical suggestions, we shall not need to dwell on the methods to be adopted for the making, care and preservation of roads. And yet we cannot refrain from alluding to a few of the mistakes which are so common as to fall under the eye of every traveller in scores of towns where those entrusted with the management of roads ought to know better.

One of these serious mistakes is to plough up the side ditches and throw the material, sods, sand and manure, which the rains have washed off the road-bed into them, back into the centre of the driveway. This stuff-sod, sand and loam-is utterly destructive of the foundation of the road. The first rains convert this loose organic material into a slough of mud, while a hard rain washes it back into the ditch. In a dry season it becomes a perfect bed of dust, annoying to the traveller, destructive to vehicles and about as bad as the mud itself. The surveyor who allows this iniquity ought to be complained of as an enemy to society. It is

surely destructive to any good road, and it would be better economy for the town to throw the money directly into the ditch and let it lie there.

Another serious and very common mistake is the neglect to remove the small, loose, rolling stones which in a dry time are sure to work up to the surface of many badly constructed roads. This is so easy and simple a matter, and can be so rapidly done with a garden rake and by cheap and unskilled labor, that any town is quite unpardonable for neglecting it. Even a very sure-footed horse is liable to stumble over these rolling stones, and they make a road positively dangerous. A town is greatly to blame for failing to remove them promptly and often.

Another great mistake is in making the road-bed far too crowning,— that is, in the form of a convex circle, with the centre raised a foot and sometimes eighteen inches or more and the curvature at the sides so abrupt as to make it dangerous to turn out on meeting a carriage, or, at least, to give the driver a feeling of insecurity. Even the county commissioners of one of our large counties, who, it would seem, ought to know better, made the specifications for a road only twenty feet wide requiring that the road should "crown" in the centre no less than eighteen inches, or one and a half in ten, and they could not be reasoned out of it. See the result. The convexity is so great that the middle of the road is the only place where a carriage stands upright. The travel all clings to the middle of the road, wearing one path for the horse and two ruts for the wheels and making the road very uneven. A road ought to be formed so as to induce travel over all parts of it. No road should ever be allowed so rough as to require a transverse inclination greater than one in twenty, which for a road-bed twenty feet wide would give a centre six inches higher than the sides. The best road-maker in England adopted one in thirty, or six inches curve for a road thirty feet wide, and MacAdam fixed on one in thirty-six, and sometimes made it one in sixty, or three inches crown in a thirty-feet road.

The question of the drainage of a road and the best methods of effecting it are so thoroughly treated in the essays referred to that they need not be dwelt upon here, though of the highest importance in the layingout and management of roads. We commend the subject to the selectmen of towns and to all county commissioners, with the earnest hope that our county and town roads will soon receive their serious attention.

GUIDEBOARDS ON COUNTRY ROADS.

EVERY man who has had occasion to travel over our country roads has been amazed at the culpable neglect of very many towns to comply with the law in regard to the erection and maintenance of proper guideboards. The selectmen of many a town are open to indictment and fine for neglect and especially for cruelty to animals, for in a vast number of cases, to our certain knowledge and experience, strangers and travellers have been led miles out of their way either from the total want of guideboards where they ought to have been or from guideboards misplaced and pointing so as to mislead. Here is the law (Public Statutes, Chap. 53) about guide-posts:

SEC. 1.- Every town shall erect and maintain guide-posts on the highways and other ways within the town at such places as are necessary or convenient for the direction of travellers.

SEC. 2.-The selectmen or road commissioners of each town shall submit to the inhabitants, at every annual meeting, a report of all the places in which guideposts are erected and maintained within the town, and of all places at which, in their opinion, they ought to be erected and maintained. For each neglect or refusal to make such report, they shall severally forfeit the sum of ten dollars. SEC. 3. Upon the report of the selectmen or road commissioners, the town shall determine the several places at which guide-posts shall be erected and maintained, which shall be recorded in the town records. A town which neglects or refuses to determine such places and to cause a record thereof to be made shall forfeit the sum of five dollars for every month during which it refuses so to do. SEC. 5.-Every town which neglects or refuses to erect and maintain such guide-posts, or some suitable substitutes therefor, shall forfeit annually the sum of five dollars for every guide-post which it so neglects or refuses to maintain.

It is very apparent that there is law enough, and it would be a very easy matter to convict the selectmen of many towns for wilful and care