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We all complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do; we are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them. Seneca.

Do good and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storm of time can never destroy. Write your name in kindness, love, and mercy, on the hearts of thousands you come in contact with year by year; you will never be forgotten. No; your name, your deeds will be as legible on the hearts you leave behind as the stars on the bow of the evening. Good deeds will shine as the stars of heaven.

Chalmers. Temperance and labor are the two best physicians of man ; labor sharpens the appetite, and temperance prevents him from indulging to excess. Rousseau.

Man can never come up to his ideal standard; it is the nature of the immortal spirit to raise that standard higher and higher, as it goes from strength to strength, still upward and onward. Accordingly, the wisest and greatest men are ever the most modest. Margaret Fuller Ossoli.

Dust, by its own nature, can rise only so far above the road; and birds which fly higher never have it upon their wings. So the heart that knows how to fly high enough, escapes those little cares and vexations which brood upon the earth, but cannot rise above it into that purer air.

Beecher.

Kind words are looked upon like jewels in the breast, never to be forgotten, and, perhaps, to cheer by their memory a long, sad life; while words of cruelty or of carelessness are like swords in the bosom, wounding and leaving scars which will be borne to the grave by their victim.

Life is a short day, but it is a working day. Activity may lead to evil, but inactivity cannot be led to good.

Hannah More.

He that can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatness of soul; for the mind that cannot be dejected by the former is not likely to be transported with the latter. Fielding.

We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.

Alger.

Just men are only free, the rest are slaves.

Chapman.

Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.

Byron.

An idler is a watch that wants both hands,
As useless if it goes as when it stands.

Cowper.

Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,
To soften rocks, and bend the knotted oak.

Congreve.

The man whom Heaven appoints

To govern others, should himself first learn

Blair.

To bend his passions to the sway of reason. Thompson.
Our time is fixed; and all our days are numbered,
How long, how short, we know not: this we know,
Duty requires we calmly wait the summons.
There are moments of life that we never forget,
Which brighten, and brighten, as time steals away;
They give a new charm to the happiest lot,

And they shine on the gloom of the loneliest day.
Walls of brass resist not

A noble undertaking, nor can vice

Raise any bulwark to make good a place,
Where virtue seeks to enter.

Sure there is none but fears a future state;

And when the most obdurate swear they do not,

Their trembling hearts belie their boasting tongues.

The lamp of genius, though by nature lit,
If not protected, pruned, and fed with care,
Soon dies, or runs to waste with fitful glare.

Dryden.

Wilcox.

The faults of our neighbors with freedom we blame,
And tax not ourselves, though we practice the same.

Compare each phrase, examine every line,
Weigh every word, and every thought refine.

A friend should bear his friend's infirmities.
The worst of slaves is he whom passion rules.

Shakspeare.

Brooke.

Nay, don't lose heart; small men and mighty nations Have learned a great deal when they practice patience.

Goethe.

The rose is fairest when 'tis budding new,
And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears;
The rose is sweetest washed with morning dew,
And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.

Scott.

It is related that while preaching from the text: "He giveth his beloved sleep," a Toledo minister stopped in the middle of his sermon, gazed upon his sleeping auditors and said, “Brethren, it is hard to realize the wondrous, unbounded love the Lord appears to have for a good portion of this congregation."

A ruralist seated himself in a restaurant, the other day, and began on the bill of fare. After employing three waiters nearly half an hour in bringing dishes to him, he heaved a sigh, and whispered, as he put his finger on the bill of fare: "Mister, I've et to thar," and, moving his finger to the bottom of the bill, "ef it isn't agin the rule, I'd like to skip from thar to thar."

A member of the New Hampshire Legislature denounced a bill that was under discussion as "treacherous as was the stabbing of Cæsar by Judas in the Roman capitol." Then he got out of it by saying that he used "by Judas," as a sort of expletive, just as he would say, "by George," or "by Tunket." He knew well enough it was Hannibal who stabbed Cæsar.

A philosopher, who went to a church where the people came in late, said: “It is the fashion there for nobody to go till everybody has got there."

A poor young man remarks that the only advice he gets from capitalists is to “live within his income," whereas the difficulty he experiences is to live without an income.

It was at the Music Hall not long since that a lady remarked to a visiting friend, after a solo on the big organ: "That's all very well; but you just wait till they put on the vox populi."

The Czar says he is ready to meet death whenever it comes. It may not be out of place in this connection to say that death is ready to meet the Czar wherever he goes.

The man who can see sermons in running brooks is most apt to go and look for them on Sundays when trout are biting.

The crying baby at the public meeting is like a good suggestion; it ought to be carried out.

"It's a long way from this world to the next," said a dying man to a friend. "Oh, never mind, my dear fellow," answered his friend, consolingly; "you'll have it all down hill."

A person overheard two countrymen, who were observing a naturalist in the field collecting insects, say one to another: "What's that fellow doing, John?" "Why, he's a naturalist." "What's that?" "Why, one who catches gnats to be sure!"

They sat together in the lamp-light and read the advertising columns of their local paper, when he suddenly exclaimed, "Look, only $15 for a suit of clothes!" "Is it a wedding suit?" she asked. "Oh, no,” he replied, "it is a business suit." "Well, I meant business," she replied. That settled it.

Prof. in psychology: "Can we conceive anything as being out of time and still occupying space?" Musical student (thoughtfully): "Yes, sir. A poor singer in a chorus.”

A Hartford Sunday-school boy gave his teacher this illustrative definition of “responsibility": "Boys has two buttons to their 'spenders so's to keep their pants up. When one button comes off, there's a good deal of responsibility on the other button."

"Does our talk disturb you?" said one of a company of talkative ladies to an old gentleman sitting in a railway station the other afternoon. 'No, ma'am,” was the naive reply, "I've been married nigh on to forty years."

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A little fellow, on going for the first time to church where the pews were very high, was asked on coming out what he did in the church, when he replied: "I went into a cupboard and took a seat on a shelf."

A widow at the West, intending to succeed her husband in the management of a hotel, advertises that "The hotel will be kept by the widow of the former landlord, Mr. Brown, who died last summer on a new and improved plan."

An affected young lady, on being asked in a large company, if she had read Shakspeare, assumed a look of astonishment and replied: "Read Shakspeare! Of course I have; I read that when it first came out."

Australian fun: "Come," said one of a couple of lawyers, sauntering through the new Law Courts in Melbourne the other day, "let's take a look at what is to be the new Court." "Yes," returned the other, "let's view the ground where we shall shortly lie."

"Your little birdie has been very, very sick,” she wrote to the young man. "It was some sort of nervous trouble, and the doctors said I should have perfect rest and quiet, and that I must think of nothing-absolutely, nothing. And all the time dear George, I thought constantly of you." The young man read it over, and then read it through again very slowly, and put it in his pocket and went out under the silent stars, and kept thinking, and thinking, and thinking. But he didn't say anything. He only kept thinking.

A Western "poet" gets off the following explanation of a steamboat explosion:

The engine groaned,

The wheels did creak,
The steam did whistle,
And the boiler did leak.
The boiler was examined,
They found it was rusted,
And all on a sudden
The old thing busted.

"Mary, I am glad your heel has got well." Mary, opening her eyes with astonishment.

"Why?" said "Because,"

said Jane, quietly, "I see it is able to get out." Mary's stock. ing had a hole in it.

"Whenever I marry," says masculine Ann,
"I must really insist upon wedding a man!"
But what if the man (for men are but human)
Should be equally nice about wedding a woman?

Could anything be neater than the old darkey's reply to a beautiful young lady whom he offered to lift over the gutter, and who insisted she was too heavy. Lor', Missus," said he, "I'se used to lifting barrels of sugar."

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A poor weather-bound individual, caught in the rain, was overheard humming to himself in a doorway:

"Twas ever thus, from childhood's hour
That chilling fate has on me fell;

There always comes a soaking shower
When I hain't got no umberell.

Colorado poetry: "The evening for her bath of dew is partially undressed; The sun behind a bobtail flush is setting in the west; The planets light the heavens with the flash of their cigars; The sky has put its night-shirt on; and buttoned it with stars."

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