end of our many listless, disagreeable, unhappy days. "When you rise in the morning form a resolution to make the day a happy one to a fellow-creature. It is easily done a left-off garment to the man who needs it, a kind word to the sorrowful, an encouraging expression to the striving; trifles, in themselves light as air, will do it, at least for the twenty-four hours; and if you are young, depend upon it, it will tell when you are old; and if you are old, rest assured it will send you gently and happily down the stream of human time towards eternity. By the most simple arithmetical sum, look at the result: you send one person, only one, happily through the day; that is, three hundred and sixty-five in the course of the year; and supposing you live forty years only after you commence that course of medicine, you have made 14,600 human beings happy, at all events for a time." Now, worthy reader, is not this simple? It is too short for a sermon, too homely for ethics, too easily accomplished for you to say "I would if I could."

It is a curious fact that selfish people, however disagreeable they may make themselves by their selfishness, are always the first to bemoan the existence of this fault in others, and perhaps you are each quite ready to remember how selfish Dick and Harry and Mary and Susan are; but ah! my dear young friends, look at home-look into your own hearts, with their curious depths, which you scarcely understand, or perhaps never tried to understand, and there you will find an ugly black spot, perhaps a small one. It will not long be very small, however, if you go on "seeking your own;" it will grow and grow, till at last the heart is one mass of black, hideous selfishness! Try to conquer this besetting sin. When you have a little time, think what you can do with

it to please or to help others; when you have a little money, think whom you can comfort and assist with it; when you have not much of the one and none of the other, still think whose heart you can gladden with kind words and kind looks. Teach your hearts to think first of others, and last of yourselves. Learn to give up your own pleasure, your own way, your own possessions, that you may know how much "more blessed it is to give than to receive." Remember that the Lord of heaven and earth "pleased not Himself," and that His command is, "Look not every one on his own things, but every one also on the things of others."

Listen to this beautiful little story or fable, called "The Selfish Pool," and what befell it :

"See that little fountain away yonder in the distant mountain, shining like a thread of silver through the thick copse, and sparkling like a diamond in its healthful activity. It is hurrying on with tinkling feet to bear its tribute to the river. pool, and the pool hails it. streamlet?' 'I am going to of water God has given me.' for that; you'll need it before the summer is over. It has been a backward spring, and we shall have a hot summer to pay for it; you will dry up then.' 'Well,'

See, it passes a stagnant 'Whither away, master the river to bear this cup 'Ah! you are very foolish

says the streamlet, 'if I am to die so soon, I had better work while the day lasts. If I am likely to lose this treasure from the heat, I had better do good with it while I have it.' So on it went, blessing and rejoicing in its course. The pool smiled complacently at its own superior foresight, and husbanded all its resources, letting not a drop steal away. Soon the midsummer

heat came down, and it fell upon the little stream; but the trees crowded to its brink, and threw out their sheltering branches over it in the day of adversity, for it brought refreshment and life to them; and the sun peeped through their branches, and smiled complacently upon its dimpled face, and seemed to say, 'It is not in my heart to harm you;' and the birds sipped its silver tide and sang its praises, the flowers breathed their perfume upon its bosom, the beasts of the field loved to linger by its banks, the husbandman's eye always sparkled with joy as he looked upon the line of verdant beauty that marked its course through his fields and meadows, and so on it went, blessing and blessed of all. And where was the prudent pool? Alas! in its inglorious inactivity it grew sickly and pestilential; the beasts of the field put their lips to it, but turned away without drinking; the breezes stooped and kissed it by mistake, but caught the malaria in the contact and carried the ague through the region, and the inhabitants caught it and had to move away; and at last Heaven, in mercy to man, smote it with a hotter breath and dried it up. But did not the little stream exhaust itself? Oh! no; God saw to that. It emptied its full cup into the river, and the river bore it to the sea, and the sea welcomed it, and the sun smiled upon the sea, and the sea sent up its incense to greet the sun, and the clouds caught in their capacious bosoms the incense from the sea, and the winds, like waiting steeds, caught the chariots of the clouds and bore them away, away to the very mountain that gave the little fountain birth, and there they tipped the brimming cup, and poured the grateful baptism down; and so God saw to it that the little fountain, though it gave so fully and so freely, never ran dry.

And if God so bless the fountain, will He not also bless you, my friends, if, as ye have freely received, ye also freely give?"-M. M. Gordon.

LESSON LXXVI.-NAPLES.

The

Naples is situated on a bay which has the reputation of being the most magnificent sheet of water in the world. It is bordered on every side by romantic cliffs and headlands, or by green and beautiful slopes of land, which are adorned with vineyards and groves of orange and lemon trees, and dotted with white villas; while all along the shore, close to the margin of the water, there extends an almost uninterrupted line of cities and towns round the whole circumference of the bay. greatest of these cities is Naples. But the crowning glory of the scene is the great volcano, Vesuvius, which rises, a vast green cone from the midst of the plain, and emits from its summit a constant stream of smoke. In times of eruption, this smoke becomes very dense and voluminous, and alternates, from time to time, with bursts of what seems to be flame, and with explosive ejections of red-hot stones or molten lava. Besides the cities and towns that are now to be seen along the shore at the foot of the slopes of the mountain, there are many others, buried deep in the ground, having been overwhelmed by currents of lava from the volcano, or by showers of ashes and stones, in eruptions which took place ages ago.

Of course there is every probability that there will be more eruptions in time to come, and that many of the present towns will also be overwhelmed and destroyed, as their predecessors have been. But these eruptions occur usually at such distant intervals from each other,

that the people think it is not probable that the town in which they live will be destroyed in their day; and so they are quiet. Of course, however, whenever they hear a rumbling in the mountain behind them, or notice any other sign of an approaching convulsion, they naturally feel somewhat nervous until the danger passes by.

Naples is built on the northern shore of the bay. Vesuvius stands a little back from the sea, but the slope of land extends quite down to the margin of the water. There is a carriage road, and also a railroad passing along the coast between the mountain and the sea.

To the south-west of Vesuvius are the ruins of Herculaneum, and to the south-east those of Pompeii; two cities buried during a great eruption which occurred nearly eighteen centuries ago-A.D. 79. Herculaneum was buried in lava, and the lava when it cooled became as hard as a stone; whereas Pompeii was only covered with ashes and cinders, which are very easily dug away. Besides, Herculaneum was buried very deep, so that in order to get to it you have to go far down under ground. The fact that there was an ancient city buried there was discovered, a hundred and fifty years ago, by a man digging a well in the ground above. In digging this well, the workmen came upon some statues and other remains of ancient art. They dug these things out, and afterwards the excavations were continued for many years; but the difficulties were so great, on account of the depth below the surface of the ground at which the work was to be done, and also on account of the hardness of the lava, that after a while it was abandoned. People now go down sometimes through a shaft made near the well by which the first discovery was made, and