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THE WORLD. This world Is a sad, sad place, l know, And wbat soul living can doubt It? Cut it will not lessen the want and woe To be always sighing about It. Then away with the songs that are full of tears— Away with the dirges that sadden; Let us inane the most ol our fleeting years By singing the lays that gladden. A lew sweet portions of bliss L've quaffed, And many a cup ol sorrow ! But, In thinking over the Havered draught, The old-tlmu Joy I borrow; And, by brooding over the bitter drink, Pain Alls again the measure; And so I have learned that It’s best to think Ol the things that give us pleasure. The world at its saddest is not all sad— There are days ol sunny weather, And the ptople In It are not all bad, But saints and sinners together. I think those wonderful hours in June Are better by far to remember Than those when the world gets out of tune, In the cold, bleak winds of November. Because we meet in the walks of life Many a se 11 -h creature, It does not prove that tills world of strife Has no redeeming feature. There is bloom and beauty upon the earth— There are buds and blooming flowers— There are souls of truth and hearts of worth— There are glowing, golden hours. In thinking over a Joy we’ve known We easily make it double, Which Is better by far than to mope and moan O’er sorrow, and grief, and trouble. For, thoug h the world Is a sad, sad place ( \nd who that Is living can doubt It?) It will not lessen the want and woe To be always sighing about It. The Small Boy’s Story. It all came of my having a railway key and being made to take music lessons. Thompson gave me the key when he was leaving last term. I don’t know how he came by it, or what good it was to him as he never saw a train except when he went home for the holidays; but he was always talking of the convenience of having such a thing when you were traveling, and hinting at the mysterious penalties the company might inflict if they caught you usiuv it. e gave it me in exchange lor a nit of Letty’s hair (she’s my sister, and Thompson was dreadfully in love with her) and a scrap of the bonnet trim ming she wore in church. I stole that but had to ask her for the hair, and she brought out a whole bundle and said I might trade away the lot if I chose. ‘Hair wasn’t worn much new.’ Music was another thing altogether. Herr Otto Finke was an old friend of my father’s, and lived at Luckboro’, our market*town. He took a fancy to me—bother him ; and actually persuaded my father and mother to let me come over to .Luck boro’ every market-day, with my father, for a lesson in German and music. I didn’t mind dining with him first (uncommonly queer messes we had, and lots of jam with them)— but the music was simply disgusting— (in the holidays, too !) and the lessons generally eroded by Finke getting to the piano h#iself, and warbling songs of his Vaterlaud by the hour. He did so once too often though—and now I have got to my story. We used to come and go between Mosslands and Luckboro’ by omnibus. There was a Mosslands station ou the line between Luckboro’ and London, but my father never went by it if he could help it. When he did, though I had vae key with me I never dare use it, and began to think I had made a bad bargain with Thompson. One Tuesday, however, las^ winter, Finke got so earried away by his own 'sweet singing that he kept on long after I ought to have .started to meet my father, end then got so remorseful that I thought he was going to cry ;„or perhaps want to keep me all nignt. “Look here,” I said, “it doesn’t mat ter. There’s a train that gets in as soon as the ’bus. I can catch it if I, run—Good by!” * And off I scudded, one arm in and one out of my top-coat, for I was sure he’d object, or want to see me off'. I had money, and there was a train, which came up long be fore I had seen all I wanted about the station. I made a dash at a carriage. It wasn’t locked, as I half hoped it might be, and in I sciaurbltd, but was nearly ^ ^ _ _ blown out again by a volJey Of the I jdnked'at the communication with tiie strongest language I ever did htear.fcruard. She shook her head'. The train started and jerked me down into a seat before I’d time to gpt my breatb. I was not used to bad ex pressions, and my fellow-traveller’s remarks made my. blood run cold. There were ladies in the carnage, but he didn’t seem to mind that. He had a red, scowling face, with heavy red eyebrows and bloodshot eyes. All the rest of him was a mass of railway rug&jknd wraps. I had tumbled over into the middle seat opposite, where I sat scared and speechless,* till I caught the eyes of the lady next to him fixed on me. Ugh ! such a bad old face! A fight, cruel mouth, with all sorts of coil-lines about it, and wicked, sharp gray eyes that screwed into one like gimlets. I didn’t care much for Redface by this time. I didn’t believe he would “twist my neck and chuck me out of the window,” as he suggested ; but I hated her all over at once, from her sausage- curls—grizzly-gray, two on each side— to her hooked claws of fingers that were twitching away at her knitting- needles, in and out of a big gray stocking. “Hush, Sammy,” she said quit e s veetly ; “the poor child means no harm, and he can easily get out at the next station—Where are you going to, love? I could only gape in reply and she must have thought I was a softy, for she twisted my ticket clean out of my hand before I knew what she was after. “Mosslands. Very good. That’s the next station. I’ll see him safe out, Sammy, dear.’! Sammy growled an inarticulate re spmse from finder his rug* The third passenger had neither spoken nor stirred. She sat on the same side as the other two, covered with a big plaid rug, and a blue woolen veil tied over her head. I could make nothing out except that she seemed asleep in a very uncomfortable atti tude. I eat in the middle opposite the old woman. It was so disagreeable, find ing her sharp eyes on me, while her needles clicked on just the same, that I thought I might as well pretend to go to sleep too. So I curled myself up, and gave one or two nods, and then dropped my face on my arm so that she couldn’t, see it. Presently I heard the needles going slower and slower. I peeped, and saw the big bonnet and sausage-curls giv ing a lurch forward and then back ward, once, twice; then a big snore; and then she was off too. I didn’t stir for a minute, for I saw that “Sammy” was up to something. He leant forward, aud peered at her as if to make sure she was quite asleep; then cautiously groped in the seat be side her, and nauled up a little black bag. Ha opened it softly, drew out a silver-topped flask, and closed it just as a j ;erk of the train roused the old lady. . Sammy diyqd back into fyis corner; and she sat* holt upright, rubbed her eyes hard, felt suspiciously about till she found the bag, stowed it away behind her, and resumed her knitting. Only for a few moments though; with a weary groan she let stocking, needles and all go down with a run, and dropped back sounder asleep than before. Then from Sammy’s corner came a gurgle—soft and low—many times re peated, then all was quiet. Now was my time. I began to look about, and think what I should do first. Wnether I dared get up on the seat and see how the communication with the guard worked, and what would happen if I pulled it. If the train did atop, I could make off, or say it was Sammy. He was half-tipsy now,-and people wouldn’t believe him. First of all I went to the window to look out a little.^ It was pitch dark outside, and all I could see was the reflection of the carriage, and of the lady in the blue woolen veil. She was sitting up now, and looking in tently at me. What an uncomforta ble set they were, to be sure! * * - I looked round at her directly. She was very’young—younger than Letty, and she’s just seventeen, and not pretty,—but so thin and frightened looking that I felt quite unhappy about her. She fixed her big bright eyes on me, and put up her flpger. “Don’t speak,*' she said in a clear whisper. “Keep looking out of the Window. Cad you hear what I am saying?” I nodded, and she went on, looking now at me, and now at the old woman. “If they get me to London, I am a dead woman. You are my last chance. Will you help me?” I nodded very Ua^I indeed, and guard. She shook her head’. '“No, that’s no good. i I must get away at the next station. He is safe. Can you stop her from following me?” I didn’t believe I could. I might have thrown a rug ,over Sammy, and sat on him for a minute or two; but that old woman was too much for me. I felt that directly she woke she’d see what I was thinking of, and strangle me before I could stir. The preciou* minutes were flying—the miles were hurrying past us in the outside gloom —the girl's big woeful eyes were fixed on me in desperate appeal. “I have friends who will save me if 1 can but get to them,” she panted. “Just one minute’s chance—only one—” All at once I had an idea. A splen did one! “Look at this,” I whispered, and held up my railway key. “If I open this door, dare you get out? You can hold on outside till the train stops. Run straight across the down line. There’s only a bank and a hedge on the top. Lots of gaps in it nearer the station. There you are on the Luck- borough Road. Do you hear?” I was quite hot and out of breath with whispering air this‘as plain as I could. She caught every. Word as fast as I could think it almost. Wliatwith th<plct|ling pf iuy own clevetiftess- hatred o f thai nasty old womf*fc and delight in spiting her; and p|ty for the poor girl, I felt as brave jis any fellow, however big, could 4°. and full of ideas as well. “Gyve me that,” I^d, pointing to her blub veil. “They won*t see you’re goneritl sit here, with it tied over my head.” “Oh, no no ! They’ll kill you.” “Njpt they! They can’t interfere with me.” (I declare I felt as if I could$g)it Sammy and a dozen old ladie%?|u8t then.) “Quick! now or never.” I tied theveil.over my head and lowered tb« window as softly av possible. There \vas no time to lo e, for the train was slackening speed even then, I unlocked the door. She gave lie one look that made me feel braver than ever, aud inclined to cry, both.at onoe; and in a second she was out on the step. T ie train stopped. I saw her skirt flutter in the stream of light that fell from our open carriage door across the down line of rails, and that was all—and I was huddled down under the big plaid rug with the old woman wide awake standing over me. “ Drat the boy. Sammy ! Call the porter; he’s got out at the wrong side.” “Call-un-yre-self,” answered Sammy all in one word. She pulled the door to and tramped back to her seat, taking no more no tice of me that) if I had been a cushion of the carriage. “L don’t matter if he has broken his neck either,” she mut tered, “perhaps we’d better make no fuss.” Tne train was off again, I dared hot jump up while she was in the Vay, and thought I must take my chance at the next station. “Oh! my bones and body!” she groar^d presently. “Qh, what a time it has been ! Sammy !” No answer. “Sammy!” She was up again, and I think she hauled him up and shook him, for something fell with a crash like a broken bottle. “You idiot,” she screamed. When you wSnt all the brains you’ve got, and more too! To play me this trick ! Serve you right if I get out aud leave you at the next station—ugh!” It sounded as if she were banging his head against the carriage. That and the fresh air seemed to rouse him. He got up and put his head out of the window for a short time, and then replied slowly and impressively : “Now, look here, old woman. None cif your nonsense. When he’s wanted, Sftnuel Nixon is all there. And no man alive can say he isn’t,” he went on solemnly holding carefully on to one word till he was sure of the next. - “As to this business, I ask you—is it mine or is It yours? Now then?” “Yours, I should thiuk ; as It’s your wife who is giving us all this trouble. I wish I’d left you to fight it out your selves.” “Stop that,” said Sammy, who was talking himself sober and consequently savage. “I’ll not have it put upon me. I didn’t want to marry her; that was your doing, and I don’t want to make away with her; that’s your do ing, and if it's a hanging matter, I am not the one to swing for it.” “Heaven forgive you, Sammy!” said the old woman, evidently horri bly scared. “Don’t ye talk in that way to your poor old mother—don’t. If the poor creature was only in her right mind she’d be the first to say her old nurse was her best friend—the only one she had In the world when her pa died aud left her.” ... Here she snlfi'ed a little. Simmy gave a sort of deriBive growl. —“And as to her marrying you; it stood to reason that she must marry somebody, sometime, left all alone in the world with her good looks and her fortune; aud why not my handsome Sou? It was luck for you, Sammy, though you turn against me now. Tbereeyou were, just come home from foreign parts, without a halfpenny in your pocket, or a notion where to turn tb find one; and there was she without a relation or friend to interfere with you—as simple as a baby—not a creature to stop her doing as she chose with her self and her money. It would have been a sin and a shame to lose such a chance ! Of course, I wanted to see my handsome lad as good a gentleman as the best of them.” Tne old woman seemed to be talking on and on pur posely ; like telling a rigmarole to a child to keep it quiet. Sammy growled again in a milder tone. “Oh, yes. Say it’s all my fault, do You can talk black white when it pleases you.” —“It was your fault, Sammy. You might have lived happy and peacable if you’d chosen. Haven’t I been down on my bended kne°s to beg you to let her alone when you was treating her that shameful that the whole country side was ringing with it. You know it, and otheis know it. Aud I can tell you what, Mr. Samuel Nixon, if she'd been found dead in her bed, as I ex pected every morniug of my life to hear, there wasn’t a servant iu the place that wouldn’t have spoken up before the Coroner—and glad to do it. Who’d have swung for it then, I’d like to know.” The brute was mastered. I heard him sliiifiling his feet about uneasily ; then—in a maudiln whimper ; “It was drink, nothing else, and her aggravat ing, whining ways. Don’t be hard on me old woman, I m sure, I’ve given in handsome to all your plans.” “Because you couldn’t help yourself —you fool. Now you see what it is to have your pior old mother to turn to. Your wife may talk as much as she pleases now. Who’ll believe her when we’ve got it written down by two grand London doctors that she’s as mad as mad can be ? Who’s to mind her talk, or any one else’s? Aren’t we taking her up to London just for the good ol her health, to a nice safe place where she will be well looked after and Lept from getting hersell and other folks into any more trouble; and then you and me will go back, Sammy, and live as happy and comfortable as you please.” “Ihey will treat her like a lady— eb, mother?” “Of course they will; a beautiful place, and the best of living. Bless you, she’ll be as happy as the day is long. It does you credit being so ten- der-hearied, Simmy. I knew you couldn’t abide seeing her storming and raving as she did last night, so I just gave her a little sup of something befort we started, and you see she’s been sleeping like a baby ever since. And the gentleman—where she’s go ing, you know—he gave me this bottle; and when we get to London I’ve just to give her a whiff of it on a handkerchief, and off she goes as quiet as a lamb. No screams or tantrums this time; and he and his nurses will be on the look-out for us with his car riage, and before the knows it there she’ll be as snug as you please.” This was awful! What should I do? Were we ever going to stop? Was there another station before London? Should I be drugged, dragged off and made away with! I knew if they found me out it was all over with nie. The pattern of the blue Shetland veil danced be fore my eyes—the noise of the train was as the sound of the roar of artillery in my ears. I sat up, ready for a spring and a struggle. A jerk! Another! A stop, and the door flung open. “Tickets, please.” I made one pluuge. I flung the rug jlean over the old woman, dashed my arm into Simmy's face, and tumbled headlong out, into the arms of the astonished ticket collector. I felt him clutch me, and then the ground rose up, or I went down—down—into an unfathomable depth of blackness! “Hullo! old fellow. Better now?” were the first words I heard. Thomp son’s voice! There he was with a glass of water in his hand, stooping over me^ Thompson’s mother was kneeling beside me, cuddling me up against her nice soft sealskin. I was on the waiting-room sofa, and about a dozen people were all standing staring round. Thompson went aud tele graphed home that I was safe, and then he and his mother took me to the house in London, where they were staying, I can’t remember much after that. I was ill for many weeks, I believe. I tried to tell people what had happened; but no one would listen. They try, even now, to make me believe I dreamt it in my illness. I’ve got it told now though, aud every word of it is solemn truth. Besides, didn’t I see aud smell Letty burning the blue Shetland veil. I’ve had no more musio lessons since, that’s one good thing. The Railway Key? Oh 1 left that ■tioklng In the door. That’s all. Insanity. Dr. A. E. MacDonald, Superintend ent of the Asylum for the Insane,situ ated on one of the islands adjacent to New York city, In a lecture on insan ity, said: Many learned men have been en deavoring for a long time to settle just what insanity is, and it is not too much to say that they have not yet succeeded. Rut if I cannot tell you just what Insanity is I can tell you one or two things that it Is not.| Insanity is not a disease of the mind. The poet speaks of the “mind di seased,” but the physician does not. The mind is no more subject to di sease than is the soul to death. The disease is in the brain,as purely physi cal in its location and characteristics as disease of any other organ, and if the mind shows its presence and ef fects it is only because rniud is the product of brain action, and an un« healthy organ must always give rise to disturbed action. Insanity is so diverse in its degrees and phases that it is hard to draw the line and say just where soundness of mind ends and uusoundness begins. In fact, it is a good deal a matter of majoiities. We who call ourselves sane happen to be iu the msj rrity just now, aud we have set up our stand- ar aud looked up a number of worthy people who fail to meet it. Their number is increasing all the time, and by-and-by, if it keeps od, they will be in the majority, and then they will turn around and look us up. Between the men manifestly of sound intelhct aud those confessedly insane there are arrayed rank upon rank of those in whom a defect, greater or less, is seen. Iu some there is un mistakably insanity, in others eccen tricity as we call it; in others again depravity. Many men of mark have bten found in these ranks. Some have occupied thrones, like Charles IX. of France, George III. of England and Fredeiick II. of Prussia, and have im pressed upon the polioy of nations the stamp of their disease; others, like Mohammed and 8 vedenborg, have colored with the delusions of insanity the tenets of religious sects ; and es pecially from among men of lettera have these ranks been largely lecruit- ed. Johnson, Swift, Pope, Gray and Wordsworth; Byron and Shelley ; Cowper, Southey and Charles Lamb— in all there was either„marked insan ity or a close and undeniable approach to it. The one great predisposing cause is the inheritance of a tendency toward insanity begotten in some defect In the ancestry, not necessarily itself in sanity, but possibly some other ner vous disease, and possibly, too, intem pera n e. The immediate causes may be either moral or physical in their nature. Now we have come to look more for physical causes. Of these in temperance and other vicious indul gences are the most productive. The simple rules of life which afford the best protection from other diseases should be followed by those who would avoid this, the most terrible of all. The keynote of the whole is the remembrance that insanity is a physi cal disease, whence it follows that Its prevention must come through atten- tion to the general laws of health. Anecdotes of Animals. Oa a Sunday evening a watchman in a Troy factory helped his dilatory dog into the building with the toe of his boot. Ou all week days now the dog enters the factory as usual, but no amount of coaxing can get him near the building on the Sabbath. During a storm at Cuthbert, Ga., a barrel containing a hen sitting on a nest of eggs was picked up, whirled round, and blown over the house. It dropped right side up in the front yard. The hen remained undisturbed, and the chickens were hatohed soon after the aerial journey. A monkey belonging to George Brodie, of Pittsburg, Pa., Is credited with extraordihary sagacity. The an imal is often told to bring one or the other of the two newspapers, takeu by the family, to Mr. Brodie’s aged mother. Oae is printed with large type and the other in very fine, and not always dear letters. It is said that whenever he brings the latter he brings her spectacles also. Dogs that get druuk;are not uncom mon. “Old Jaok,” of Indianapolis, Iud., belonging to the tire department, regularly drank refuse beer from the empty kegs of the saloon adjoining his home, but getting druuk the other day, justa^analarm of fire sounded.he fell beneath the wheels of the maohina and was crushed to death.