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w Gospel Work and the Salvation Army Warriors. Perhaps the most, extraordinary religious work of the present day is that which is done by the enthusiastic who ar<; banded together American Hats. persons wno are under the name of the Salvation Army. Uncouth in their manners, almost rlotousin some of their demon strations, yet thoroughly in earnest in their purpose, these promulgators of the gospel have made their mark ( to an pxceni, which is to Bay the least, astonishing. When they began operations they were regarded as a lot of wild eccentrics hardly worth noticing. People who took the trou ble to take any notice of them at all said that they might do their pr aying and parading for a few weeks or months, but that as soon as the nov elty of it was over the whole move ment would collapse. The very con trary of this has proved to he the case. In England, where they have their headquarters, they have not only ac quired a foothold but have to some ex tent amassed wealth. When two or three years ago a delegation of th e army came to this country, it was heralded with considerable flourish of trumpets and beating of drums. It was agreed by many good people that as the churches had not up to that time succeeded in bringing in and converting all the ungodly, the new agency ought to have a chance. As soon as the militant band landed on our shorss and began the struggle with the powers of Batan it succeeded more in making itself a laughing stock than in anything eUe. From time to time new members have come from the other side of the water and have joined the ranks. The character and qualifications of these seem to be much the same as of the advance guard. They seem to delight in sprig military style and the putting on of soldierly titles. They call a prayer meeting a “knee- drill.” If they are going to hold a meeting in the streets, they speak of it as an encounter with Satan. If they make converts they say that tiny have given the adversary of souls hard knocks on his head, or thrusts in his ribs. Their imagery is coarse, and they set at defiance not only the rules of grammar, but the customs of reverent worship. In their hymns they combine the style of the negro minstrel and the low variety show, seasoning it with a few theological expressions and quotations from Scrip ture. They make a specialty of their belief in the personality of the devil, and incorporate in their ditties as much of this as they put into rhyme . For instance, they siug : The devil and me, We Oin’t agree; 1 hate him And he hates me. This is not only for the musical de votion of a praver-meeting in a hall, but they roar it out marching through the streets. Some of the “hymns” are rich in personalities For instance, when a drunken and dirty tramp has signified his desire to lead a new life, they are ready for his case with some thing which begins “Out of the gutter we’ve picked him up Notwithstanding all the oddities and eccentricities of the Salvationists they seem to have done good to a class ot people whom ordinary church work lias never reached. As to the extent of this benefit, or its perma nence, there are all manner of con flicting opinions. The open question is whether they are not doing quite as much harm iu bringing religion into contempt by their vulgar and irrever ent ways as they are doing good to the tramp and others whom they bring under their influence. Yet there is a disposition to wish them God-speed In their own way of doing good, if any good whatever can come of it. Value of the Sunflower. The sunflower is worshiped by the Chinese; and deserves the devotion of materialistic people from the fact is tne most useful of all vegeta- i 'r<un its seeds Is made oil un* aed as a lubricant and soap uu • Jed for softening the skin. Sun- oil is greatly used fcr adultera- salad oil, and it burns longer any other vegetable oil. I Sunflower cake is more fattening in lim-eed cake, its flowers supply best bee food, and Its leaves are ih used for aduleratlng tobacco, yields a finer fibre used in and the best yellow dyes lese are produced from its Several acres are to be laid sunflowers in the Thames year. Duriug my recent travels in America I have been at times fairly over whelmed by the contemplation of some of the head-coverings I have seen, and more especially among the “supplementary” classes, if I may call them so, of the American people. Following the conr-e of empire wei to ward I found that, after leaving the mulatto Stats, I passed tbriugh the red Indian to the Chinese on the Pacific and then, going south, trav- ersed the Mexican till I came to the negro, and through him get hack again to the mulatto. As a matter of ethnological geography this division of the States was sufficiently interest ing, but an additional interest accrued from looking at it from the hat stand point. As a general rule, it may be accepted that hats ara made only f< r white men, and that the supplement ary classes wear them after they have been thrown away, and that the negro as a general thing, only arrives at a hat alter it his been thrown away several times. Nobody but a negro cherishes a very old hat. The Chinaman, it may be, buys a second-hand hat, and, after ironing the brim out flat, wears it with de cency. A red Indian begs or et^als one, and, alUr cutting out a hole in the crown, stufls the orifice with feathers and walks round the camp with much complacency. The mu latto, having found one lying about, washes it, ties a blue ribbon round it and wears it on Sunday. But the negro meets with the o!d hat and straightway pub* it on to as much of his head as it will cover. He doos not try to improve it or to ornament it. When he fir.-t saw it lying in the road it was “an ole liat,” but once his it becomes a new possession, and never grows any older until he finds anothe r And in America, scattered up and down the States, there is a prodigious number of them lying about, especi ally in the West, and most especially in the mining districts. It seems to be a point of honor among miners not to wear second-hand hat*, fcr if they choose they certainly need never buy one. Perhaps they suspect old hats to be only some stratagem of the enemy to get them into a quarrel over the claim, either to it or ti something else. At any rata, whatever the reason, they never touch them any more than a coyote will tiuch a dead Mexican. [The Mexican, by the way, eati so much red pepper when alive that, the coyote will not eat him when dead. So they say.] The “colored man,” however, doss not frequent mines, or he might revel In a new old hat every day. He prefers civilization, and the result, in the matter of his head-cover ing, is very striking. His apprecia tion of the independence of American citizenship leads into the most com plete recklessness. There is nothing that he will not put on the top of his head—provided there is only enough of it to assure him that it once formed part of a cap or a hat, and that he can balance the fragments on his head. In Texas and Arkansas his origi nality excels itself, he turns anything into a hat. I saw a negro sitting on a woodpile, near Marshall, with the lid of a luncheon basket on his head, and tied around his chin with a red ribbon. He was a simple person, for he ac cepted the remarks of my companions in the kindliest spirit possible, and told us that he had “another hat* 7 at home. This was only his working-day hat. The Indian has very marked tastes, for he prefers the “Stove-pipe” hat; If without a crown po much the better. Next to this is the gray felt, the light color having superior facilities of adornment. He begs for fragments of ribbon or for the metal oruameuts used as trade marks on cakes of chew ing tobacco, and trims the crown with them, while he adorns the brim with fringe of his own contrivance. The labels ofl sauce bottles make a chaste ornament for hats of this kind. The Chinaman is a pronounced utili tarian. He understands, however, the real object of a hat in a climate, and does not hesitate, therefore, at any width of brim. When working in the sun, as I saw them in gangs on the Southern Pacific Line, he wears a construction that looks something like a laundry basket. Speakiug roughly, hats increase in brim as security to life aud property diminish. It was a man without a hat that stabbed Buckingham. This is true all the world over, whether we are among the wide-turbaned Kookas in India, the flat-hatted banditti of Italy or the oow-hoys of Arizona and Texas. The umbiageous brim of the hat of the Arizona cow-boy—“the white In- d'an,” as he is oalled, and he is indeed often more terrible to meet than the red—is the flag, a* it were of his in subordination to laws. He is no re- spectnr of limits, and expresses a general abhorrence of discipline by the license which he takes in hats. A nair.iw brim Bavors to him of a cramping civilization. He refuses to be cribbed up under ordinary head- gear. Nothing is too wide for him. If he could he would put a prairie on his head. But, leaving minor pointi about hats for larger ones, what a wonderful amount of a man’s respectability rests in his hat! Tolry the experiment, lose your hat over the bridge on a windy day aud walk a few blocks without oue. A1J the rest of your cl< thes will not save you from the ptr-tonalities of the juvenile public, nor the unconcealed ridicule of the more adult, ft is no use to remind the street boys that Julius Caesar never were anything on his head. If you put your umbrella up you only make matters wc rce. The man who has lost his hat is the general joke of the mo ment. The New York Girl No girl in the whole country—not even excepting the firmest of strait laced New-Euglauders — is half so carefully guarded a< the New-York girl of to-day. She is watched with the most elaborate care aud cultivates a reticent manner that places her in Ismailia. IsmaUia is a remarkable place, even impressive in spite of its smallnesp. Many of its gardens are a Kew with out its glass houses. Its principal street, facing the lake, and containing the Khedive’s Palace and a large num ber of well and tastefully built houses, is a really handsome one; aud in course of time, aB irrigation is extend ed and the natural wealth of the laud is developed, Ismailia itself will grow in size and beauty, and establish some claim to be regarded as a miniature Paris. But fcr the present its imme diate surroundings are more suggest ive of savagery than civilization. The glaring, hot, soft-powdery sands in vade its outlying quarters, like inlets from the sea. There is no gradual transition from cultivation to sterility, from life to death—you step oat of a doorway and put your foot upon the great desert stretching away without a break to Suez and the equator,or in an. other direction to Arabia and the Dead Sea and the far limits of Syria, or in a third, with only a slight break, to Libya anil the Pillars of Hercules. But turn to yet auothi r direction, and Ismailia assumes the appearance of a great seaport of Europe or America. Eighty large vessels, laden with ar uies from England, from India, float on a lake luminous with the re splendent blue of the Mediteiranean. Like a seaport, too, Ismailia is ooly- glot; and on its crowded wharf, where soldiers and horses and muni tions of war are landing day and night, one hears not only Euglish and French and Italian and Greek, and the native Arabic, but Tamil ^nd Telugu from Madras, Marathi from Bombay, Hindoo from Bengal, Oordoo from Northern India, and Punjabi and the semi-Afghan dialects of the Northwestern frontier. So many are the races of the world which own the benign sway of England, aud are ready at a moment to send forth their hosts over a thousand leagues of sea to execute her bidding. “Every school- boy’’ knows that on the Euglish Em pire the sun never sets; but few schoolboys, young or old, ever realize the foremost row of discreet woman hood. In particular are the street manners of New York girls and women admirable. Men who yield a seat in a car or stage to a lady here a^e often incensed because the only ac knowledgment Is a haughty and al most imperceptible inclination of the head. But the seat is the woman’s by right, and a little reflection will sho.w any man that in a vast city full of presumptuous fools and conceited cockneys, a reticent and reserved manner is the only safeguard. The same woman, in noticing a friend or acquaintance on the street, will greet him with the frankest of smiles and the most cordial manner in the world. The manners of society girls are severe. The gushing era has passed by, and the “thoughtful and occasionally vivacious” era has ar rived. They talk about everything, and hold their heads well up in the air. The girl who looks shy, droops her head or lowers her eyes when ad dressed by a man, is voted very bad form ; and, as the carriage is very up right, the prevailing manner of society girls is charmingly frank and earnest. I call this an improvement over the maidenly simper that formerly pre vailed. It is difficult to analyze the subtle delicacies that make a woman fashionable and in proper form. One thing I notice Is the custom of itera tion which most girls cultivate. For instance, if you say to a girl: “It is very warm,” she does not smile and simper: “ Perfectly dreadful, I never suffered so in my life,” or “ I am quite consumed,” but she looks at you ex pressively, and says, with the same emphasis that you have used: “Yes, it i3 very warm.” Again you say : “ Mrs. Brown’s death was a great shock.” The answer will not be a sudden burst of adjectives expressing her grief, nor will she say: “It’s bo dreadful!” but the simple formula: “Her death was indeed a gr<?at shock.” the shade. The piano is left almost entlrelv to the Wagner enthusiasts, who form an extensive, and exclusive clique, and are known personally as “Parsifals.” The New York girl Is ftlso wildly enthusiastic in matters of art, from Kensington embroidery to- Bartholdi statues. She paints on everything—dlk, velvet, marble, tiles, plaques, walls, wood, stoue, dress ma terials, hosiery, furniture, and her en thusiasm for working in clay is great. She seldom or never produces any thing from the plastic mud, but her soul soars, and she is enabled to wear a square pasteboard cup and a huge bib with Queen Elizabeth shoulder- puffs Then, too, she is a prodigious worker at private theatricals,charades, and dumb-crambo—if that’s the way it’s spelled. In private theatricals no end of trouble is taken, and money is lavished iu the most reckless manner. Scenes are painted, temporary stages erected in ball rooms, orchestras em ployed, and skilled dramatic teachers retained for weeks. The most elabo rate tableaux are given with a rich ness of costuming never approached on the professional stage. The New York girl leads a busy life, and, on the whole, rather a happy one, and taken all in all, she is about as charming as any other girl on the bosom of the earth. the full force of the proposition ; 4 on the shore of Lake Timsah, in full view of our fleets of stately ships, amid multitudes of English soldiers, of 8 poys aud Sowars, on their way to inner Egypt, within hearing of the strange sounds of so many tongues, the familiar saying repeated itself with the strength of a revelation. Horse Trading and Theology. The Schoolmistress and Stocks. A Hudson river farmer who wanted a better horse thau he possessed drove into Yonkers one day with his nag, and hunting up a certain citizen who had the sort of horse he wanted, the farmer stated his desire to exchange, and added: “I understand that you area Christian man?” 1“Yes, sir.” “Belong to the Bapti “Yes.” “One of the d lieve?” “I am.” A trad and the farmer dro ye ho new equine. But in the' three days he returned a “See here, deacon, what man are you ? You never tol that horse I got of you had and ringbones and heaves?” believe I didn’t.” “Well, yo pretty Christian, you are friend,” placidly replied the goc “if you can And it anywhere in the good book that a deacon In the Ba* tist Church must point out the defects in his own horse where a sinner Is too ignorant to see for himself, I’ll admit my sin and trade baok. Come in and we’fcbunt for the passage J” Church?” ons, I be- was made, with the oourse of begun: d of a ne that avins I fiud it difficult to illustrate ray meaning fully; but in gemral the conversation of a New York girl is simple in language and profound in accent. Her craz* for the Euglish does her tiie greatest harm. Iu her struggle t > get the Euglish accent, she lays herself open to ridicule. She is guitly of calling street car “trams,” and says such things as “I cawnt dance any more,” or “I can’t dawuce any more,” combining the American and English in a most hybrid and entrvating way. In the way ot fun, New York girls! have everything from prayer rugs to fencing; but always withiu the strict est bounds of propriety. The prayer rugs are genuine importations from the East, and have most of them been used by Mahommetans. Tne fashion is not new, but it has been revived of late until no girl considers her chamber furnished unless one of these heavily •woven, heartshaped little rugs lies at her bedside. They fence to a lim ited extent. Colonel Monstery, who was in San Francisco some years ago, and may still be remembered there, has several classes at young ladies’ houses. They fenoe with the single stick and confine themselves to up and down movements. ^‘It doesn’t pay t) have them thrust,” said the colonel the other day, because as soon as one of them makes ft pass they both run away,” But lawn tennis is their great field, and New York girls rank at the head of the list as exptrt players. There are private tennis courts whereve r the grounds will ad mit it, and the armories of the city are utilized to the utmost by tennis clubs. There is great rivalry among the girls, not only in point of skill, but costume. They look stunning, in snug-fitting Jerseys and short skirts, and move as gracefully as when roller skating. The number of horse-women iu New York never fails to astonish strangers. The riding habits are made by tailors, aud are marvels of close lilting, and the horses are full- blooded. The girls ride well, and there is no prettier sight than a com pany of twenty or thirty of them seamperiug through the Park at a furious pace in the early morning, with a squad of sedate grooms in the rear. At home the New York girl plays the piano a little, and the harp, banjo or violin a good deal—that is, the last three instruments, and particularly the_vM iu i are throwing the piano In “Guess I won’t go to school to-dav,” said a Carson urchin with an Appeal in his hand. “Why not?” “Concor dia has fallen ofl ten cents and I don’t dare show up until it pick* up again.” “What have the fluctuations of Con cordia got to do with your studies?” “A good deal,” answered the boy. “My teacher has a hundred shares of the stock, and when it falls off a few cents we all catch it heavy. I keep mj»eye on the list, and when tin re’s a break you bet I don’t go to school. I play sick. Golly ! how she basted me the time Mount Diablo busted down to $2. When it was selling at $20 she was as good as pie. “I was the first feller that got on to the break and told the boys of my class that it she didn’t sell there’d be the devil to pay. I heard Uncle Fra ser say that it was a good deal short, and I never slept a wink for a week. I grabbed The Appeal the first thing e very morning ; when I saw her keel down to $16 I skipped to the hills. My ! how she did bang Johnny Dob son round that moruing! I was in hopes that the blasted mine would pick up, hut the water got in the lower levels and I knew we were in for it. She licked somebody for every dollar it dripped. After it struck $8 it picked up a little and we had time to git. My mothtr’s been paichin’ my pants now ever since the big break Sierra Nevada, and if the on’t take & ?urn sc quit the*public i on a rs An unfortunate in a goodly supply of fresh cellar of the house was inf{ rats, and these had no sooner^ ered the whereabouts of the eggs than 1 they determined to replenish their own stores below stairs with them. How was this to be effected? The cellar steps were steep aud long, and tbe eggs were brittle. But the rats had their wits about them. One large rat turned himself onto his back, clasped an ef|? firmly between his four paws, and then allowed his numerous friends to push and pull him in this position to the top of the cellar steps. Oa the first step a crowd of rats were in waiting. The rat with the egg was pushed over the edge by those above, and received ialo the open arms of those below. This operation was re peated until the egg reached the cellar in^safety, and was stowed away in the rats’ larder—a glorious trophy of in genuity and perseverance. Many an egg had disappeared in this mysteri ous way, and at last the good house wife, suspecting that rats were in some way at the bottom of it, hid herself by the cellar st«ps and watched. She saw the whole performance, and said she could scarcely credit the sight of her eyes, so marvelous was the sagacity of these little creatures. ScALLorED Oysters.—“Adelaide” writes: “The recipe for soalloped oysters in the Household Notes is not complete without the liquor of the oysters and a little milk (If the bak ing dish will contain it) added. These I know are neoessary to a good dish of soalloped oysters, having learned by experience that they cau be spoiled without sutfioleut liquid in whioh to bake them. *