Dade County news. (Trenton, Ga.) 1888-1889, December 14, 1888, Image 3

Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

REV. DR. TALMAGE. tH E BROOKLYN DIVINE’S SUNDAY SERMON. gnbjcct; “The Fragrance of the Gospel.” Text: "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory pal aces."— Psalms xlv., 8. Among the grand adornments of the city of Pal is is the Church of Notre Dame, with its great towers, and elaborated rose winduws, and sculpturing of the last judg ment, with the trumpeting ange s and rising dead; its battlements of quarterfoil; its sacristy, with ribbod ceiling and statues of saints. But there was nothing in all that building which more vividly appealed to my plain republican tastes, than the costly vestments which laid in oaken presses, robes that had been embroidered with gold, and been worn by popes and archbishops on great occasions. There was a robe that bad been worn by Pius VII. at the crowning of the first Napoleon. There was also a vest ment that had been worn at the baptism of Napoleon 11. As our guide opened the oa ; ; en presses and brought out these vestments of fabulous cost, and lifted them up, the fragrance of the pungent aro matics in which they had been preserved, fi led the place with a sweetness that was al most oppressive. Nothing that had been done In stone more vividly impressed me than the e things that had been done in cloth, and em broidery.and perfume, But to-day 1 open the drawer of this text, and I look upon the kingly robes of Christ, and as I lift them, flashing with eternal jewels, the whole house is filled with the aroma of these garments, which “smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces.” In my text the King steps forth. His robes rustle and blaze as He advances. His pomp and power and glory overmaster the specta tor. More brilliant is He than Queen V ashti. moving amid the Persian Princes; thar Marie Antoinette on the day when Louis XVI. put upon her the necklace of eight hundred diamonds: than Anne Boleyn, the day when Henry VIII. welcomed her to his palace; all beauty and all pomp forgotten, while wo stand in the presence of this im perial glory, King of Zion, King of earth, King of Heaven, King lorever! His gar ments not worn out, not dust-bed raggled; but radiant, an 1 jeweled, and redolent. It seems as if they must have been pressed a hundred years amid the flowers of heaven. The wardrobe from which they have been taken must have been sweet with clusters of camphire and frankincense, and all manner of precious wood. Do you not inhale the odors? Ay,ay. They “smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces.” Your first curiosity is to know why the robes of Christ are odorous with myrrh. * This was a bright-leafed Abyssinian plant. , It was trifoliated. The Greeks, Egpytians, j Romans and Jews bought and sold it at a high price. Tne first present that was ever given to Christ was a sprig of myrrh, thrown on his infantile bed in Bethlehem, and the last gift that Christ ever had was myrrh pressed into the cup of his crucifixion. The natives would take a rtono and bruise the tree, and then it would exude a gum that would saturate all the ground beneath. This gum was used for purpose? of merchandise. One piece of it, no larger than a chestnut, would whelm a whole room with odors. It was put in closets, in chests, in drawers, in rooms, and its perfume adhered almost intermin ably to anything that was anywhere near it. So when in my text 1 read that Christ’s •garments smell of myrrh, I immediately conclude the exquisite sweetness of Jesus. I know that to many Ho is only like any his torical person; another John Howard; another philanthropic Oberlin; another Con fucius; a grand subject for a painting; a heroic theme for a poem; a beautiful form for a statue; but to those who have heard His voice, and felt His pardon, and re ceived His benediction, He is music, and fight, and warmth, and thrill, and eternal fragrance. Sweet as a friend slicking to you when all else betray. Lifting you up while others try to push y-ou down. Not 60 much like morning-glories, that bloom only when the sun is coming up, nor like “four clocks.” that bloom only when the sun is going down, but like myrrh, perpetually aromatic—the same morning, noon and night —yesterday, to day, forover. _ It seems as if w» cannot wear Him out. We put on Him all our burdens, and attlict Him with all our griefs, and set Him foremost in all our battles, and yet He is ready to lift, and to sympathize, and to help. We have so im posed upon Him that one would think in eternal affront He would quit our soul; and yet to-day He addresses us with the same tenderness, dawns upon us with the same smile, pities us with the same compassion. There is no name like His for us. It is more imperial than Caesar's, more musical than Beethoven's, more conquering than Charlemagne’s, more eloquent than Cicero’s. Itthrobs with alllife. It weeps with all pathos. It groans with ail pain. It stoops with all condescension. It breathes with all perfume. Who like Jesus to set a broken bone, to pity a homeless orphan, to nurse a sick man, to take a prodigal back without any scolding, to illumine a cemetery all plowed with graves, to make a Queen unto God out of the lost woman of the street, to catch the tears of human sorrow in a lachrymatory that shall never be broken? Who has such an eye to see our need, such a lip to kiss away our sorrow, such a hand to snatch us out of the fire, such a foot to trample our enemies,such a heart to embrace all our necessities? I struggle for soma metaphor with which to express Him. He is not like the bursting forth of a full or chestra; that is too loud. He is not like the sea whi n lashed to rave by the tempest' Shat is too boisterous. He fs not like tbs mountain, its brow wreathed with the lightnings; that is too solitary. Give us » softer type, a gentler comparison. We have seemed to see Him with our eyes, and to hear Him with our ears, and to touch Him with our hands. Oh, that to-day He might appear to some other one of our five senses 1 Ay. the nostril shall discover His presence. He comes upon us like spice gales from heaven. Yea, His garments smell of pungent, lasting and all pervasive myrrh. Oh, that you all knew His sweetness. How soon you would turn from vour novels. If the philosopher leaped out of his bath In a frenzy of joy and clapped his hands, and ru3iied through the streets, because he had found the solution of * mathematical problem, how will y*u feel leaping from the fountain of a Saviour’s mercy and pardon, washed, clean, and made white as snow, when the question has beep solved; “How can rny soul be saved?” Naked, fro-t-bitten, storm-lashed soul, let Jesus this hour throw around thee the “garments that smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces.” Y our second curiosity is to know why the fobes of Jesus are odorous with aloes. There some difference of opinion about where these aloes grow, what :3 the color of the flower, what is the particular appearance of the herb. Suffice it for you and me to know that aioes mean bitterness the world over, and when Christ comes with garments hearing that particular odor, they suggest to me the bitterness of a Saviour’s sufferings. ” ere there ever such nights as Jesus lived through— nights on the mountains, Dights ou the sea, nights in the desert? Who ever had a hard reception as Jesus had? A hos telry the first, an unjust trial in oyer ana terminer another, a foul mouthed, yelling mob the la t. Was tiiere a space on His back as wide as your two fingers where He was not whipped? Was there a space on His brow an inch square where He was not cut of the briers? When the spike struck at the instep, did ,t no t go clear through to the hollow of the foot? Oh, long, deep, bitter Pdgrirnage. Aloes! Aloes! John leaned his head on Christ, but who md Christ lean on? Five thousand men ted b y the Haviour; who fed Jesus? The sym pathy of a Saviours heart going out to tl * mper and the adulteress; but wtao.eootheu Cnrist? Denied both cradle and de.itn pod. He had a fit place neither to be t**™ nor to die. A poor babel A poor U'l! A poor youngman! Not so in ;eti as u tap rto cheer his dying hours, Even tao candle of tio sun snu.fad out. Oh, was it not all aloes; Ad our sins, sorrows, be reavements, loss s. and all too agonies of earth and hell picked up as in one clus ter an l squeezed into one cup, and that pressed to His lipj, until * the acrid, nauseating, bitter dr.ihgho was swallowed With a distorted countenance, and a shudder from he a i to loot, and a gurg ing strangula tion. Aloes! Aloes 1 iSoching but aloes. Ah this lor Himself; All this to get the fame in the world of being a martyr; All this in the spirit of stubbornness, because he did not l.ke Cesar? No! no! All this because He wanted to pluck you and me from hell. Because lie wanted to raise you and me to Heaven. Because we were lost and He wanted us found. Because we were blind and He wanted us to see. Because we were serfs and He wanted us manumitted. Oh, ye in whose cup of .life the saccharine has pre dominated; oh, ye who have had bright and sparkling beverages, how do you feel toward Him who in your stead, and to purchase your disenthral latent, took the aloes, the un savoryfcloes, the bitter aloes? Your third curiosity is to know why these garments of Christ are odorous with cassia. This was a plant that grew in India and the i adjoining islands. You do not care to hear I what kind of a flower it had or wnat kind of 1 a stalk. It is enough for me to tell you that | it was used medicinally. In that 1 land and in that age, where they i knew but little about pharmacy, cassia was used to arrest many forms of disease. So j when in my text we find Christ coming with i garments that smell of cassia, it suggests to ; me the healing and curative power of the Son of God. “Oh,” j'ou say,“now you have j a superfluous idea. We are not sick. Why do we want cassia? We are athletic. Our respiration is perfect. Our limbs are lithe, an l in these cool days we feel we could bound like the roe. ” I beg to differ, my I brother, from you. None of you cau be better in physical health than I am, and yet I j must say ws arc ail sick. I have taken the diagnosis of your case, and have ex amined all the best authorities on the sub ject, and I have come now to tell you that you are full of wounds and bruises and putrefying sores which have not been bound up, or mollified with ointment. The maras mus of sin is on us—the palsy, the dropsy, the leprosy. The man that is expiring to-night on Fulton street—the allopathic and homoeo pathic doctors having given him up, and his S friends now standing around to take his last words—is no more certainly dying as to his ■ body than you and I are dying unless we have taken the medicine from God’s apothe cary. All the leaves of this Bible are only so many prescriptions from the Di vine Physician, written," not in Latin,like the prescriptions of earthly physicians, but writ ten in plain English, so that a man, though a fool, need not err therein. Thank God that the Saviour’s garments smell of cassia. Suppose a man were sick, and there was a phial on his mantel piece with medicine ha knew w ould cure him, and he refused to taka it. what would you say of him? He is a suicide. And what do you say of that man who. sick in sin, has the healing medicine of Hod's grace offered him, and refuses to take it? If he dies he is a suicide. People talk as though God took a man and led him 1 out to darkness and death, as though He brought him up to the cliffs and then pushed him off. Oh, no. When a man is lost it is not because God pushes him olf; it is because he jumps off. In olden times a suicide was buried at the cross roads, and the peo ple were accustomed to throw stones upon his grave. Ho it seems to me there may 1* in this house a man who is destroying his own soul, and as though the angels of God were here to bury him at the point where the roads of life and death cross each other, throwing upon the grave the broken law and a great pile of misimproved privileges, so that those going may look at the fearful mound, and learn what a suicide it is when an immortal soul, for which Jesus died, puts itself out of the way. When Christ trod this planet with 'foot of flesh,, the people rushed after Him—people who were sick, anil those who, being so sick they could not walk, were brought by their friends. Here I see a mother holding up her little child and saying: “Cure this croup, Lord Jesus. Cure this scarlet fever.” And others saying: “Cure this ophthalmia. Give ease and rest to this spinal distress. Straighten this club-foot.” Christ made every house where He stooped a dispensary. Ido not believe that in the nineteen centuries that have gone by since His heart has got hard. I feel ihat we can come now with all our wounds of soul and get His benediction. O Jesus, here we are. We want healing. We want sight. We want health. We want life. The whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. Blessed be God that Jesus Christ comes through this assemblage now, His “garments smelling of myrrh”—that means fragrance—“and ifloes”—they mean bitter sacrificial memories—“and cassia’’—that means medicine and cure; and according to my text, He comes “out of the ivory palaces.” You know, or if you do cot know I will tell you now, that some of the palaces of olden time were adorned with ivory. Ahab and Solomon had their homes fur nished with it. The tusks of African and Asiatic elephants wer#t>visted mto all man ners of shapes, and there were s.airs of ivory, and chair 3 of ivory, and tables of i vory, and floors of ivory, and pillars of ivory, and windows off ivory, and fountains that dropped into basins of ivory, and rooms that had ceilings of ivory. Oh, white and overmastering beauty. (Jresn tree branenes sweeping the white curbs. Tapestry trailing the snowy floors. Brackets of light flashing on the lustrous surroundings. Silvery music rippling to the beach of the arches. Ihe mere thought of it almost stuns my brain, and you say: “Oh, if I could only have walked over such floors! If I could have thrown myself in such a chair! If I could havo heankthe drip and dash of those fountains!” You shall have something better than that if you only let Christ introduce yon. From that place He came, and to that place He proposes to transport you, for His “garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces.” Oh. what a place heaven must be! Jhe Tuileries of the* French, the Windsor Castle of the English, the Spanish Alhambra, the Russian Kremlin are dungeons compared with itl Not so many castles on either side the Rhine as on both sides of the river of Go i the ivory palaces! One for the angels, insuffer ably bright, winged, fire-eyed, tempest charioted; one for the martyrs, with blood red robes, from under the altar: one for the King, the steps of His palace the crowns of the church militant; one for the singers, who lead the one hundred and forty and four thousand; one for you ransomed from sin; one for me, plucked "from the burning. Oh, the ivory palaces! To-day it seems to me as if the windows of those palaces were illumined for some great victory, and I look and see climbing the stairs of ivory, and walking on floors of ivory, and looking from the windows of ivory, some whom we knew and loved on earth Yes. I know them. There are father and mother, not eighty-two years and seven ty nine years, as when they left u?, but blithe and young as when on their marriage lay. And tiiere are brothers and sisters, mer rier than when we used to romp across the meadows together. The cough gone. The can cer cured. The erysipelas healed. The heart break over. Oh, how fair they are in.the ivory palaces! And your dear little children that went out from you—Christ did not let oneot them drop as He lifted them. He did not wrench one of them from you. No. They went as from one they loved well to One whom tbev loved better. If I should take your little child and press its soft face a -ainst iny rough cheek, I might keep it a little while; but when you, the mother, came along, it would struggle to go with you. And so vou stood holding your dying child when Jesus passed by in the room, and the little one sprang out to greet Him. That is alt Your Christian .lead did not go down into tie dust and the gravel and the mud. Though it rained ali that funeral day, and the water came up to the wheel’s hub as you drove out to the cemetery, it made no difference to them, for they stepped from the home here to the home there, right into tho ivory palacm All is well with them. All is welL . • . it ■ not a d. ad weight that you UTt when you carrv a Christian out. Jesus makes the bed up soft with velvet promises, and Ha says: “Put her aown here very gently. Put that head, which will nover ache again, on this pillow of hallelujahs. Send up word that the procession is coming. Ring the i ells. Ring! Open your gates, ye ivory palaces!” And so your loved ones are there. They are just as certainly there, having died in Cnrist, as that you ara here. There is only one thing more they want. Indeed, there is one thing in heaven they have not got. They want it What is it? Your company. But, oh, my brother, unless you change your tack you cannot reach that harbor. You mi rht as well take the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, expecting in that direction to reach Toronto, as to go on in the way some of you are going and yet expect to reach the ivory palaces. Your loved ono3 are looking out or the windows of Heaven now, and yet you seem to turn your back upon them. You do not seem to know the sound of their voices as well as you used to, or to ba moved by the sight of their dear faces. Call louder, ye de parted ones. Call louder from the ivory palaces. When I thjnk of that place, and think of my entering it, I feel awkward; I feel a 3 sometimes when I have been exposed to the weather, and my shoes have been be mired.andmy coat is soiled,and my hair is dis heveled, ami I stop in front of some flue resi dence where I have an errand. I feel not fit to go in as I am and sit among polished guests. So some of us feel about heaven. We need to be washed—we need to be rehabilitated before we go into the ivory palaces. Eternal God, let the surges of Thy pardoning mercy roll over us. I want not only to wash my hands and my feet, but, like some skilled diver, standing on the pier-head, who leaps into the waves and come 3 up at a far-distant point from where ho went in. so I want to go down an d so I want to come up. O Jesus, wash me in the waves of Thy salvation. And here I ask you to solve a mystery that has been oppressing me for thirty years. I have asked it of doctors of divinity who have been studying theology half a century, and they have given me no satisfactory answer. I have turned over all the books in my library, but got no solution to the question, and to-day I come and ask you for an explanation. By what logic was Christ induced to exchange the ivory palaces of heaven for the crucifixion agonies of earth! 1 shall take the first thousand million years in heaven to study out that problem. Meanwhile and now, taking it as the tender est and mightiest of all facts that Christ did come, that He came with the spikes in His feet, came with thorns in His brow, came with spears in nis heart,to save you afld to save me. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everiasting life.” O Christ, whelm this audience with Thy compassion. Mow diem down like summer grain with the harvesting sickle of Thy grace. Ride 'trough to-day the conqueror, Thy garments smelling “of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces.” O, sinner, fling everything else away and take Christ! Take Him now, not to-morrow. During the night following this very day there may be an excitement in your dwelling, and a tremulous pouring out of drops from an unsteady and affrighted hand, and befon to-morrow morning your chance may b« gone. He Was an Old Sailor. “Can’t a feller wait for liis ship ?" said a man with red eyes and seedy clothes, as he steadied himself against one of the stone posts on the sea-wall along the Battery. He addressed a policeman who was watching him closely. “Can’t he wait till his ship is ready to pull out?” “Yes,” said the officer in a tone as if it depended on circumstances. “Can’t he linger where the waves dash high, till the tide is right to li’ist his ship over the breakwater ?” “Yes, if he’s-quiet about it.” . “Can’t the captain of a big eight-mast ship with two bow-sticks on her rest in your park till they send the starboard schooner to take him off ?” “You are a captain of a vessel, then?” “Yesser, that’s it. See her tied up over there toward that ’ere big statute. See the masts on her, and the fo’castle sticking up ’n the air like a church steeple? That’s my ship. I’m goin’ on t’ her jess as soon as they come to take me off in the bulkhead. Lemmy rest in your park till they pull up here to this stone side-walk with the for'ard bulkhead.” “All right;—but you mnst’nt holler.” “Nary yell—’taint the way of seafarin’ men. I’ve follered the gea for forty years, podner. As soon as they row me out in the lighter we will weigh the anchor, and if she seems to be ’bout the right heft we’ll sail away to Greenland’s icy mouut’ins and India’s coral sands. We’ll h’ist the rest of the musts and sail away past Coney Island and Cubv and all them places while the stormy petrel and the albacrossers and flyin’ lish dash around ns. Ev’ry morning, podner, we’ll weigh the anchor to see if it’s gain in’ any.” “How long did you say you had been a sailor?” asked the officer. “I’ve trod tho deck for forty years. Give me a wet sheet and a flowin’ sea and a wind that follers fa t, and if the rest of the led clothes are moderately dry and the piller comfortable and there chit nomuskeeters, I can sleep till break fast is ready every time. I remember once when l was sailing my good ship off the coa t of Giberaltor with the tropics all around us, picking at us and looking cross, and one day there come by one of them blizzards, which is the terror of the hardy navigator in those regions where they have the equator and all such things. ‘Boll up them sails be hind there!” says I in thunderin’ tones. ‘Splice the main-top royal-gallant rope; fold up the mizzen spanker and put it in the closet; pull in the inain-mast ’fore it gets wet; furl the barometer, box up tho compass and heave overboard the log and lighten the ship a little; lower the hold down tho hatchways before “Come, that will do—move on !” “In jess a minute I was standin’ by the larboard side and then I walks over to port, and “Move on I” “- Then I goes along for’ard of the flyin’ jibboom, and “Oit t" — IV. T. Tribune. f u " A monument to Shakspere, designed, executed and present 'd by Lord Ronald Gower, was recently unveiled at Strat ford-on-Avon. It consists of a life-size figure of the poet on a pedestal, about which are placed on projecting bases representations of four of the poet's chief characterizations—Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, Falstaff and Prince Hal. Hamlet is seated; with a dejected ex pression of visage, musing over Yorick’s skull. Falstaff is also seated, an empty wine cup is in the left hand, the right beiug raised, with the forefinger extend ed. Lady Macl>eth is represented rub bing her hands to remove the indelible blood-stains. The faoe is hard and cruel, but a shadow of remorse is to be remarked in it. Prinoe Hall is trying om his fatliMr’s srown. k TURTLE WHIPS A BEAR A NOVEL AND EXCITING BATTLE ON A FLORIDA BEACH. Biff BJnok Bear Attacks a Mon ster Turtle, and Gets the Worst of the Cpinbai. A recent issue of the St. Louis Globe- Democrat says: The schooner Mabel F., Captain Zeka Dickerson, came into Charlotte Harbor, Fla., ou Saturday, with a load of huge loggerhead turtles and fish. The turtles were monsters, several of them measur ing over nine feet from end to end, over the shell, and five to seven across. Such ones will weigh from TOCIto 1000 pounds each, and it is no child’s play to capture them. Several of the crew had severe wounds on their hands, caused by tho sharp claws with which the turtle s flip pers are armed,and one sailor wa3 mourn ing the 10-s of his thumb, which ho lost by fooling with one of the captives. The mate, Jim Wheelan, and a sailor named Dan Bryan had the unusual luck of witnessing a fight between a big black bear and a monster turtle. It occurred at Key Mina. The schooner was at anchor on the inside shore, while the men went across the island, half a mile or so, and secured turtles on the gulf shore. The second night these two, by some choice, wandered down to the end of the island. While going along cautiously they heard a confused sound some way ahead, as if some kind of a fight was going on. A deal of thrashing about was audible, and a sort of roar or grunt that sounded like a bear was heard. Pushing forward they soon rounded a sharp turn that the beach made, and the cause of the rumpus was before them. At first they could not tell what it was, but saw that two big forms were struggling together and lighting furiously. From the grunts they knew that a bear was one of the combatants. Cautiously and silently they came up nearer and to their groat surprise they perceived that the fight was between a huge loggerhead turtle and a big, shaggy black bear. From their positions it would seem that the bear had sprung on the turtle a 9 it was retreating to water, and had tried to overturn it. In some way it had stepped in front turtle, and the latter, thrusting its head out,had quietly seized one of bruin's hind legs and held on. At this the bear roared loudly and pawed furiously at the turtle’s back, trying to fore e him over on his back. This the turtle resisted with all his strength and weight, settling down close to the ground whenever the bear made an extra effort, and then, as the latter related his efforts, the turtle would suddenly start up and endeavor to get nearer the water, keeping his firm hold of the bear’s leg all the while. This move would arouse bruin’s ire again, and the fierce contest would be renewed with increased fury. The bear’s disengaged hind leg plowed the sand deeply as he endeavored to stop the turtle's progress watervvard, while his fore paws clawed loggerhead madly, vainly trying to find some vulnerable spot; for, judging by his angry growling and the desperate efforts lie made to release his leg from the reptile’s grip, the turtle was holding on for keeps. By a sudden push and a powerful muscular effort of his head and paws bruin managed to get the turtle half-set, one side being raised a foot or so. Pur suing his advantage he seized one of the turtle’s big flippers in his jaws, and the snap that followed showed that bruin felt that things were evening up. The old loggerhead plainly Odn’t like this change of tactics, for its free flippers moved like the fan of a threshing ma chine. Its big body plunged from side to side, while it scattered the sand in showers all around as it tried to throw off its b‘g antagonist. The bear was dragged around considerably by the turtle’s movements, and the pain in his imprisoned leg evidently put him in very bad humor. He kept chewing the turtle’s flipper and endeavoring to get the latter overthrown. The old turtle worked around and finally got in a stroke with its sharp claw that badly ripped the bear’s under side. This infuriated bruin so much that he let go his grip on his anla gonisist’s flipper, and reaching his head uown, tried to free his hind leg. But he made a bad mistake, and the fighting mad loggerhead quickly improved his opportunity. As bruin’s nose came within reach he let go the leg, and quick as a flash fastened his iron grip on the bear's jaw. The boys say that then ensued a circus. The bear was thoroughly taken by surprise, and he roared lustily with pain and rage. The turtle pushed on and dragged his unwilling captive along. The latter saw his danger and felt it, too, for thcy'were so near the water’s edge that the waves splashed over them. The combat continued at this point for several seconds; it was plainly to be seen that both were p r etty well tuckered out, and either would have been willing to cry quits. But neither dared let go. The loggerhead dragged him along and finally had hita in water knee-deep. Here he had things more his own way. The waves coming in dashed the bear about so that he maintained his footing with difficulty. He frantically danced about, endeavoring to get free, and using his terrible claws all he could, but the turtle’s coat of mail proved impene trable. Bruin’s strength now began to fail, and his big foe took advantage of every relaxation of his efforts to escape. Slowly the turtle worked his way out into deeper water, his flippers helping him wonderfully in his native element. A shelving rock or slide was soon gained, and there the last struggle took place. The turtle, half covered with water, was raised time and again a foot or so by the frantic struggles of the partially drowned bear, whose head was kept under the water longer each time. It was plainly to be seen now that the bear was doomed. After a few minutes longer of the struggle, as the bear rested a moment, the turtle plunged off into deep water, dragging his prey under. As the bear went down his hind legs kicked convulsively, but in a very feeble way.. The wa chers of this ferocious encounter waited for an hour, to see it the body of the bear would be released, but nothing came up. The next day, however, the fragments of the beast wa-hed ashore, mutilated »ud cut all to pieces. Three young Japanese men are now in the office of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury at Washington studying drawing. WORDS OF WISDOM. Laziness grows on people. Let us ever glory in something. Experience keeps a dear school. To all mortals is given a tongue. Contraction animates conversation. Let us bewaie of losing our enthusiasm. He who eats the meat let him pick the hone. Don’t give advice, unless you wish to be hurt. Man’s honor wears armor, aud carries a mace. Man is an enigma from his birth to his death. Only when society is established can wrong exist. Dogs wag their tails not so much at you as at their bread. It is the duty of every person to do some good in the world. Well doing, however rough and thorny at first, surely leads to pleasant places. Wrong doing is a road that may open fair, but it leads to trouble and danger. Brood not upon misfortunes. If you must take the bitter pills do not chew them. The willow which bends to the tempest often escapes better than the oak which resists. « Tho more business a man has to do tho more he is able to accomplish, for he learns to economize his time. The darkness of death is like the even ing twilight; it makes all objects ap pear more lovely to the dying. Flattery corrupts both the receiver andthegver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to the king. Ease must be impracticable to the envious; they lie under a double mis fortune ; common calamities and common blessings fall heavily upon them. Misunderstanding and inattention create more uneasiness in the world than deception and artifice, or, at least, their consequences are more universal. American Wars. Since Columbus first discovered this country, 396 years ago, sixteen wars have raged in vihat are now the United States or been waged by this Govern ment. They were the Dutch war ol 1655, King Phillip’s war of 1675, King William’s war of 1680, Queen Anne’s war of 1713, the French and Indian war, 1757; the Revolution, 1775; the Indian war, 1760; the Barbary war, 1803; the Tecumseh wav, 1811; the war of 1812; the war on the Algerian pirates in 1815, the first Seminole war in 1817, the second • Seminole war in 1835, the Black Hawk war of 1832, the Mexican, 1846, and the Civil war, 1861. The duration and cost of the four great wars were: Revolutionary, seven years, $135,103,500; 1812, two and a half years, $107,159,000; Mexican, two years, $66-, 000,000, and the Civil war, four years, over $“,000,000,000, or a total cost of nearly three and a half billion. In the Revolutionary war the number of Amer can troops engaged was 231,791, and in the Civil war the Northern soldiers num bered 2,688,523. There have been also so-called re bellions or attempts to overthrow the Gover.Jnent. The first was in 1.82, when some officers of the Federal army tried to consolidate the thirteen States into one and confer supreme powei on Washington. The second was in 1787, j|lled “Shay’s Insurrection,” in Massachusetts. The third was in 1894, popularly called “Tho Whisky Insur rection of Pennsylvania.” The fourth instance was in 1814, by the Hartford Convention Federalists. The fifth, on which occasion the different sections ol the U nion came into collison, was in 1»20, under the administration of Presi dent Monroe, and occurred on the ques tion of the admission of Missouri into the U nion. The sixth was a collision between the Legislature of Georgia and the Federal Government in regard to certain lands given by the latter to the Creek Indians. The seventh was in 1820 with the Cherokees in Georgia. The eighth was the memorable nullifying ordinance of South Carolina in 1832. The ninth was in 1842, and occurred in Rhode Island between the Suffrage As sociation and the State authorities. The tenth was iu 1836, on the part of the Mormons, who resisted the Federal au thority. —Detroit Free Press. Ainu Prayers For the Sick. When very sick, an Ainu man (the woman may not pray at all) will call upon the fire-goddess, who is reckoned a , great purifier, thus: “Abe kamui, Yeko ingara w.i en kore” (“O fire-goddess, condescend to look upon me.’’) Upon the approach of death, the master will lie close to the fire on his own side of the hearth, partly for the sake of the warmth, but probably in a measure foi any possible benefit to be gained from propinquity to the realm of the fire-god dess. Then the village chief and elders, and the sick man’s friends, all come to see him; the men to pray and “drink to the gods,” while the w-omen weep and wail in rather a noisy fashion, since they are denied the comforts of religion. There are times when the patience of the praying men becomes exhausted if no favorable answer is given to their peti tions. Mr. Batchelor tells of one death scene which he witnessed when two men were praying to the goddess of fire and another toward the sun rising through the eastern window ; while a fourth was looking toward the northeast corner of the hut (which corresponds in a measure to the latrine of Japanese houses) and swearing most vehemently at all the gods, something after this lashion: “iou fools! why don’t you pay some attention to us? Can’t you see that this man is in great danger? Here we’ve been praying and praying for him, and yet he doesn’t get well. What’4 the matter? Are you deaf? Can’t you hear us?” —Popular Science Monthly. An aged widower got married recently for the fourth tim», notwithstanding that he had a house full of grown-up children. While the marriage ceremony was being performed one of the guests, hearing soLw in the next room, asked oue of the children tv ho it w.s. “lhats j 1 mily.” was the reply, “-he always ; howls when papa gets married again.” t-uriou'-ly enough, after the purchaser paid for his gun, he said he would like to have It charged. THE STORY OF AN EXILE. PATHETIC EXPERIENCE OF A RUS SIAN BANISHED TO SIBERIA- < A Man of Fine Attainments Doomed to Perpetual Banishment— Hi* Wife’s Sad Fate. The following from the Century is on® I of the most touching stories that Mr. j Kennan has yet told of the fate of Sibe- I rian exiles: “To me, perhaps, the most attractive and sympathetic of the Tomsk exiles was the Kusaiau author, J exil Yolkhofski, who wa9 banished to Siberia for life in 1878, upon the charge of ‘be longing to a society that intends, at & more or less remote time in the future, to overthrow the existing form of Govern ment.’ He was about thirty-eight years of age at the time I made his acquaint ance, and was a man of cultivated mind, warm heart- and high aspirations. He knew English well, was famil iar with American history and literature, aud had, I believe translated into Russian many of the poems of Longfellow. He spoke to me with great admiration, I remember, of j Longfellow's ‘Arsenal at Springfield, 1 and recited it to me aloud. He was one of the most winning and lovable men that it has ever been my good fortune.to' know; but his life had been a terrible tragedy. His health had been shattered 1 by long imprisonment in the fortress of Petropavlovsk; his hair was prematurely] white; anc wheu his face was in repose there seemed to be an expression of .pro found melancholy iu his dark brown eyes.j I became iuliuiuielj’aCqUailiteu Vvitu uiul and very warmly attached to him: andj when I bade him good-bye for the last time on my return from Eastern Siberia! in 1886, he put h's arms around me and 1 kissed me, and said, ‘George Ivanovitch,! please don’t forget us! In bidding you good bye, I feel as if something were going out of mv life that would never again come into it.’ “Since my return to America I have heard from Mr. Yolkhofski only once. He wrote me last winter a sad and touching letter, in which he in formed me of the death of his Wife by. suicide. He himself had been thrown out of employment by the suppression of the liberal Tomsk newspaper, the Siberian Gazette ; and his wife, whom I remember os a pale, delicate, sad-faced woman, twenty-live or thirty years of age, had tried to help him support their family of young children by giving private lessons and by taking in sewing. Anxiety and overwork had finally broken down her health; she had become an invalid, and in a morbid state of mind, brought on by unhappiness and disease, she reasoned herself into the belief that she was an incumbrance, rather than a help, to her husband and her children, and that they would ultimately be better oil if she were dead. A little more than a year ago she put an end to her unhappy life by shoot ing herself through the head with a pistol. Her husband was devotedly attached to her; and her death, under such circumstances and in such a way, was a terrible blow to him. In his letter to me he referred to a copy of James Russell Lowell’s poems that I had caused to be sent to him, and said that in reading ‘After the Burial’ he vividly realized lor the first time that grief is of no nationality; the lines, although writ ten by a bereaved American, expressed the deepest thoughts and feelings of a bereaved Russian. He sent me with hi* letter a small, worn, leather match-box, which had been given by Prince Pierre Krapotkin to his exiled brother Alex ander; which the latter had left to Volk hofski; and which Yolkhofski had'in turn presented to his wife a short time before her death. He hoped, he said, that, it would have some vaiue to me, on] account of its association with the live# of four political offenders, all of whom I had known. One of them was a refugee in London, another was an exile in Tomsk, and two had escaped the juris diction of the Russian Government by taking their own lives. “1 tried to read Volkholski’s letter aloud to my wife; but as I recalled the high character and lovable personality of the writer, and imagined what this last blow of fate must have been to such a man—in exile, in broken health, and with a family of helpless children dependent upon him—the written Lnes vanished in a mist of tears, and with a choking in my throat I put the letter and the little match-box away. “The Tsar may whiten the hair of such men as Felix Yolkhofski in the silent bomb-proof ca emates of the fortress, and he may send them in gray convict overcoats to Siberia; but a time will come in the providence of God, when their names will stand higher than his on the roll of history, and when the record of their lives and sufferings will be a sour. • of heroic inspiration to all Russians who love liberty aud their country.” B ggest Flagstones Ever Quarried. Everybody who has been able to see the mansions built by the late William H. Vanderbilt for himself and his two daughters, with their families, knows that the structures occupy the whole hifth avenue front between Fifty-first and Fifty-second streets, New Y’ork Uitv, and most visitors have noticed the enormous stones which form the side walk. 't hese blocks of granite reach from curb to area rail, and are propor tionately w ; de. The city home of Mrs. Willie Vanderbilt is on the corner just across Fifty-second street, and it is more ornamental with its carved granite, than the larger piles of brown stone. But the 300 feet of sidewalk boideriug the two sides of the prem ses was com po-ed of flags not remarkably big, al though rather better than the Filth avenue average. The whimsical youDg matron did not choose that her sister-in-law neighbors should be better off than she, eveu in what they tread on in transit betwixt portal and carriage. Therefore, she has ordered her sidewalk torn away and replaced by the biggest flagstones ever quarried. They will be about twenty feet square each and a foot and a half thick. The difficulty of get ting out such tremendous blocks, and the ;ost of transportation, will make the price rather more than SIOOO apiece by ihe time they are laid. To real ze the extravagance one has only to think that ;he money paid for every one of these stones would build a pretty house in the country or buy a considerable farm. Nevertheless, as not less tL vn ninety-six per cent, of this outlay in for labor, isn’t it better for many poor people that this very rich person should want that kind of a sidewalk? — limes-Democrat.