hands collecting these rags, which they heap together in large tubs, in which the flax and hemp become a sort of infectious matter.

Of this matter paper is made. Although paper, they have not yet become idols; they are sold by the ream and the quire, but they will not have to wait long.

During this time, on another side, other men are bruising, pounding, diluting poisons, mixing them and turning them over the fire, until they become of the color of mourning. The priests of the idol which is about to be made, then shut themselves up with the paper, and trace characters upon it. These characters amount to twenty-four; but, by their position, they change both their signifiIcation and their value.

If such an one of these figures be placed with such another, and between those certain others, a man a hundred leagues off lifts up his head, feels himself puffed up with joy and pride, and others venerate and envy him. If, on the contrary, it be another figure which is after such another figure and before such another, the same man is overwhelmed with grief and shame; he dares no longer to leave his house, he shuns the regards of men, everybody attacks him, ridicules him, abuses him.

The idol is folded in four and slipped underneath doors.

He enters underneath doors it is true; but, when once entered, he is master of every house; he begins by uttering oracles; then there is but one step from oracles to miracles; of a fool he makes a man of wit, and of a man of wit an idiot; of a sordid and ambitious man a virtuous and disinterested citizen; he sends a king into exile, and crowns whom he pleases. The idol announces to you miraculous waters which prevent the hair from growing grey, and blacking which revivifies old boots, and he is believed.

The idol promises the realization of that famous cabbage, which could be cooked but in a pot as large as a church, and he is believed.

He promises men in place who shall neither corrupt nor be corrupted, and disinterested citizens, devoted to the public good, and he is believed. To try your faith, the oracle relates to you the most absurd histories, and you believe him.

Never was a deity so punctually obeyed.

But the day is near its end, the day finishes; the idol sees his altars abandoned. On the morrow morning he finds nothing but disdainful iconoclasts in those that had been his most fervent adorers; he is exposed to more insults than he has undergone in all that life so full of vicissitudes which we have described. Never was idol so treated; he is cut into round pieces to cover pots of preserves, and into long pieces to light pipes with, into square pieces for children to make ducks, boats, and salt-boxes of.

There is no domestic use to which the idol of yesterday may not be degraded to-day.

During this time, another deity, who has likewise been slipped under the door, comes in his turn to utter his oracles; he is listened to and obeyed with the same respect and the same kindness, until on the morrow he goes. to the preserve pots and to light the fire. Such is the true, unadorned history of the greatness and the fall of flax and hemp.

Now, who could believe this, particularly of flax, which has so innocent, so pure an air, when it opens in the morning its little blue flowers, so light and so fragile."

And who could believe this of my tree, so stately, so tall and so graceful? But, tree of. mine, I don't know as I am dissatisfied with you after all. Your possibilities are great, though you will never fulfil them; for like many another one you are hedged about by adverse circumstances, so that you will never fulfil the destiny which properly belongs to you. But if you are an exception to your order, and your mission different from that of your class, still your brief life in my little garden may not after all be a failure. You will never be perfected as hemp, never be metamorphosed into the idol that is one day exalted and the next day cast into the fire. But you have your compensations. In a field of hemp down in that Kentucky or Tennessee where your kindred dwell, what would you be? I venture to say a mere nothing. Among acres of such as yourself, who would have admired your individuality? No one. But here you have been talked about and gazed upon and been a season's wonder. Here, in my garden, you have had the opportunity of forming the acquaintance many illustrious families. I think you

of

have rather crowded the rosebush whose soil nourished you when you were a seed, but it may be the necessities of the case would not allow you to do otherwise. That rose acacia you have quite overtopped, but I hope it has been done in no vain spirit, for it is a very beautiful tree and its blossoms are more lovely than anything of which you will ever be able to boast.

I

A GIRL'S TALK TO GIRLS.

BY SARAH L. JOY.

"The Girl of the Period."

HAVE many times resolved that I, for one, would not say one word on this muchabused and overdone subject, but in spite of all my protestations, you see what is the heading of this article. I have endured in silence, and endurance is no longer a virtue,

I love to think that this latter is the case, for then I trust your days are pleasant to you, and that no sad regrets or vain longings embitter them. I think your life here has been more than if you had grown up among your kindred, and added your little to the making of that powerful idol; for you would at the most have made but a few yards of rope or twine, or again a few sheets of paper, and let it comfort you to know that from acres of your kindred you will not be missed. Here you are an event, an exception, and it is ever exceptions that are fraught with wonderful power.

A hundred seeds might fall on those southern fields, and grow up and mature and decay, but it is the exceptional seed that carried in some seemingly chance but really providential way to some foreign port, or to some distant land, that revolutionizes a people.

Sometimes when I look at you I fear you may be lonely; but can that be missed which is never known? What do you know of companionship, who have never experienced it? No; the sun, the air, day and night with their changes, are your all of life. You go back to no past, you anticipate no future. Already down to your roots I see a yellow leaf which I know tells surely of decay, but of this you are ignorant. When it comes you will accept it as a law of your being, and fade with the passing year without a regret.

WEALTHI bears more heavily on talent than on poverty; under gold mountains and thrones, who knows how many a spiritual giant may lie crushed and buried.

called upon to question-and now I must cry out in sheer despair and disgust.

I cannot pass a picture store, no matter how small and insignificant, but staring me from its windows is either a photograph, cartoon, or worst of all, a coarse, gaudily colored lithograph, labelled "The Girl of the Period." I can't take up an illustrated paper, either American or foreign, that some horrid caricature is not found within its pages illustrating some particular habit or foible of the "Girl of the Period." Even the more solid journals wont let the subject rest, and from the Lakes to the Gulf, from Atlantic Border to Pacific Slope every publication gives its fling at them. Across the Atlantic, too, in England especially, we find our abuse outdone; in fact, America is only following the lead. From the Salurday Review, bitter and caustic on every subject, shrivelling everything it touches with the hot breath of its sarcasm, to the soberer and more conservative Macmillan and Cornhill, no magazine or paper will let us alone, and I, for one, enter an earnest protest against this sarcastic and unjust ridicule.

I look at these caricatures, I read these libels, but looking around among my girl friends I fail to detect a likeness. Faults there may be, faults there are, but in no such degree or kind as our revilers would prove that we possess. In what manner the girls of to-day are worse than those of yesterday were, or those of to-morrow may be, I cannot tell. It may be obtuseness of mental vision, but I fail entirely to see in what respect we have degenerated so sadly from former generations. People have fallen into a deplorable habit, indeed I don't know but they have always had it, for I recollect reading somewhere that the "Golden Age" was in no wise so beautiful and heroic to those

who lived in that glorious epoch as it is to us who thrill and glow at the soul-stirring legends that have been handed down to us through many a generation, at any event they have the habit, whether newly acquired or not makes not an iota's difference, - of undervaluing the present and turning fond eyes to the irrevocable past, on the principle probably that "distance lends enchantment" not only to the physical but mental vision, and ignoring all the good of to-day, see only. its defects and sigh for a return of yesterday's lost virtues.

I don't believe that the girl of a century or half-century ago, was one bit pleasanter to meet or to live with than the girl of to-day. I don't believe her smile was more sunshiny, her heart larger or warmer, or her life broader or better than that of any true-hearted girl of to-day. The same faults of girlhood that we possess belonged at some time to our grandmothers and mothers; they outgrew them, perhaps, and I believe we may. We may not have the same educators, yet ours may not be the less valuable.

We may not as yet have had to learn the grand, heroic endurance which they learned; we may have less of the Spartan element aroused in us, but we are their daughters and their qualities must be ours; latent, perhaps, but only because they have not yet been needed. We showed a little what we could endure during our late war. There was not a girl in the land who had not an interest there. You and I felt it; we felt what it cost to see the best and dearest going away to fight for a principle; not a mere chimera as some would have us think, but a living, throbbing principle. Did we hold them back? Would we have held them if we could? Was not their honor and the honor of our country dearer than aught else? Ah, girls, there was a heroism there, and our mothers need not blush for the degeneracy of their daughters.

That is past now, but the work is not done yet, and we shall have opportunities without number to show the "stuff we are made of." Could I have chosen any time in which to live, I know of none that would have been my choice so quickly as the present. It is so full of promises for the future, a future

which you and I are to help to make, in which our sex will play a prominent part, and the "Girl of the Period" is to be a great motive power towards accomplishing the inevitable end. What that will be I cannot tell, and if I told what I really do think and believe, perhaps you would not all agree with me, so I will leave the future to write its own history more eloquently than pen of mine can prophecy it.

But while with the girl of that period I have nothing to do now, the girl of to-day I cannot patiently endure to see maligned. In pure self-defence I have taken up my slight weapon, and I wish it might be to some avail.

But, girls, I'm whispering now-are we to blame for all this hue and cry? Do we give occasion for it? Because I said we were probably no worse than some other girls of another era, I didn't say we were faultless, for honestly I don't think we are. I think I have told you what seems to me to be some of our faults, and I have a few more in reserve. They are faults common to girls of almost every age, to be sure; but that should not content us. We should be humiliated, in these days of progress, by being simply no worse; our duty and privilege require us to be far better; so much better and purer and grander that from the beauty of our lives and the breadth of our charity and good will, the "Girl of the Period" may be a title no longer of ridicule and reproach, but a name to challenge the respect and admiration of

our age.

WE are taught to some purpose when we are lifted up into that pure and sweet humanity of which the divine love that stooped to share our earthly lot is the perpetual exemplar and inspiration. Before all honor is that humility, before all pride and glory of knowledge is the spirit of service, the spirit of those who look not every one on bis own things, but every one also on the things of another. Learn to live for others; live for them that you may love them, love them that you may live for them. Love, as a grain of mustard-seed, is worth all the knowledge in the world without love.

IT

THOUGHTS DURING A RIDE.

BY MRS. H. M. HOLBROOK.

T is the Sabbath one of those perfect days we might almost say, so rare, that we find in the month of June. A calm seems to rest on the face of Nature, and all things wear their holiday garb a Sunday dress not of sanctimonious gravity, but of that cheerful, quiet happiness, so restful to the weary children of toil. It is with this feeling of rest and peace that we start on our accustomed ride to the neighboring city to church. The way leads several miles over hill and dale, through wood and open glade, by the homes of wealth, and the little brown cottages of the poor, half-hidden among the

trees.

Among the cares and fatigue of the week, we looked forward to this hour's ride with bright anticipations which are now fully realized.

Every blade of grass and bush has bathed itself in dewdrops, and they still hang pendant from every leaf, waiting for the sunbeams to drink them up; they might be fairy nectar if the taste equal the colors. And the birds and bees flit hither and thither, enjoying each and all.

Little birds, sporting on joyous wing, do you never have anxious hours? Do you never fear your little homes may be destroyed by some rude hand, or that the fledglings of the nest may be stolen while you are away? or do you scorn to borrow trouble, feeling that your Heavenly Father careth for you. Your quiet, satisfied ways and happy songs all's well." We may well borrow some of your content and trust, and lay the lesson to heart for future profit.

say

As we are whirled along, from the top of some hill, or a sudden! bend in the road, a new picture is presented to the eye. Watch the lights and shades on yonder hillside. What might perhaps be a common picture is certainly lovely in the golden rays of the 2nn. So we often notice a plain face and irregular features beautified by the goodness shining through it, when performing some deed of kindness.

June is prodigal of her treasure; the wayside is blooming with the rose and all the wild flowers of the wood; the blackberry

vines are drooping with their wealth of snowy clusters, promising a rich harvest of fruit.

Nature at this season holds her Jubilee, and from ten thousand throats ascend the songs of praise and thanksgiving to the hand that provided all this bounty. Nature and life are closely connected. All the phases of the one may be found in the other. Myself and companion were speaking of the opposite types of beauty represented in June and October, and the stages of life in which they may stand as the figure. S. prefers October, with its gay, frost-tinted banners, while I incline to June, when everything revels in luxuriance of leaf and flower, while all is fresh and green, before the scorching suns have parched and withered, and ere the dust and storms have soiled and broken.

October presents greater variety of color, but we know it is the last effort of expiring life. There is a feeling of sadness blended with the delight with which our gaze lingers upon this glory of departing leaf and flower. It is like looking on the silvered locks and bowed form of one we love, whose life has been well-spent ; tried in the furnace of affliction ; bowed by the storms of life, but rising after they have passed, stronger in faith and trust; having been sifted of the dross of the material things of this world, with the glory of a brighter life shining around them, and in the beauty of ripened grain, awaiting the harvest of the Angel of Death to be gathered home. And can we not continue the figure? as the seed falls to the ground and is hidden from our sight under the snows and storms of winter, we know it does not lie idle, but is preparing to burst upon our gaze with the opening Spring in new beauty and life; why may it not be proper to conclude that the living spirit after leaving its house of clay passes through a similar transition, preparing itself for greater works and more lasting happiness? Its powers and capabilities for proprogress will open, springlike, and increase, till in the fulness of time it shall be redeemed and dwell forever in the full light of that blissful region, where the glory of the Father, and the Son, and the companionship of saints and angels, and the divine love for all mankind, shall be to us an abiding joy.

Perhaps, taken in connection with these thoughts, October may bear the pa'm over