BLESSED be women's clubs! They take their place beside the bicycle as conservers of youth. In their happy precincts the question of age enters not at all, or if it does, it is but to the further honor of gray hairs. The handsome gray-haired woman with the picture-hat is a constant delight in the club- satisfying our æsthetic sense and proclaiming to all the feminine world that there is no more mistaken beautifier than peroxide of hydrogen. Alice M. Wood.

MRS. Julia Ward Howe recently gave a lecture at the New England Conservatory of Music on "A Plea for Cheerfulness." She took in part this view. James T. Fields, after his retirement from active work, used to give a reminiscent lecture on the same subject with like conclusions.

The moralist will say that these writers were temperate, governed in all things by moral principle, and sought to fulfill a calling rather than to make money or gain fame. This is true. But we repeat: Most of these literary people, and probably all of them, felt that they must live for influence, and that they were doing that which God had called them to do, and they found their happiness in their work. True happiness tends to long life, and such contentment comes from things that money cannot buy.

To those who are not drawn to literary work until late in life, the case of Mrs. Frances Trollope offers great encouragement. She was fifty years old when she published her first book, the notorious "Domestic Manners of the Americans," which was so bitterly denounced by the people of this country sixty-five years ago. She made $5,000 by that work. She continued to write for twenty-five years, producing in all 114 volumes, chiefly novels and travels. Mrs. Trollope supported her family by her pen, and it was not a very brilliant pen, but keeping everlastingly at it, she made it pay. So can any person of average ability.

To all who aspire to a literary career, there is one golden precept: "Do regular work." One hour a day is better than five hours twice a week. Three hours of writing every day will accomplish wonderful results. Try it. But keep everlastingly at it.

By a grave one learns what life really is; that it is not here but elsewhere; that this is the exile, there is our home.

As we grow older, the train of life goes faster and faster; those with whom we traveled together step out from station to station, and our own station will soon be reached.

Max Muller.

LIKE AS THE THRUSH IN WINTER.

LIKE as the thrush in winter, when the skies
Are drear and dark and all the woods are bare,
Sings undismayed, till from his melodies

Odors of spring float through the frozen air
So in my heart, when sorrow's icy breath
Is bleak and bitter and its frost is strong,
Leaps up, defiant of despair and death,
A sunlit fountain of triumphant song.
Sing on, sweet singer, till the violets come
And south winds blow: sing on, prophetic bird!
Oh, if my lips, which are for ever dumb,

Could sing to men what my sad heart has heard-
Life's darkest hour with songs of joy would ring;
Life's blackest frost would blossom into spring.
Edmond Holmes.

FEW who have read "L'Immortel " can have forgotten Rehu. He is drawn as only Daudet could draw deftly, with infinite satiric humor. At ninety-eight, says Daudet, Rehu, the dean of the French Academy, "still carried himself upright, and was as fond of a hoax as in the days of the Directory. It was his amusement to impose abstinence from wine, abstinence from meat, and every ridiculous variety of regimen upon citizens enamored of life, crowds of whom wrote him daily, asking by what diet he had so miraculously extended his years. He would prescribe sometimes vegetables, milk, or cider, exclusively, sometimes clams, again a prolonged fast. Meanwhile he ate and drank what he pleased, taking after each meal a good nap, and every evening a turn up and down the floor of his room."

Admirable old man! Nonagenarians are comparatively numerous, but few get so much out of life at ninety-odd as did Jean Rehu.

To swell brown buds does rising sap begin
In wintry weather;

The feathered things, long before March is in,
Will pair together.

Later than yesterday will Phoebus set
In this day's skies;

Earlier tomorrow morn than this year yet
He will arise.

What matters, then, the naming of the year?
'Tis spring, 'tis spring, for all the Kalendar.

Ella Fuller Maitland.

SIR Samuel Wilks, one of the Queen's physicians, said: "Every one has a natural temperament. Follow that and avoid excesses. That's all A quack may tell you you must eat an ounce of albumen, so much starch, so much water, and so on, and what should you do? Go and have a nice chop. The instincts of people are right. Jenner would have said to you: 'I never walk at all, except from my house into my carriage. I hate walking, and, if I could, I would get my servants to carry me to bed.' That was Sir William Jenner, the Queen's eminent physician; and what about exercise, then? In the last three or four centuries we have done better intellectual work than ever before, and these have been the times of tea, coffee, tobacco, and alcohol. What can you make of that? It is surprising. Again I say, follow your instincts."

Thus it would seem from the Queen's case that a strong will, regular habits, and abstemious living are the roads to a strong old age.

MAN is what he thinks. Not what he says, reads, or hears. By persistent thinking you can undo any condition which exists. You can free yourself from any chains, whether of poverty, sin, ill health, or unhappiness. If you have been thinking these thoughts half a lifetime you must not expect to change the conditions you have made, or batter down the walls you have built, in a week or a month or a year. You must expect to work and wait, and grow discouraged and stumble and pick yourself up and go on again.

You cannot in an hour gain control over a temper which you have let fly loose for twenty years. But you can control it eventually, and learn to think of a burst of anger as a vulgarity — like drunkenness or profanity — something you could not descend to.

If you have allowed yourself to think despondent thoughts and believe that poverty and sickness were your portion for years, it will take time to train your mind to more cheerful and hopeful ideas; but you can do it by repeated assertions and by reading and thinking and living the beautiful New Thought Philosophy.

From Henry Harrison Brown's book I quote the following excellent rules for assertions. Say them over daily:

I am fearless. I dare to do anything I desire.

I am life. I cannot know sickness.

I choose my life. I make it—all goodness, usefulness, success. I am peace, joy, prosperity, happiness.

Add to this, I am love, wisdom, power to do good, benevolence, opulence.

And if you persist in saying, thinking, and living these ideas, you cannot fail in life.