THIS nervous preparation for old age is only trouble thrown away. We fall on guard, and, after all, it is a friend who comes to meet us. After the sun is down, and the West faded, the heavens begin to fill with shining stars. So, as we grow old, a sort of equable jog-trot of feeling is substituted for the violent ups and downs of passion and disgust. In a word, this period for which we are asked to hoard up everything, as for a time of famine, is in its own right the richest, easiest, and happiest of life.

Robert Louis Stevenson.

EASTON, who wrote on human longevity, says: "It is not the rich or great that become old, but such as use much exercise, are exposed to the fresh air, and whose food is plain and moderate; such men as perhaps never employed their thoughts on the means used to promote longevity. Buffon believed that if accidental causes could be excluded, the normal duration of life would be between ninety and one hundred years."

OUR SAINT,

THE one I sing was born and bred
Ere proud Queen Fashion's whims had led
A single maid to vex her head
O'er pug or poodle;

Her form was lithe, her face was fair,
Her laugh was blithe and debonair,
Her voice was sweet, - her favorite air,
Was "Yankee Doodle."

The broidered bodice that she wore,
While footing it along the floor,
Has lain for fifty years and more
In some dark chest hid;

And he whose arm around it stole,
Sought while yet young the starry goal,
A grief which she has, patient soul,
Long in her breast hid.

Her eyes are dim, her voice is faint,
And yet she never makes complaint;
One more serene and like a saint

I have yet to see

Than she, who in the corner sits
And dozes, while she knits and knits
Her little nephew's socks and mitts, -

My great-aunt Betsy.

Clinton Scollard.

As Spinoza has taught, the proper study of a wise man is not how to die, but how to live, and as long as he is discharging this task aright he may leave the end to take care of itself. The great guiding landmarks of a wise life are indeed few and simple: to avoid useless sorrow; to acquiesce patiently in the inevitable.

It is not by being anxious in an inordinate or unduly fussy fashion that man can hope to live long and well. The best way to live well is to work well. Good work is the daily test and safeguard of personal health. The practical aim should be to live an orderly and natural life. We were not intended to pick our way through the world, trembling at every step. One-half of the confirmed invalids of the day could be cured of their maladies if they were compelled to live busy and active lives, and had no time to fret over their miseries.

SOME of the greatest who lived long always exercised. Some were noted for athletic vigor, as Brougham, Lyndhurst, Peel, Campbell, Graham, Palmerston, Prof. Wilson, Gladstone, Bismarck. There is no other way in which the individual parts of the organism can be properly nourished and sustained except by activity; upon the health and tone of the individual units depend the health, strength, and endurance of the body as a whole.

HE holds the seas in the hollow of His hand. We must all strike somewhere and go down. One comfort, then, for ourselves and one another, is to have done our duty.

Dickens.

THE way I look at it is, that we are all drawing on to the bottom of the hill, whatever age we are, on account of time never standing still for a moment. always do a kindness and be over-rejoiced.

So let us

Dickens.

I WOULD not have you trouble your minds for one single instant as to getting ready for death. Death is easy enough; it is living that I have found to be hard. I find more trouble in living in one single day than I ever expect to find in dying.

Minot J. Savage.

MICHAEL Angelo, artist, sculptor, architect, poet. To this man came his pure love for Vittoria, and it became Indian Summer in the life of Michael Angelo.

The harvest moon was past, the first frost had rimed his head, the best fruits of his busy life had been garnered, when suddenly nature, settling to winter sleep, was enveloped in the golden haze of August; there was balm. again in the air's caress, and the sap that had begun to seek the roots in earth, leaped in the veins of the grand old tree; the south-fleeing birds halted in their flight, and the earth that the chill had blighted, was astir with life, astir with a thousand soft voices whispering "It is summer! It is summer!"

Clara E. Laughlin.

BROWNING said once: "Death! Death! It is harping on death I despise so much, this idle and often cowardly as well as ignorant harping.

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'Why should we not change like everything else? Death is life. Without death, which is our crape-like, church-yardy word for change, for growth, there could be no prolongation of that which we call life.

"For myself, I deny death as an end of anything; never say of me that I am dead."