MRS. RUSSELL SAGE'S ACTIVITY.

MRS. RUSSELL SAGE tried hard to "beg off" from serving any longer as president of the Emma Willard Association, which met yesterday afternoon at Sherry's for its annual election, says the New York Tribune. She pleaded as her excuse failing health, saying: "I am in the afternoon of life, but I did not really believe I was growing old until I fell down stairs last June, and really, nothing has ever so thoroughly demoralized me as that fall, and I am conscious of a great falling off in vitality. I want to see you go forward and enjoy a rapid progress."

Mrs. Leon Harvier promptly arose and stated that she had come all the way from Boston to urge Mrs. Sage to remain for one more year, so as to round out the ten of the association.

"Would you not be our honorary president if someone took your active duties from your shoulders?" she asked.

"Ah! but you know," replied Mrs. Sage, “I am very meddlesome, and I might be interfering at the wrong time."

It was protested by other members that Mrs. Sage should never be put in the honorary position until she positively refused to hold the office of president any longer, and so a vicepresident was nominated from the floor, who could occupy the chair at any time in Mrs. Sage's absence.

Ar the age of ninety-one Cesare Cantù expired painlessly and peacefully, "in the full and certain hope of a joyful resurrection." This greatest of Italian historians, whose works far exceed in number those of Tiraboschi and Muratori, was from his boyhood to his death a firm, devout believer, unassailed by doubt, supported throughout a life of tribulation by a profound sense of duty "here below," an unalterable faith in immortality, the continuation of existence in the world beyond the grave."

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At eighty years of age he had the courage to thoroughly revise and augment his Universal History." Rising at dawn and working uninterruptedly for eight hours every day save Sundays; of simple, temperate habits, a tenacious memory, and an extraordinary power of concentration, one can understand the amount of manuscript produced; yet still the merę list of his books is amazing.

As Thou hast made Thy world without,
Make Thou more fair my world within;
Shine through its lingering clouds of doubt;
Rebuke its haunting shapes of sin;
Fill, brief or long, my granted span
Of life with love to Thee and man;
Strike when Thou wilt the hour of rest,
But let my last days be the best!

Whittier.

THE POINT OF VIEW.

WHEN I was twenty-one I thought a man of forty very old and that he ought to retire. When I was forty I thought a man of sixty had grown senile and worthless. When I got sixty I reversed my opinion, and thought that fifty and forty and thirty and twenty knew little of the pleasures of existence and the utilization of cultivated power.

Senator Chauncey Depew.

DEPEW at sixty-nine says: 'Young-old folks rule the world.' 'What is age?' he asks on his last birthday; ' certainly not years.'

THE death of M. Legouvé the other day, at the age of ninety-six, recalls the fact that we have in England a host of literary men who have passed their eightieth birthday. As for Dr. Smiles, the author of "Self-Help," he is now ninety, and is, therefore, the oldest author in England, if not in Europe. Literature seems to conduce to long life, unless it is complicated with alcohol, and in these days the tradition that an author should be a tippler has almost entirely died out.

THERE are no Shadows where there is no Sun;
There is no Beauty where there is no Shade;
And all things in two lines of glory run,

Darkness and Light, ebon and gold inlaid.
God comes among us through the shrouds of air;
And His dim track is like the silvery wake

Left by yon pinnace on the mountain lake,
Fading and reappearing here and there.

The lamps and veils thro' heav'n and earth that move,
Go in and out, as jealous of their light,
Like sailing stars upon a misty night.

Death is the shade of coming life; and Love
Yearns for her dear ones in the holy tomb,
Because bright things are better seen in gloom!

Father Faber.

BLESS God for the shadows!

The beautiful shadows!

And take this thought, as thou goest abroad,
In heaven, or earth shades owe their birth
To light, and Light is the shadow of God.

Anon.

"God is Truth, and Light His shadow."

Plato.

HAPPY the man the Roman bard could say
Whose word at night is, "I have lived today!"
In life's calm evening, happier still is he
Who can exclaim, "I hold the past in fee."

PRESIDENT ELIOT A BICYCLIST.

A BICYCLE-RIDING college president at the age of threescore years and nine is the latest claim which Harvard University now has to put forth. While crimson students are snoring in their rooms these fine spring mornings President Eliot is up taking a brisk spin through Cambridge on his wheel. Mrs. Eliot usually accompanies him, for although only a few years younger than her husband, she is equally strong and healthy and ready for outdoor exercise. The two of them, looking fresh and happy, can be seen almost any clear morning riding along at a smart pace through the quiet old shaded streets of Cambridge.

President Eliot, in spite of his age, is one of the halest and heartiest-looking men in Cambridge. He walks like a young man, with his head well up and his shoulders back, and goes through a daily routine of college work which would break down many a younger man. He is perhaps the best example in the country of an ex-athlete who is still keeping himself in trim; for although he no longer rows on Harvard's crew, he still takes exercise and pays fully as much attention to his physical as to his mental needs.

AN OLD IRISH LEGEND.

IN a certain lake in Munster there were two islands. Into the first death could never enter, but old age and sickness and the weariness of life and the paroxysms of fearful suffering were all known there, and they did their work till the inhabitants, tired of their immortality, learned to look upon the opposite island as a haven of repose. They launched their barks upon the gloomy waters, they touched its shore and they were at rest.

So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand.
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go,

Scarce knowing if we wished to go or stay
Being too full of sleep to understand

How far the unknown transcends what we know.

Longfellow.