THINGS THAT DO NOT MATTER, AND THINGS THAT DO.
By A. A. H. J.
It matters very little whether or not you have a new dress or bonnet this spring, provided you are modestly and respectably clad. The handsomest gown will be somewhat the worse for wear a year from now, and not a friend worth having will care the more for you because of the feathers and flowers that adorn your clothing. It does matter whether your associates this season are among those who can help you onward and upward, whether you read good books, whether you have a home in a church which is working for the Master with its whole heart, and whether you shall take hold, with courage and fidelity, of your own special work. There are very many pleasant things which are not essential to our progress. There are some things less pleasant to our ease-loving nature, yet nevertheless essential to symmetrical growth. Prove all things. Hold fast to that which is good! Some of our young people will be glad to receive advice as to what they should read. First, read History. This lays in the mind a solid foundation of thinking, judging and comparing. A young child given historic reading will always love it, and will be sure to develop a literary taste. Those whose taste has been vitiated so that they dislike history, can restore the natural taste for the true by a faithful course of twelve months' historic reading. Next read Biography. You have read of great events and mighty world-changes: read now of their actors. Happy the child to whom some wise parent has given "Plutarch's Lives." Read the lives of heroes, literati, philosophers, and philanthropists; those masters of the world who have made history by the outliving of their individualities. Then come Travels. Follow Kane to the Arctic Seas; go with Irving into the Far West; plunge with Livingstone into the heart of Africa. You can sit by your own warm fireside and, without change of costume or fear of sea-sickness, visit the "cradle of our forefathers," sunny France and genial Italy. Should your roving disposition wish to go farther, what a blessed thought that you can penetrate to the innermost recesses of remote Asia without experiencing any of the accompanying necessary inconveniences of modern travel. Pompeii and Nineveh, Babylon and Heliopolis, can all be explored without asking the conductor for a stop-over check. Now the mind will be prepared for scientific research, wherein lies a world of useful knowledge. One other book we would recommend for daily perusal. It is a whole library in itself. He who has not read and re-read the English Bible, knows nothing of English literature. In it we find his-155tory, biography, travels, poetry, philosophy, science and romance. As a purely intellectual work it has never been surpassed; and when considered as the fountain from which flows all the life currents of the soul, how faithfully should we read and ponder.