SINCE leaving Italy, I have been busily engaged in securing a house at Geneva for my family and Swiss colporters, in laboring for the Bienne church, and in helping Brother Albert Vuilleumier at Chaux de Fonds, where he had faithfully acted the part of a colporter, visiting and offering our papers in every house in a city of 25,000 inhabitants, and where he had followed up his colportage by preaching, and had, with the blessing of God, led seven persons to embrace the truth. But he had reached the point where a re-enforcement was necessary, and I came at his urgent invitation, when it seemed impossible to respond, in view of so much other labor devolving upon me.
I have given nine discourses, the Spirit of God greatly helping; the work of conversion is going on, and at least seven persons more kept last Sabbath. I believe that although the company here had about lost its identity by the removal of four families, yet by faithfulness of those now obeying, and by holding more meetings in a larger hall in the near future, the church of Chaux de Fonds will soon rank among churches number one in size and influence. May God encourage Brother Albert Vuilleumier in doing similar pioneer work in many other cities.
Among the victories at Bienne, we would mention the conversion of a Roman Catholic, after much patient labor by Mrs. Bourdeau, and after our meeting an able Catholic priest.
Our permanent address is Chantepoulet 12, Geneva, Switzerland. D. T. BOURDEAU.
Among the Churches.
By William M. Ings
FEBRUARY 26, I joined Elder Briggs at Placerville, where he had arranged for a series of meetings. These continued for three weeks, and as the result nine persons promised to walk in harmony with all points of our faith, and six adults were baptized.
Meetings were held during the day to strengthen and encourage those already in the faith. Much time was spent in giving instructions in missionary work. One person will devote her whole time to canvassing for "Sunshine" and SIGNS, and others will give some attention to this work as soon as they can arrange their business. Three distributors were placed in as many prominent positions, which will supply the traveling public with reading matter. Thirty-six yearly subscriptions were added to their club of SIGNS, and sufficient means were cheerfully pledged to carry on the work for the present year. The town was divided into wards, and persons assigned to work up an interest in their respective districts. All pledged to faithfully pay the Lord's tenth. Five subscriptions were taken for Good Health, and three for the Review. Over $25 worth of Bibles and other books were sold, and $25 was donated to the work. We left the friends greatly encouraged.
March 24-30, we spent with the church at Reno, Nevada. No special effort was made to create an outside interest, although some interested listeners were present. Some practical duties were set before this church, and there was quite a willingness to act in harmony with the instructions given. All the company present vowed to hereafter deal honestly with the Lord, and return to him his due in tithes and offerings. The friends voted to place five distributors in some of the most accessible places in Reno, and will keep them supplied with our literature. Thirty-four SIGNS were added to their club, and sufficient means was pledged to carry on the work for the present year.
One sister who had lost her interest in the message returned to the fold, with deep repentance.
From March 30 to April 7, we labored in the interest of the St. Clair church. Here we found an outside interest, every seat being filled. Instruction was given in sending out SIGNS, writing letters, etc., and the friends took hold with a will to learn all they could, and hereafter much work will be done by this church to help spread the Third Angel's Message.
Thirty-four SIGNS were added to their club, and some other subscriptions were taken; and means was raised to cancel their indebtedness, and a sufficient amount was pledged to continue the work. After a Bible-reading on tithing, every one pledged to faithfully pay the tenth to the Lord. As the outside interest continued, it was thought best for Elder Briggs to continue the meetings for a few days longer.
I returned to Reno to finish the work there. I enjoyed a profitable time with this church. Several meetings were held, and the ordinances of the Lord's house were administered. This was a blessed season to all present.
Surely the Lord is good, and is always ready to give us of his Spirit when we draw near to him. WM. INGS.
Oakland, April 15, 1885.
Ferndale, Humboldt County, Cal.
By N. C. McClure, F. L. McClure
WE have just closed a series of meetings on Dow's Prairie, Humboldt County, resulting in seventeen signing the covenant to keep all the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. Some others are keeping the Sabbath, and we trust will soon fully take their stand. We also organized a Sabbath-school of twenty-nine members, and established regular Sabbath meetings. Forty-five signed the anti-whisky and tobacco pledge, a number signing the teetotal pledge also. We began these meetings in the fall, but were interrupted several times by high waters, sickness, etc., but the interest was well kept up by visiting, when possible, and sending the SIGNS and tracts. The Lord blessed the work; to his name be the praise.
The work in Humboldt is moving onward. New ones are being added to the companies from time to time, and those who have rejected the truth are getting more bitter. Surely we are nearing the end.
April 13, 1885. N. C. McCLURE. F. L. McCLURE.
Oregon.
By Charles L. Boyd
THE meetings in Corvallis resulted in the organization of a small church, a T. and M. society, and a Sabbath-school. Sabbath and first-day, April 4 and 5, I was with the church at East Portland. The good work is moving steadily forward here. Two willing souls were baptized, and nine united with the church; four of these by letters from Eastern churches, and the others recently embraced the truth here. We now have two German classes in our East Portland Sabbath-school.
Brother Potter is engaged in the missionary work, and finds so much to do that he needs help. I now go to Yamhill County to assist Brother Ward. Brother Reed reports a good interest at Currinsville, Clackamas County, where he went in answer to an urgent call. Truly the hand of the Lord is manifested in the work here.
C. L. BOYD.
A Christian Synagogue in Russia
The Jewish reformer, Joseph Rabinowitz, the leader of a new movement among the Jews of Southern Russia, succeeded in opening on January 5, at Kishenev, the capital of Bessarabia, a synagogue in which Jesus Christ is recognized as the Holy Messiah. This was done under the authority of the minister of police, who was present. In his discourse, Rabinowitz sought to prove that the expectation of the Jews was met in Jesus. A Lutheran minister assisted in the service. The chief hope for this movement lies in the fact that it is from within the Jewish body; and the opening of what may be called a Christian synagogue has created a great sensation among the Israelites of Russia.—Missionary Herald.
Patrick in Ireland.
CHRISTIANITY, in its purer form, came to Ireland about the middle of the fifth century. For six years Patrick, the son of pious parents, the child of a priest, had been held in slavery in Ireland, and on the hills of Antrim had tended his sheep and worshiped God. Every seventh year it was the Irish custom to set free all bondmen. Patrick returned to his native Brittany, to his parents, and his Christian friends, was ordained a presbyter, and studied in the Celtic schools of Gaul.
Yet his fancy must have often gone back to the pleasant fields and generous natives of Antrim, where his spotless youth had passed, who were still lost in savage superstitions, who sacrificed the firstlings of their flocks, and sometimes their infants, in the Valley of Slaughter, and knelt in the groves of the Druids. A vision came to Patrick as he labored at his studies in Gaul, summoning him to the conversion of Ireland. A voice called him in the midnight; he obeyed. About the year 432 he crossed the seas to the land where he had once been a slave, and preached the simple gospel to the bards, the princes, and the bearded people of Erin.
In the year 432 there were no images nor crucifixes, no pompous ritual, no spiritual despotism, no moral corruption emanating from Rome. The Imperial City, sacked by Goth and plundered by Hun, torn by discord, soon to be desolated by Genseric, and reduced almost to a naked waste, harried by robbers, and polluted by savages, had sunk to the condition of a provincial town. Its scanty population, its corrupted priesthood, or its trembling bishop were scarcely able to maintain the existence of its fallen church.
Patrick, therefore, the humble slave and missionary, brought to Ireland the simple elements of an apostolic faith; he preached only the doctrines of Paul, with almost equal success. The savage Irish received him with generous hospitality; he preached to the assembled nation on the hill of Tara; he purged the Valley of Slaughter of its dreadful rites; he founded schools, churches, and monasteries in the wilds of Connaught and along the dreary coast of Ulster, and Ireland became a Christian country, renowned for its intelligence, its pious genius, and its missionary zeal.
For many centuries the island of the saints abounded with schools where countless teachers were educated, and where scholars from all the neighboring countries came to study at the feet of the most accomplished professors of the age. While Rome and Italy had sunk into a new barbarism, Ireland had revived the taste for classical learning, and was filled with a thoughtful and progressive population. At the great college of Armagh seven thousand students are said to have been gathered at once; a hundred schools studded the green fields of the happy isle; in every monastery its inmates labored and taught with ceaseless industry; its missionary teachers wandered among the Franks of Gaul and the Celts of Scotland, to Belgium and to Germany, sowing everywhere the germs of Christian civilization.—Historical Studies.
The Christian’s Pocket and the Gospel
By The Christian at Work
The question of Presbyterian and Baptist generosity as evidenced by the amounts given by each denomination respectively, is being discussed in some quarters, and we think quite profitlessly so. The Baptists outnumber the Presbyterians, but the Presbyterians have the larger balances in bank, and, therefore, give more. This comparing of ourselves among ourselves leads to pharisaism and develops false pride. The fact is no denomination gives the half it might and should give. The Christian's pocket seems to be the last thing to come under the power of the gospel.
A Tragedy in the Tombs.
By Irenæus
It is a trite but true saying that truth is stranger than fiction. A few hours in the court-rooms of a great city will make revelations more remarkable than the wildest fancies of romance suggest. There is in this city a prison with a court-house called the Tombs, because its architecture is drawn from a mausoleum in the land of Egypt. It is gloomy on the outside, gloomier within. Duty sometimes, curiosity oftener, has led me within its walls.
The sorrows of the lowly and poor, the struggles of the wretched with sin and misery, the wages of vice, and the tragedies of broken hearts and wasted lives are displayed as on a stage every day in the court-rooms. Last week one was brought out having in it elements of great dramatic interest, but the more simply and naturally the story is told, the better will the terrible moral of it be seen.
Some fourteen years ago an Irishman came from his native isle to this city, bringing with him his wife and four daughters, all quite young. He found employment at first and got on comfortably. They must have been a family of more intelligence than many of the poor immigrants who find a refuge in this country when hunger drives them from their own. But when the burden of his family became too heavy for the unprincipled wretch to bear, coward as he was, he deserted them, fled to parts unknown, and they have never heard a word from him since. Then the mother succeeded in getting the children into various asylums, and she went back to Ireland. It is not unusual for Irish parents to impose their children in this way on charity. They get them well cared for in the winter at these homes and take them out in the spring sometimes, or when they are able to earn something. The asylum is allowed a certain sum per week for the children's board, and as this sum is more than the cost, the more they have the more money they make.
Several years went on and these children were growing up without any knowledge of the whereabouts of their mother. When the oldest daughter left the asylum, she managed, by dint of industry, energy, and courage, to get knowledge enough to become a teacher. Then, with a noble spirit, she took a room and gathered into it her sisters, and finding work for them to do, they lived comfortably. There is something very fine in the heroic conduct of this oldest girl. It is strange that two such sneaks as the father and mother could be the parents of such a family of daughters. Now they were all earning more than their daily food, and they sent to Ireland for their mother to come back and set up a home once more.
This was a sad mistake, but it was nature and filial affection. The mother came and became a drunkard. There is the bane of life among the lowly. A mother and a drunkard among these four poor girls struggling to make a home for themselves and her. Of course a drunken mother is a living monster. There is no terror like it in this world of sin and misery. She would have the money the girls earned and spend it for liquor. She went to the school where the oldest daughter was an able and respected teacher, and made a scene that covered the teacher with confusion and shame. This was repeated so often that the noble young woman was obliged to resign her place, driven out of it by the beastly conduct of her own mother. Then want added its terrors to this wretched household. But for the one dreadful vice of the mother, they might have been happy, in their humble way, with industry, health, and peace. Now the furniture had to be sold, one piece after another, which the girls had bought with their hard-earned money. The walls and floor were stripped and the mother drank it all, except what little was spent to keep them from starving. Can there be deeper distress than this?
At last, when all hope had perished, and it had become impossible to bear it any longer, the daughters were compelled to seek the protection of the law against their own mother. They laid the case before one of the justices. The mother was arrested and brought into court in the Tombs. The heart-broken daughters told their sad story of suffering, cruelty, and shame. The mother turned upon them and denounced them as vile women, thus going down one step lower in infamy than we had thought it possible before. Their character was investigated, and it was easily proved by their neighbors that they were excellent young women, worthy of all respect and confidence, whose young lives had been blighted by their own mother. She was sent to prison for six months. At the end of that time, perhaps before, she will come out to renew a course of vice and wretchedness which will bring these daughters into sorrow and suffering unspeakable.
In this sad story I see a specimen of parental meanness and baseness rarely equaled even among the people of which these parents are a type. Can a mother forsake her own child? Here first the father, and then the mother, forsook four daughters, leaving them to the cold charity of the world. The father is probably a drunkard, certainly the mother is, therefore the last drop of parental love is expelled from the heart, and even a mother becomes a wolf, destroying the children she would otherwise cherish and protect. Take out this vice, and here in this humble family were all the elements of comfort and enjoyment. With this vice, the home is the abode of woe too grievous to be borne.
But there is a meaner and a baser person than this wretched woman. When we see and know the power of the passion for strong drink, we can pity while we abhor the mother who robs her children that she may buy the liquor she loves more than she loves the children that drew their life from her bosom. We pity her. But for the man who daily ministers to her dread appetite, and, for the sake of a few cents, makes her a drunken demon to carry hell into her household, for such a man there is no pity in a human breast. For him there is a fearful looking for of judgment! Each piece of silver in his till is coined out of the sorrows of orphans. When he counts his ill-gotten gains he counts the tears and sobs of virtue, hungry and in rags. When he drives his fast horse on the road, every foot-fall tramples on hearts he has crushed. May God have pity on him ere he comes among those the smoke of whose torments ascendeth up forever and ever.
When this drunken mother was sent to prison, the feelings of her daughters broke forth in sobs that made the court-room like a funeral. Even then they would have taken her back, and, hoping against hope, would have made one more vain attempt to save her from herself. But it could not be and ought not to be. And thus ended the tragedy in the Tombs. The mother went to her own place, and the poor daughters went to their ruined, desolate home.
Is there balm in Gilead, no help for such woes? Is human nature so lost to all redeeming influences that tragedies like this must be performed continually in a Christian city? Is there no eye to pity, no arm to save?—Irenæus, in N. Y. Observer.
The Home Circle.
By Agnes M. March
TWO VISIONS.
WHERE close the curving mountains drew,
To clasp the stream in their embrace,
With every outline, curve, and hue
Reflected in its placid face,
The plowman stopped his team to watch
The train, as swift it thundered by;
Some distant glimpse of life to catch,
He strains his eager, wistful eye.
The morning freshness lies on him,
Just wakened from his balmy dreams;
The travelers, begrimed and dim,
Think longingly of mountain stream.
Oh, for the joyous mountain air,
The fresh, delightful autumn day
Among the hills! The plowman there
Must have perpetual holiday!
And he, as all day long he guides
His steady plow with patient hand,
Thinks of the flying train that glides
Into some new, enchanted land,
Where, day by day, no plodding round
Wearies the frame and dulls the mind,
Where life thrills keen to sight and sound,
With plows and furrows left behind.
Even so, to each, the untrod ways
Of life are touched by fancy's glow,
That ever sheds its brightest rays
Upon the path we do not know!
—Agnes M. March, in Century.
Mrs. Stowe's Reward.
By William B. Wright
Of all the great agents by whom the destruction of slavery was accomplished, Mrs. Stowe seems to the eyes of poetic justice the most abundantly rewarded.
Garrison died in the dawn of the new day. Phillips lived remote from the battlefield so nobly won. New foes charged upon Beecher before he had taken breath from the battle. The gentle Whittier, loved and honored by all, looks from his harbor upon the stormy past, and sees afar the liberated captives. But Mrs. Stowe alone has been permitted, not only to see the desire of her eyes, but to reap with her own hands the harvest she planted; to realize in her own experience that the reward of the faithful, the entering into the joy of their Lord, is, for having served one city well, to be permitted to serve other cities; for having helped our brethren, to be permitted to help them still. For another cabin has arisen on the banks of the St. John. It has long radiated faith, hope, and charity among the needy. She who helped to break the fetters of iron has been suffered to break many a chain of ignorance and degradation.
Mrs. Stowe was among the first, after the war, to take up her residence in Florida. There she began to do for the neglected—white and black—what she had done so effectively for the scholarly students at Andover. Her influence pervaded her neighborhood. The professor, her husband, preached every Sunday to the large company collected by her efforts. He gave gratuitously to this humble work the time and energy which was vainly sought with offers of large emolument by editors of encyclopedias and periodicals in England and America.
A church building became a necessity. Mrs. Stowe left her sunny home at Mandarin to supply one. At the serious peril of her health she spent an entire winter giving readings in the Northern States. The proceeds of these readings, with some assistance given at her personal solicitation, sufficed to build the church. In it the rich and the poor—the emancipated slave and the emancipated master—meet together, the Lord the maker of them both. Of late the infirmities of age have prevented the professor from preaching, and a younger man has taken pastoral charge. Each Sunday Mrs. Stowe, surrounded by a large class of blacks, devotes to them the heart and brain which wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
When it was needed, she dipped her pen in ink and made a million readers realize their duties to those who lived in Uncle Tom's cabin. When she had done that so well that the world wondered, she entered the cabin itself and began to instruct with living voice those who could not read the written word—and this she has been doing so unobtrusively, so gently, that it is not strange if angels have seen and admired.—Rev. W. B. Wright, in Cottage Hearth.
Health and Temperance.
By Old Headache
Old Headache Speaks.
My dear distressed members of the "Sitting-room": I have visited nearly all of you, and you know me to your sorrow; in fact, I'm ever an unwelcome guest; but you will provoke my visits. It's a law of nature that I should go where I am called. To be sure I do not afflict you all with my presence, but the vast majority of you expect, and dread my approach. Oh, I just dote on this country! I'm invited out so much. They snub me terribly in Europe, with their plain teas. Why, the average wealthy Briton would look aghast at the supper-table of the average man in America. The hot breads, pastry, sauces, and pickles! My! don't I revel also at the great hotels in our cities!
I was once remonstrating with a worthy land lady of St. Paul, when she mentioned the various desserts and courses she had each day. I said to her:—
"You wicked woman, to manufacture so many dyspeptics."
"Well, if I undertake a reform, I will lose my boarders. I know they cannot eat a tenth part placed before them; indeed, they cannot more than taste of each kind of pie and pudding, but they demand it all the same, and as no one has yet discovered a kind of 'boarding-house hash,' whereinto bits of pie, or dishes of pudding can be converted, there is great waste. All that we can do with it is to pile it up in great baskets and give it to the poor."
"Very kind," grumbled I, "to give them such stuff in lieu of good substantial food that they need." I regret exceedingly that I have to plague the children—poor dears!—as I do here, but just as soon as they are out of their mother's arms they are allowed to eat anything and everything; and in cities and towns, milk, nature's food for the young, is withheld very soon.
Indeed, I have often thought it surprising to see the lack of milk on the table as a drink at the average farm-house. Parents will say, "Our children don't like milk." Ah! their desires have grown upon what they have been fed, viz., meats, tea, coffee, pastry, sauce, cake, etc. Some children are allowed to form the habit of washing down their food with cold water. Of course the gastric juices are cooled thereby, and as their food has become moistened, mastication is unnecessary, hence little saliva is made; thus nature is ever being baffled, and I am invited.
One great cause of my advent is the bread. Now you all know that bread is the one staff of life; but, alas! most of you make it such an insufficient staff by your ignorance, that life finds from this source but a poor prop indeed. Most of you prefer (from habit) your bread too fresh, when you know it will more readily digest if a little stale. In Germany, where I seldom go, it is against the law for bakers to sell other than stale bread. Then, again, you allow your bread to get too light, and if not quite sour, it is so near it that it sours, ferments, and otherwise spoils in the stomach, instead of digesting properly.
Well, I have just visited a lady and you will not wonder why I went when I tell you what she had for dinner. Potatoes, warmed or fried in grease or pepper, beef steak, a la ditto (beef steak thus cooked is as indigestible as a piece of sole leather would be). Her bread was very strong milk-emptyings—pity she did not empty it into the pail—she finished her repast with a piece of very rich mince pie.
I have many agents on the road; they are known as "Hard," "Slight," "Catarrhal," "Awful," "Sick," "Nervous," etc. Ha! it was sadly amusing to hear "Sick" relate his past experience. Said he'd just visited a man who had always said, "'Twas all gammon about being careful with one's diet; he could eat anything and everything, and at all hours of the day. Others could, too, if they weren't so notional." At last a day of reckoning had come, and he cursed the day that he discovered he owned a stomach. "Oh," said Sick, laughing till the tears ran down his cheeks, "how he did retch and writhe in pain! Made a terrible fuss; thought sure his time had come; expect I'll have to call upon him often now, as he's never learned to deny himself."
Well, I must now hasten to dispatch "Nervous" to Mrs. A. Toady, who sat up last night till two o'clock to finish her dress. All its ruffles and furbelows are the exact counterpart of her neighbor's, Mrs. Ten Thousand. The material, of course, isn't as good, and it's ten thousand pities to put so much time, patience, yes, and nerves into such inferior cloth; but she alone must suffer my advent, which is the penalty. Now, you should all agree to eat regularly, to avoid stimulants, and to eschew dainties; use good, light, but stale yeast-bread, a reasonable amount of phosphorus, such as you get in graham bread—for man cannot live by starch alone, as has been well demonstrated—ventilate your houses, and especially your sleeping-rooms. Frozen air is not always pure, as some erroneously think.
Bathe often in a bath tub with plenty of water, thereby keeping the many pores of the skin open. If only a sponge bath is convenient, it must be more frequent. It is really shocking to hear old nurses tell of some of their patients' condition as to cleanliness. Not long since a nurse told me of being called to care for a woman some forty years of age who was in a raging fever. Said she: "I gave her a terrible sweat, then bathed her, removing a good quart of dead skin. I asked the woman when she last took a bath, and she honestly admitted that she had never bathed in her life. [A fact.] But I got her pores well open and she escaped a run of a fever." Fresh air and water are free, but it is surprising to see how many prefer physics and doctors' bills.
Avoid all excesses; be ye "temperate in all things," and my word for it I'll not molest you in the future. I have had little rest of late, as the women have been making countless mince pies, pork and greases have been unsparingly used, and who, pray tell, but suffers by this regimen? Why, even the cooks suffer, as they have to be cooped up in ill-ventilated houses, getting no outdoor exercise; hence their systems have become clogged from the hearty food that has been craved for warmth. It is not the food we eat, but that which is assimilated or digested properly that gives us strength and vigor.
But I must be off; so many are constantly transgressing nature's laws that my labors are arduous. I get no rest night nor day. Hoping not to see any of the readers of the "Sitting-room" again very soon, I remain, distressedly yours.—Old Headache, in Christian at Work.
Judge Not.
PERHAPS no lecture which John B. Gough ever delivered, has done more good than the one he used to give so often on "Circumstances." With the skill of an artist, and with all the fire and passion of his fervid temperament, he would narrate incidents, showing how often persons are misjudged, because the one who pronounces judgment is ignorant of the circumstances of the other. An event just reported from a town in Kansas, painfully illustrates the same subject. A young woman was teaching school in the place, and people considered her mean and unsocial, because her garments were threadbare, and her habits reserved. At last these complaints grew into a demand for her removal on no other ground than that she was unpopular. Her resignation was requested, and in a polite note to the superintendent of schools, she bowed to the inevitable, and the next day took morphine and died.
Then, little by little, the truth came out, that she had practiced the most heroic self-denial during all this cold, dreary winter. She had had no fire in her room, and her bed was without blankets, or sufficient covering. She was saving her earnings to help support an aged father and educate a young brother in an Eastern college. Worn by physical exposure, her courage failed before this last cruel obstacle. When the facts were understood, there came warmest sympathy and admiration for the self-abnegation of this woman, whose heart and life had been pierced through by words of cruel censure, words that are sharper than steel. But sympathy came too late. It is only another illustration of the old text, "Judge not." —Sel.
Be Content.
By Methodist Recorder
We are often disposed to envy the lot of others, to consider their condition better than our own, and to wish that we were placed in their circumstances. This is an evidence of folly. There is no condition in life that has not its difficulties and trials. These are sometimes concealed from public view, but this does not render them less difficult to endure. If we were as familiar with the circumstances of those whom we are disposed to envy as we are with our own, our views might be greatly modified, and our own condition might be made to appear quite endurable. It is better to patiently endure the evils that we suffer, than to fly to those we know not of. Providence does not make the mistakes which many persons imagine. Men are ordinarily better fitted for the positions in which Providence has placed them, with all their difficulties, than they are for any other. Our true wisdom is to make the most of our lot, improve its advantages, and patiently endure its trials. Indulgence in a repining, envious spirit only increases the evils we endure, and lessens our enjoyment of the good we possess. We should not depend upon our outward circumstances for true enjoyment, but seeking our happiness from a higher source, we should learn with the apostle, in whatever state we are, therewith to be content.—Methodist Recorder.
Tin Deposits in Dakota
Up to this time the United States has been forced to depend for its supply of tin upon England and other foreign nations. This invaluable metal has recently been found in the Black Hills region of this country. There is enough of it in Dakota not only to supply this country, but the whole world for centuries to come. The tin in Dakota is richer and more easily mined than any other tin on the face of the globe.
The Best Thing for a Young Man
By James A. Garfield
POVERTY is uncomfortable, as I can testify; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself. —James A. Garfield.
Care of the Sick
NEVER stand at the foot of a sick-bed and survey the patient. All figures loom large to fevered eyes, and by the side of the bed are only partly seen, and do not annoy with the sense of too much presence. Do not open the door very slowly, for then the attention is strained, speculating as to who the next comer can possibly be after all this preparation and with such cautious approach. Low but clear tones, quiet but sure movements, and rapid, rather than slow, are a relief to any patient.
Whispering is torture. Silence is best until you can discuss matters in another room; but if you speak, speak out, and make no mysteries about anything. In severe illness the nurse must watch her patient steadily, but not seem to be looking. In convalescence it frequently soothes the invalid to have the nurse seated at the window, apparently looking out. This frees the faculties from the tension that the sense of being watched usually gives.
SECULAR.
By Editor
-France imported 50,000 tons of oranges in 1884.
-Ohio has more colleges than any other State in the Union.
-Last year England paid $54,000,000 for the service of her navy.
-The New York street-cars killed 21, and injured 108 persons last year.
-John B. Gough has delivered more than 8,500 addresses in forty-five years.
-The preliminaries are being arranged looking to peace between France and China.
-April 2, S. I. Prime, D. D., completed his forty-fifth year as editor of the N. Y. Observer.
-Edwards Pierrepont, Secretary of the American Legation at Rome, died in that city April 16.
-The gross public debt of Canada, as stated in the House of Commons the other day, is $227,110,336.
-A fine new flouring mill at Roseville, Cal., was burned April 15. Loss, $45,000, insured for $24,000.
-Heavy floods and great damage are reported from Ontario, on account of the breaking up of the ice.
-The value of produce exports, at the port of New York, for the week ending March 24, was $5,907,000.
-A hotel and seven other buildings were burned at Victoria, B. C., the night of April 16, and two persons perished in the flames.
-There was a serious riot in Cork, Ireland, the night of April 15, after the arrival there of the Prince and Princess of Wales.
-Governor Hoadly, of Ohio, says he cannot afford to be a candidate for re-election. He had to pay $10,000 for his election two years ago.
-Quite a severe frost visited California the night of April 17, doing considerable damage to the grape crop, and in some parts damaging all kinds of fruit.
-Now that Barrios is dead, peace has been signed between Guatemala and Salvador, and the trouble in Central America is over, at least for the present.
-The Christian at Work declares that there is one thing, and only one, that travels faster than thought, and that is—a lie. We are not disposed to dispute it.
-The Asiatic cholera is raging on the eastern coast of Spain, mostly in the province of Valencia, where the earthquakes were so destructive last fall and winter.
-There is unprecedented business depression in Italy, and it is expected that there will be an enormous emigration from that country to the United States, the coming summer.
-The Pennsylvania House of Representatives has passed, by the emphatic vote of 131 to 39, the Senate bill providing for scientific temperance instruction in the public schools.
-An old woman and her two grandchildren, aged eight and ten years respectively, starved to death near Point Pleasant, W. Va., during the cold weather in the early part of April.
-For the year ending Sept. 30, 1884, the New York elevated railroads carried 96,702,620 passengers. In five years the number has been more than doubled without any extension of the lines.
-April 13, at Oscoda, Mich., while seven men were clearing some brick out of a large smoke-stack, it fell and five of them were instantly buried beneath 50,000 brick. One man was severely injured and one escaped unhurt.
-It is reported that the Czar of Russia is to assume the title of Emperor of Central Asia, and to be crowned at Samarcand, in Turkestan. This is probably intended to be an offset to Queen Victoria's title of Empress of India.
-A serious complaint has been entered at the war department against the management of the garrison at Fort Walla Walla, W. T. Neglect, exposure, and oppression of the soldiers, by the officers, are the principal charges.
-At a fire in Huisers' Piano Factory, New York City, April 14, the second floor gave way and nine firemen were thrown to the cellar with a number of pianos, which fell on them. All the men were more or less injured, two of them it is thought fatally.
-A Stradivarius bass-viol was recently injured while being transported over the New York Central Railroad, and a suit for damages resulted in the large verdict of $3,025. The instrument was pronounced by experts the only one of that make they had ever seen.
-Recently high pontifical mass was celebrated in Copenhagen for the first time since the days of the Reformation, such a service having heretofore been forbidden by law. The Catholics in Denmark now number about 3,000 souls, with 26 priests, of whom 7 are Danes.
-The Sixty-fifth Montreal Volunteers, when ordered to proceed against Riel, the leader in the Canadian rebellion, refused. Their excuse was that they needed equipment, but it is believed that they sympathize with the malcontents, and are unwilling to go against them.
-A barn 100x120 feet in size, on Senator Stanford's ranch at Vina, Cal., was burned at 2:30 in the morning of April 16, in which seventy-five mules and thirty-four horses were burned to death. Loss, $30,000, with no insurance. Two mules escaped. The fire is supposed to have been the work of an incendiary.
-In the Canadian House of Commons, April 14, a message from the governor-general was read asking Parliament to grant immediately $700,000 toward defraying the expenses of putting down the Northwest rebellion. That rebellion is about the most serious difficulty with which Canada has ever had to deal.
-Wheeling, W. Va., is profoundly stirred by the report of the grand jury, returning 125 indictments. Sixty of these are for gambling, among which are found an ex-Governor, a candidate for the U. S. Senate, and a large number of "prominent merchants, manufacturers, society young men, attorneys, and other professional men."
-A new invention is suggested by the Scientific American by which to detect burglars. Instead of the "alarm" ringing a warning when the safe is approached, an ingenious device is to instantly turn on a full glare of electric light, and at the same time expose a plate in a camera, all ready to take an instantaneous picture. The sleeping inmates of the dwelling will be awakened in the process, who can secure the negative, and perhaps the burglar.