- = LIFE'S MISERY. ——— We sow the glebe, we reap the corn, We build the house where me may rest: And then at moments suddenly We look up to the great wide sky. Inquiring wherefore we were born— For earnest or for jest. God keeps his holy mysteries Just on tone outside of man's dream! In diapason slow, we think . To hear their pinions rise and sink, While they float pure beneath his eyes Like swans adown a stream. And sometimes horror chills our blood, To be 80 near such mystic things; And we wrap round us, for defense, Our purple manners, moods of sense— As angels from the face of God Stand hidden in their wings. And sometimes through life's heavy swound, ‘We grope for them - Sa ‘We stretch our hands abroad and try To reach them in our agony— And widen so the broad life-wound, ‘Which soon is large enough for death, with strangled The Bar Light-House. Government had, for several years, been sadly neglecting a job of mending in the case of the Bar Light-house bridge. Here and there boards had be- gun to spring suspiciously beneath un- wary footsteps; and then the wind had begun to tear them off, and the rain to rot and moulder them down. What WAS every man’s business was nobody's, and no individual was disposed to in- terfere with the province of that ab- stract millionaire, the United States Government. To be sure, the keeper of the Bar Light, Jackson Reed, who was naturally more solicitous cencerning the holding out of the sturcture than any one else, had wildly and fruitlessly patched some of the worst places, off and on, after a hard “northeaster.”’ when he awoke more keenly to the ex- igencies of the case, and the hopeless dilatoriness of his taskmaster. But it had amounted to very little. Long ne- glect had made more than mere patch- ing necessary. Now the quarter-mile bridge leading to the Bar Light-house, if not in an absolutely unsafe condition, was not calculated to inspire any degree of confidence in the unaccustomed crosser at least. It was not quite so bad at low tide, or on a mild still day. There was not much to fear then be- yond a little fall and a ducking; that is. if one cleared one of those ragged apertures successfully. But on a dark night with the winds howling over it, and the ocean thundering beneath it, it was the sort of a bridge that only a disembodied spirit eould be supposed | to cross with any degree of nonchalence, The lignt-house itself was only an ordinary dwelling house, strongly built. with a tower for the light. It stood on a massive pile of rocks, with little tufts of coarse vegetation in the clefts, Jack- son Reed, who had an unfortunate love | and longing for a garden spot, bad actually wheeled enough earth over from the mainland for a little patch a few yards square, and when he was not engaged in a fruitless struggle with the | broken a | fruittess struggle i pottering old man was Jackson le bridge he was engaged in with his garden. lacking in nervous force and quickness of intellect ; but light go out, and the absolutely required he had never let only thing that is | of keeper is to keep the light burning for the sailors who steer by it. The wonder was that his wife Sarab She was a a should have been his wife, person not of a different mould merely, but of a different kind ; not of a differ- ent species, but of a different genus Nervous and alert, what her husband accepted in patient silence she received with shrill remonstrance and question- ing. Her husband patched the bridge, crawling over its long reach on his old knees ; she railed, as she watched him, at the neglect of the government, He uncomplainingly brushed the sand from his little puny struggling plants, and she set her thin face against the wind that cast it there, In both, the religious element or cast of mind was strongly predominant, but Jackson Reed simply looked out on nature and into his own soul, and took in as plain incontrovertible facts the broken bridge, the tossing sea, his little wind-swept, sand-strewn garden patch, and God in heaven. Neither proved the other or nullified the other; they were simply there, But Sarah Reed, looking out on the frail, unsafe bridge which connected them with the main- Jand,2and the wicked, senseless sea which had swallowed up her father and a brother whom she had idolized, and the poor struggling plants trying to live under the bleak winds, had seen in them so many evidences of neither God's love and mercy or his existence. She was a rheumatic old woman now, al most helpless, in fact, unable to step without the help of her husband. And she sat, day in and day out, at one of the sea windows of her sitting room, knitting, and holding her de- flant old heart persistently against the pricks, The minister at Rye, a zealous young man, with an mnocent confidence in his powers of holy argument, had visited her repeatedly, with the view of improv- ing her state of mind. She had joined the church over which he presided, in her youth ; indeed, it was the church three miles distant, The minister had heard from one of his parishioners, who was #4 connection of hers, that Mrs, Reed had lost her faith, and straightway he was fired with holy ardor to do something for her spiritual benefit. But even his tonguey confidence and ingenuousness could glean but little satisfaction from his interviews with the rheumatic and unbelieving old woman, “No, Mr. Pendleton,” she used to say, shaking a thin rheumatic hand, with an impressiveness which her hearer might have copied advantageously in the pulpit, *‘it ain’t no use. You kin talk about seein’ with the spirit, an’ worshippin’ with the spirit; anybody needs a little somethin’ to eateh hold on with the flesh ; when it’s all spirit it's too much for a mortal bein’ to compre- hend, an’ the Lord knows I ain't never had much of anything but spirit. I ain’t never had any evidence, so to speak ; I ain't never had a prayer answered in my life, If Ihave, I'd jest like to know how. You say, mebbe, they've been answered jest the same, only in a different way from 1 asked fore Ef you call it answerin’ prayer to give one thing when you ask for another, I don't, An’ I'd rather not believe thar was any God than to believe He'd do a thing like that, Tuoat’s jest con- trary to what He said about Himself an’ the bread an’ the stone in the New Testament, It’s worse to think He'd cheat anybody like that than to think He ain't anywhar, accordin’ to my mind. No, Mr. Pendleton, a human bein’ needs a little human evidence once in a while to keep up their faith, an’ I ain't never had any, I'll jest let you know how it’s been a leetle. Here I am, an old woman, an’ me an' Jack- son's lived here on this rock for forty year. An’ thar’'s being things I've wanted different, but 1 ain’t never had ‘em—things that I've cried an’ groaned an’ prayed to the Lord for—big things an’ little things—but I never got Ef the Lord had give me one of the little things, it me that 1 might have got a feeling that He was here. “Forty year ago, Jackson an’ me was jest married an’ set up house- keepin’ here, thar was an awful storm father an’ broth- staid The next bodies was one. seems to when one night, an’ my on knees all night prayin’. their two darlin’ My brother had only the sweet- washed ashore, married a few months little thing She began to pine. 1 prayed to hev her spared, She died, an’ left her little baby." “But you had him for your own, did Pendleton, been est, lovingest she was. you not?" interrupted Mr. ““He Las been a comfort to you, God has displayed His love and mercy in this case in sparing him “Mr. Pendleton’ —and the rheuma- tic hand went % ¢ id a ive 19 EY up again I ain’t never mn spared to me ; ef [ain't g 1} 5 Lata Thar's been lots of o that 1 hia nes ft ig ULES, 3 Yow $ different. might it speak of, Look to say that tists and little ones, I'll ventur’ wy 01 mm n vou shook 1 CARINE your shoes when jy over it, an’ wouldn't be sorry this min- ute ef you was safe back. Whenever heart an’ cold till he comes back, for fearhe’s fell through. I've prayed to the Lord about that, Then—you may think this a little thing—but thar is Jackson's garden. He set out a rosebush in it fifteen year ago. Well, it ain't died, Thar ain't ever been a rose on it, though, An’ it seems to me sometimes that if thar should be jest one rose on that bush that I should believe that the Lord had been thar. You wouldn't think I'd been silly enough to pray about that, I hev. It's fifteen year,an’ thar ain’t never been a rose thar. No, Mr. Pendleton, it ain't no use. You mean well, but it lays with God, ef He's anywhar, to show Himself to me in a way I can get hold on.”’ So the pretty, rosy-faced young min- ister would go away, picking his way cautiously over the unstable bridge after a somewhat nonplussed prayer, which Mrs. Reed, incapacitated from kneeling by her rheumatic knees, had sat and lis- tened to grimly. The Bar Light-house was three miles from Rye. A sandy, desolate road, almost us billowy as the sea, stretched between, The ouly house in the whole distance was a little brown one just at the other side of the bridge. They sup- ported themselves by sewing for a shop in Rye. Jackson Reed's nephew, Wil- lian Barstow, had been engaged to marry the daughter—Abby her name was ; but a month ago he had brought a wife home from the city. He had rented a pretty little tenement over in Rye, and gone to housekeeping. Abby Weaver had tied up a few little notes and keepsakes in a neat parcel, and put them away out of sight. Then she went on with her work. She was a plain, trustworthy looking girl, with no show about her, as different as possible from the one her recreant lover had married. She was pretty, with an entrancing-lit- Jackson goes over it my is still g 3 tle air of style about everything she wore, Abby had seen her go by a few times in a jaunty velvet jacket and kilted petticoat, with the fair round face with its fringe of fluffy blonde hair smiling up at her husband out of a be. witching little poke, Then she had gone and looked at herself in her poor glass, takiug in the old black alpaca, the plain common face with the dull hair combed back from her forehead. “No wonder,” said she, ‘an’ I’m glad it's so, for I don’t think the Lord can blame him,” Sarah Reed had found a double trial in the breaking of the engagement, In the first place, she had liked Abby, In the second place, this new matrimonial arrangement had taken the darling of her heart from under her immediate supervision. If he had married Abby Weaver, he would have lived either in the light-house, as he had done all his life, or in her wother’s cottage. But nothing could suit his pretty city lady but to live in Rye, The bare idea of the light-house terrified her, Sarah Reed's frame of mind had not improved since the marriage. One afternoon, a few weeks after the young couple had set up for house- keeping, an unexpected deficiency in some household stores sent Jackson Reed to Rye, where the nearest markets were, It was the middle of the after- noon when he went, and there was a storm coming, “Don’t worry, Sarah,’ his last words were, ‘‘an’ I'll be back by five to light the lamp. It'll be pretty near dark enough for it then, I reckon, ef it keeps on this way, ef it is June.” She sat at her window with her knit. ting after he had gone, and watched the storm roll up. She had taken a fancy lately to a landward window, the one with the poor little garden patch under and the rosebush which never somed, blos- The bush really looked won- derfully thrifty, considering its many drawbacks to growth, Buatit was ina sheltered corner, and had all the warmth and milduess that could be bad in the bleak place. It was three feet high or so, a hardy little Scotch rose, There cer- tainly seemed no reason in nature why it it, should not blossom, but blossom it never had. Mrs Reed never looked at it now for buds, She never even glanced at it to- day ; she only looked out uneasily at the nit darkening sky, and k on her stocking. She was always Knitting fact, could do, and she had never been an idle SLOCKIngs; in it was all the kind of work she woman with her brain or her So she knit her husband and William Lngers. stout woolen stockings for Jarstow from morning till night. Her husband kept the house tidy and did the cooking, and al It as a woman. the which Mrs, Heed sat would have dreamed that wot the housewife, ith fil Aili ul he was as { No one looking at room in it was 1 field of action of a tidy It was a plain, rather cheer- less kind of a room. There wasa large figured, dull colored ingrain carpet on the and £¥ table, it § floor, U some fla ere was a shiny Subd ERA omed chair SOLA, A a lamp mat that iW 8, and a sti hair cloth few shells on the Abbey and a framed wreath William the mantelshelf, Weaver had made, which had Barstow's iain on ther's coffin were all ornaments, and set it on a the howling around it, and there Take a room like that rock in the ocean, with wind and the waves is anything especially enlivening about it. Mrs. Reed had been rather good-look- ing in her youth ; was even rather good looking now. She had bright alert blue eyes, and pretty soft gray bair. But there was an air of keen unrest about her which could jar on nerves like a strident saw, In repose she would have been a sweet old woman. Now, she looked and was, as people say, hard to pet along with. Jackson Reed's light burning meant more to the Lord, perhaps, than it did to the sailors, At five o'clock the storm was fairly there, and the old light-house keeper had not come home, A heavy tempest twilight was settling down, and it was almost time the lamp was lit. Six o'clock came and it was darker yet, and still she sat there alone; her knitting dropped in her lap. Seven o'clock, and her old husband had not come. It was quite dark now, and a terrible night, hot and pitchy, and full of mighty electric winds and fires and thunders, A conglomerate roar came from the ocean as from a den of wild beasts, Suddenly an awful theught struck the wretched old woman at the light-house window, and swift on its track rushed another still more awful. The first was, her husband had had a “turn’ scmewhere on that lonely road from Rye. “Turns,” as she called them, Jackson Reed had had once or twice be- fore, but they had never interfered with his duty. He had fallen down insensi- ble, and lain so for two or three hours, This was what had happened to him now. And the second thought was her darling. William Barstow was out on that dreadfnl sea, and there was no light to guide him to port. Stange that she had not thought before, Yes, it was Tuesday. Was it Tuesday? Yes, the very day he was going to Lock- not port with Johny Sower, He was out on th it sea somewhere in a boat, which could not live in it a minute. Yes, it wis to-day he was going. pretty little wife were talking it over Sunday night, She was lamenting, half in sport and half in earnest, over the lonesome day she would have, and he promised to bring her home a new bon- net to console her. Yes, it was Tues. day, and Jackson Reed had told Abby Weaver about it yesterday-—that was Monday. He hid forgotten that she was no longer so interested in Willie Barstow's movements, And when Le told his wife what he had done she scolded him for his thoughtlessness, Yes, it was Tuesday, and he was out on that sea, and there was no light lit, Nothing to keep him off these terrible rocks that the light had been set there to show. In the morning he would be thrown dumb and cold where she could almost see him from her window, It would be with him as it had been with his father and grandfather, and mebbe with his wife as it had been with his poor young mother, All the strong, baffled, but not suppressed nature of the woman asserted itself with terrible force, “Oh, my darling! my darling! my darling!” she shrieked, in a voice which was in itself both a prayer and a curse, ‘*You out thar, an’ all the love in your mother’s heart can’t light ve home! Oh, the black water rollin’ over that beautiful face, an’ those laughin’ blue eyes that looked at me when you wis a baby, an’ those black curls I've tin’ out that lovin' soul! O, Lord ! Lord ! Lord! *“He's been a good boy,’’ she went on in & curious tone, as if the mighty ear of the inexorable God she her, and she was pouring arguments, it—*‘he’s been a good boy ; never mean ac- There's Abby Weaver, | know ; of girl love is the any bad habits, never any little tions, but look at the face OO Lord, behind a homely face jut while you keep on makin’ think roses than potatoes, an’ pearls oysters the that looks hold the longest an’ He wa'n’t Abby . hn this the he's married, an a one. folks that is prettier than love out of a prettily will the stro to blame, i other He blame, Lord, he wa'n't to blame. Don’t drown hi for that, drown him for Lord I" She sat there ed, in expostulatio and h louder and longer. If from the bad turn which made one as 4 ts it You 48 a picture, in that O lord! Lord! $s Or ieking on in weak voice, half in prayer, the A new terror seize igher, and S04 her her husband should recover she suspected he had had, and attempt to cross that Id be killed too. God knew what new rents might When her Down she matic knees her bidding f five years, and prayed as she had never done be. fore, In the midst of her agony a great calm fell suddenly over it. “I will go an’ light the lamp myself.” she in an ‘an’ He will go with me ! Slowly Sarah Reed arose on her feet that had not borne her weight for five years. Every move- ment was exeruciating torture, but she paid no heed to it ; she seemed to feel it and yet be outside of it. She realiz- ed, as it were, the separateness of her soul and her spiritual agony from all bodily pain, She walked across the floor, went out into the entry, and groped her way up the narrow stairs leading to the tow- er. She dragged herself up the steep steps with terrible determination. She slid apart the slide at the top, and a blaze of light almost blinded her. The lamp was lI« Sarah Reed might have floated down those stairs, upborne on angels’ wings, for all she knew. Somehow, she was back in her sitting room, on her knees, Her husband found her there, a half hour later, when he staggered, as pale as death, and drenched to the skin into the room, “Good Lord, Sarah, who lit the lamp?’ his first words were, “The angel of the Lord,” she answered, solemnly raising her gray head. “I hed a turn over thar on the road, "bout a mile out of Rye. I've jest come to an’ got home. Seemed to me I should die when I thought of William. The bridge is pretty well broke up, but I hung on to the side. An’ Lord! when I saw that light burnin’ I could ha’ come over on a cobweb. Who came to light it, Sarah ¥" *“The angel of the Lord,” she said again. “Don’t you ever say it ain’t so, Jackson ; don’t you ever dare to try to make me stop thinking it’s so, I've been askin’ the Lord all these years for some- thing to show me that he was anywhar, an’ Hehasgive it to me. I crawled up them stairs" said awed voice, “You went up them stairs, Sarah 7" “Yes; I went up to light the lamp, an’ it was lit, The Lord hed been thar, It's true about Him," The pale old man went up to his kneeling wife and kissed her tenderly, “Don’t you believe his angel lit it 2” she asked, looking at him with anxious intensity, “Yes, Sarah, I do,” replied Jack- son Reed, The thought was steadi- ly recurring to his haif-dazed brain, “Abby Weaver, Abby Weaver lit the lamp; but Sarah—Sarah need not know,” i The next morning Sarak Reed, | looking out of her window, saw a | little pure white rose on the bush be ueath it, “Yes, 1 meant to have told it had budded,” when she thar 100," you said her husband, exclaimed, “I found it yesterday. Thar's another one, It was a lovely clear morning. Abby Weaver, looking out of her window, saw William Barstow pass by on his way to the light house to tell the old folks of his safety. ——————— Health Hints. Hor MILK AS A STIMULANT. — If any one is fatigued the best restorative is hot milk, a tumblerful of the bever- | rage as hot as can be sipped. This is | far more of a restorative than any alco- | holic drink. — Demorest’s Monthly, | A spoenful of water a | spoonful of sweet oil beaten well to- gether and applied with a feather di- | rectly to a burn, relieves the smart and | prevents blistering. lime and When this remedy is not at hand, common baking soda put directly on the burn and moistened | will give immediate relief. The following remedy, when applied | within six hours after a bite froma i rabid animal, has been successful in | preventing hydrophobia ; Make | strong wash, by dissolving two table. spoonfuls of chloruret (chloride) of | lime in a half pint of water, and in- a tv oy | stantly and repeatedly bathe the parts | bitten. The poison will in this way be | decomposed, The following is recommended as a With the successful treatment for sties : fine camel's hair pencil paint tincture of odin by £93 " 1.4 finger of the left 3 i flamed papilla with { The lids should be held apart the { thumb and index hand while the tincture is applied, and until { | the part touched is dry. u A few applica 3 { tions in the twenty-four hours is sufli- client. How condiments as vinegar and salt has been M. C nits presented the Taken in useful. of i A +1 they are indulged indigestion is affected by such carefully studied by Hasson, | and the resul in a paper | read before Academy of = Clence, moderation these ! Paris. | diments are They promote | formations Lasiri JUICE, nt * ill 10 eXCess ritate the coats of the stomach der the food more indigestibl ' a AU rains 1o CARE FOR THE Ean, think that most people sufficient! $y 20 ize the importance of caring for the ear, n another article we { have referred to the life-long sufferings of brated Dean Swift, due a simple cold taken before his twentieth wear, ln his case there were ringing in his ears, deafness, nausea, vertigo or gid- diness,. But there are multitudes of cases in which the trouble is confined to simple deafness, slight at first and hardly noticed, yet steadily increasing with years. Every year thousands lay a foundation for it. The part affected is what is calied the “middle ear.”’ It is sometimes inflamed by cold air striking continually on the outside, just behind and below the ear, or pene- trating the open cavity. Fashion, which sends young children from over heated rooms into the winds of winter with the ears wholly unprotected, is responsible for many sad cases, When there is **a cold in the head {nasal catarrh) the inflammation often extends to the Eustachian tubes (the tubes that convey air to the middle ear), and shen into the ear itself, Some- times the throat and back of the mouth {pharynx} are inflamed, and the in- flammation spreads upwards in the same way. An inflammation is often thus extended from the nostrils to the ear by an improper blowing of the nose, One nostril should be cleared at a time, tthe other remaining fully open. As the results—not noticed for years ~may be increasing discomfort for life, the ears of the young sheuld oc- casionally be examined by a competent physician, The tendency to deafness may be checked if taken in time. In such cases there is a thickening of the membrana tympani (ear-drum), which thickening tends to increase with every new cold ; or some of the inner inflamed surfaces grow together, and the action of the ear is interfered with, or the Eustachian tube becomes closed. Sometimes the ear