iam Ss: i rem THE CHARM. The strongest may not have most power; Fate's favorite strikes not best his hour; The wisest may not ses most clear; Most beauty is not in the fair; Sweet voice makes not most melody; ‘Who travels may not widest see; Whom most see is not known the best; Who hardest works may do tbs least: Painter and poet cannot reach The charm—it passes tint and speech. There isa something in the air Stronger than strength, than grace more fair, Wiser than wit, wider than spara, More candid than a lover's face, More musical than melody, More real than the things we ses, More cheering than earth’s rarest win: Beek it, grasp, keen, and all is thine! —Matthew R. Knight, in Independent. A HOPELESS CASE. DY CORNELIA ATWOOD PRATT. HE sunshine was dazzling that after- noon, and in the golden November air sweeping fresh- ly down between the rows of tall houses on either hand you tasted at its best that keen- est of stimulants—iced oxygen. It was a day of the gods, fit to put new life into the most depressing sotil, and its invig- orating effects was plainly visible in the bearing of a: carefully dressed, slightly rotund gentleman of middle size and something less than middle age as he came around the corner of the avenue and walked briskly southward. This plump, well-groomed gentleman was Mr. Anthony Amory; his was not a despair- ing soui, however, in spite of the fact that he was on his way to plead—for the last time as he had resolved—what he felt to be a hopeless case. He rang the bell at the last house in the block, and was ushered into the library. As he entered that remotest and most individualized of the more public apartments of the Winchester house, he wondered, as he had often wondered be- fore, how it was that Eleanor Winchester had impressed her personality so strong- ly upon it that the room seemed alive around her. To his mind, at least, even such stolid things as the chairs, the rugs and the bookcases reflected something of that alert, intense spirituality combined with a dish of chic whica was her own especial charm. Someone had said once that Miss Winchester united a New Eng- land soul and a New York style, and to his apprehension the same piquant com- bination was carried out in her surcound- in 3 28. There had been other days, plenty of them, when he had also wondered how it was that a girl of this vype had at- tracted Anthony Amory; he had, in- deed, supposad that he was safely past the sentimental stage of life. Those days, however, were long over. Now, that he had recovered from the first shock of surprise at finding that he was, if anything, worse hit than he might have been ten years earlier, it seemed as natural as the sunrise than he should love ber. The present visit, although it was the first time Mr. Amory had seen Miss Win- chester since her return to town the week belore, was evidently not of the nature of an ordinary call, and after the first interchange of greetings neither of them pretended to treat it as such. She was sitting near the window in an im. mensely puffy and comfortable chair, and when he had taken his seat opposite her, where te had the best light on her face, they surveyed each other in ex- pectant silence for a minute; thca Mr. Amory bent forward and picking up a carved paper-cutter from the table fcrutinized it attentively. $I believe the time is up,” he ob- eerved, “*in which you undertook to formulate your objections to me. As ‘you were saying last June—" ++Of all the foolish things I said last June that promise was the most fool- ish!” ¢+Becance your numerous?” “No. Because the formulation of them is so hard.” ‘I do not feel disposed to let you off the contract,” said Mr. Amory smoothly, still examining the paper-cutter. Up to this point Miss Winchester had been leaning back in the big chair; now she held her lithe figure erect, crossed her bands in her lap and lifted her eyes fearlessly. An adorable gravity settled down upon her face. ‘Please notice that I have not asked you to,” she said. ¢‘I have decided to tell you all about it. You know I never have. The other times we have talked about this we have not done it seriously and calmly—" ¢¢J was serious enouzh,” murmured Mr. Amory, but she ignored the inter- ruption. ‘You have been excited, and I am afraid I have not been just.” ¢Jt is not justicz { want at your hands.” She waved this remark aside. ¢¢That first,” she said. ¢:Gro on, then, and be just.” Apparently the task she had set her- self was not an easy one. ¢¢I dare say I am going to make some impossible remarks,” she began uncer- tainly. “Don’t get nervous,” said Amory reassuringly, ‘‘nothing that you say is going to make any difference, you know.” ‘You told me once,” she said slowly, objections are so ’ casting about for her words, ‘‘that I was | consumed by the passion for perfection; and everybody admits that all the world wants love.” sDo you know—don’t you think there exists in every human heart an in- sppeasable thirst for perfect love?” ++] am not here to generalize about hu- manity. 1 only know what { mysels || have felt, and that I have told you al- ready.” Miss Winchester passed her hand quickly across her forehead, as if to brush away the little frown that had set- tled there. “Other people have sometimes told me that they had found it,” she went on steadily. ‘I may be unjust, but it has seemed to me, that usually they were very casily satisfied ; and yet there have been some of them I have envied from the bottom of my heart. Is it my fault that I have not been abie to be satisfied, too? You know I have been more or ess admired, but so far it has always happened that the admiration I have re- ceived has seemed to me too light a thing to be serious with. Can you im- { agine what it means to know—or think you do—exactly what you want, and to rea'ly wish for it, and never to have it | come near you, but instead to nave the cheapest, tawdriest imitations of it thrust into your hands? Why, it seems to me it is the life of Tantalus!”” Miss Winchester was breathing 1ather hurriedly now, but she took courage from the impassive, attentive face of her listenar and weat on bravely: ‘After a few experiences I stopped ex- pecting anything different. But I could not change my ideals, you know, be- cause life and love did not prove what [ had thought them.” Amory’s eyebrows went up a line at this statement, but hesaid nothing, and the girl went on: ‘“Then, pretty soon, I met you. You struck me at first as such a Philistine of the Philistines, with your irreproachable surroundings and your air of having sesn and experienced everything, and found it all pretty good—yet of thinking all the while there was really nothing worth putting yourself out for but a comfort- able life and your little joke—that I never dreamed you were going to care anything about anyone so different as I am, nor that you could care in the way you have.” ‘dn the way I do,” Amory corrected her caretully. ‘I thought you were too satisfied even to be interesting. I admit that I was mistaken and that you are several things no one would ever dream you were— good things, I mean—and I admit that 1like you very much, but—don’t you see?—it is your very excellences that are against you. You are worse than the others, becausee you come so near, and vet you do not attain. 1t is criminal in aman to approach so near a woman's ideal and then fail of it!” The light that burned in Mr. Amory’s eyes was not wholly amiable, but his voice was quiet as he said: *‘1 knew all this in a general way be- fore; that is, I suspected it. We are not getting on. Those objections of yours, those deficiencies of mme—I beg you to specify them.” “If you were used to arguing with women,’’ observed Miss Winchester maliciously, ¢*you would not expect to ‘get on.”” ¢‘You are not like other women,” he said, simply, with a lover's coaviction. “You will not evade or put me off.” The girl flushed. ¢Have I not said enough?” she demanded. ¢‘Did I not teli you in June it would be a sacrifice to marry you?” ‘What then?” he urged. ¢Did you not also tell me onoe that love could be demonstrated only by sacrifice?” “Am I pretending to love you?” sine retorted, hotly. “I had forgotten that momentarily,” murmured Amory, dejectedly. ¢‘Bat the objections? Surely, I have a right to those.” ‘Very well, if you insist. But if you do not like what I say, remember I did not say it willingly,” she waraed. ‘‘In the £rst place, I admire men who have force, who can be powers in the world. [ do not mean that you are weak, but that you are indifferent. You are only a power in the world of diners-out.” «¢[ admire the beautiful self possession with which you say horribly cruel things.” ¢“] knew yon would take 1t badly! But I did not mean to be cruel; I am only trying to be true.” ++I wish,” he said, fervently, ‘how I w'sh you would be untrue to that cold soul of yours for five minutes. I wonder if ycu have any idea how dear you can be when you are not trying to be con- scientious!” «As I was saying, you care too much for social success,” resumed Miss Win- chester, striving to speak with the calm- ness of a disinterested critic, and failing sigoally.” “Ah, yes. What else?” “You care too much for the things of the world—the luxuries and pleasures of it. You care about being cowfortable,” she said, disdainfully. “What else?’ She hesitated. ‘What right have I to say that yours is not aspiritual life? And yet—is 1t not!” ‘In short—why don’t you sum me up by saying that it wculd not occur to me | that I needed the consoiations of religion | so long as the cooking was excellent at {i my club?” ‘How furious you are! how I must i have irritated you, to make yousay that!” “Irritat ed is not precisely the word I | should use,” he returned. ¢‘When it comes to making a race with a womaa, I probably am out of 1t, but that does not make it any the pleasauter to be told so. | You have been very cxplicit. Youleave | little to my imagination. I tink I un- | derstand you now. Of course when I hoped to meet your requirements I was i under the impression that they were reasonable ones. You always seemed to [ | | | me supremely reasonable, 1n spite of your enthusiasms.” She lifted an appealing hand, but he hurried on: +] suppose I failed to appreciate the | fact that your ideals do not look like me. | A girl's ideal is not likely to be a trifle | stout and perceptibly past thirty, and I | suppose he never has the beginning of a | bald spot on his head.” She disdained to answer. ¢“And at dinner he jrobably cares about whom he takes out taan more what is set before him. TI admit that it is no longer the case with me---unless I am taking you out,” he continued. ¢Of course these things are serious offenses against the higher life, especially the stoutness; and they amply demon- strate that I am of the earth, earthy. I am glad it is proved to your satisfaction, for otherwise there have been moments when I have been so fatuous as to think that you might after all find it hard to throw me over completely.” ¢It is hardly fair to talk like that,” she said with suppressed agitation. ¢‘I try hard to recognize the facts of life. 1 am a reasonable being. I have not been dreaming about the hero in a melo- drama. But surely, somewhere, though I have never known him yet, there is a man who is both strong and fine; a man who can use the adornments of life with- with them and respect himself no less; a man who is not ashamed to have ideals and to strize toward them. Is humanity go poor, then, that I may not hope to find him? And do you suppose I like to tell you that you are not he? You who come so rear in most things?” Outside the swift November twilight had begun to fall. The light was grow- ing faint in the library. Amory turned the carved paper-cutter over and over in his strong, soft hands, bending it this way and that. “If I were to tell her that I am that man, what would she say, I wonder?” he thought. *‘On my soul I think that I am not far from being it. 1f my life is not, blameless 1n my own eyes, yet it would hardly be blameworthy even in hers. Isit nothing to have kept one's hands clean and one’s soul unstained? Does she think a man does that without ideals? Does she really think I am under any serious misappreheansions as to uses of life? Does she—O, Lord. How hope- less it would be to try to make her un- derstand.” He interrupted his own thoughts ab- ruptly. The paper-koife snapped in his hands, and he dropped the fragments with a soft gesture of his opened hands, and drew one long breath. Then he rose, saying with a new gravity that she had never heard in his tones before: ‘So be it. You must forgive me il I seemed a trifle bitter. A man doe: not lose cheerfully all I am losing—fot I did not ask you to marry me to make me ‘comfortable,’ since you insist on my fondness for comfort, but because it was my one chance for happiness. Such hap- piness and such stimulus as you are still young enough to get from many things, [find only in your presence. I have only one thing more to say. Please re- member it. I am, unfortunately for my comfort. too oid to change. I shall not love again. Absurd as it may seem— and I know you think me quite absurd— I shall not cease to love you as I love you now. world better than you know it. Youare twenty-two. That is rather young. 1 am not young, but I can afford to give you ten years out of my lile to look for that ideal of yours. And 1shall think the time well wasted if at the end of it you can tell me that no one has ever come nearer it than I. You know you have never told me that you could not love me, never once, but only that I did not come up to that mark. And so Ido not give up.” Her eyes had been fixed on the floor. Now she lifted up her head, but it had grown suddenly so dark that he could only see the motion, not the look she sent toward him. wi ¢‘Is that what you truly think, you truly feel?’ she asked at last with a note in her voice which he never remembered to have heard there before. It stirred his pulses and he wondered dully what it meant. He assented silently. The exhilira- tion with which he had entered the house, the courage with which he had begun the discussion, had all evapora- ted. He felt tired; he was conscious of the night, of the burden of his gears and of the deadly soberness of life. *¢Then—then—I almost think -you need not wait!” s+Eleanor, do you know what you are saying?” Ske turned her head away and faced the gathering darixness. ¢‘How can he be so stupid as to ask me that?” she demanded of the friendly November twilight. ¢‘Is it going to take ten years ior him to understand” — Kate Field's Washington. The Civilizing Influence of Water. ¢:On the last day of my service in the employ of the Government," said ex-In- dian Commissioner Morgan, ‘‘came to me a communication from the hat desert sands of southern California, on the banks of the Colorado River, which brought up the wonderful work accom- plished by the Government schools at Fort Yuma, Fort Mojave and Phoenix, Arizona. ¢‘The Yuma Indians are the lowest, mentally, of all the savages. They are dull of intellect, filthy in habit, prefer to go without raiment than clothe them- selves, burrow in the hot sand and live altogether like barbarians. A few years azo they fairly overran the streets of Powaix, a miserable, raggel, tilty lot. 1t was decided to reform them by the educational processs. The people of Pheeaix laughed at us. An appropria- tion was secured from Coagress, 160 acres purchased close to Pheeaix, build- ings erected, schools started, and to-day they are too cramped, while the ‘filthy beast,’ as they termed him, has disap- peared from the streets of Paceaix. “At Fort Mojave there is in operation a steam pump which torces the water up from the river to the dry packed but wonderful rich soil, which, when irrigated, produces enormous crops, | especially of watermelons, of which the Indians there are as fond asa Georgia | colored man. A bill has just passed Con- | gress appropriating money for building | an irrigation ditch in the desert, which will make it bloom like a flower garden | woen completed and give the Indians a | chance to farm and raise crops, at pres- | ent impossible.”’— Washington Star, But as for you, I know your CROSSING OVER THE RIVER reefer REV, DR. TALMAGE’S SERMON. reframe : Perils of the Christian Vanish if He But Puts His Trust in the Lord, and His - Passage Safe to the Other Side is Assured. TEXT: “And the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan, and all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all’ the people were passed clean over Jordan.”—Joshua iii., 17. Washington crossed the Delaware when crossing was pronounced im possible, but he did it by boat. Xerxes crossed the Hel- lespont with 2.0)0,000 men, but he dit it by bridge. The Israelites crossed the Rad Sea, but the same orchestra that celebrated the i deliverance cf the one army sounded the : > e | strangulation of the other. out falling their slave, or can dispense This Jordanic passage differs from all. There was no sac- rifice of human life—not so much as the loss of a linchpin. The vanguard of the host, made up of priests, advancal uatil they put their foot at the brim of the river, when im- mediately the streets of Jerusalem were no more dry land than the bed of that river. It was as if all the water had been Crawn ff, and then the dampness had been soaked up with a sponge, and then by a towel the road bad been wiped dry. Yonder goes a great army of Israelites— the hosts in uniform. Following them the wives, the children, the flocks, the herds. The people look uo at the crystalline wall of the Jordan as they pass and think what an awful disaster would come to them if be- fore they got to the opposite bank of that Ajalon wall that wall should fall on them. And the thought makes the mothers hug their children close to their hearts as they swiften their pace. Quick, now! Ges them all up on the banks—the armed warriors, the wives and children, flocks and herds, and let this wonderrul Jordanic passage be completed forever. Sitting on the shelved limestone, I look off upon that Jordan where Joshua crossed un- der the triumphal arch of the rainbow woven out of the spray; the river which af- terwards became the baptistry where Christ was sprinkled or plunged; the river where the ax—the borrowed ax—miraculously swam at the prophhet’s order; the river il- lustrious in the history of the world for he- | roic faith and omnipotent deliverancs and typical of scenes yet to transpire in your Jife and mine—scenes enough to make us, from the sole of the toot to the crown of the bead, tingle with infinite gladness. Standiog on the scene of that affrighted, fugitive river Jordan, I learn for myself and for you, first, that obstacles, when they are touched, vanish. The text says that when these priests came down and touched the water—the edge of the water with their feet —the water parted. They did not wade in chin deep or wa'st deep or knee deep or ankle deep, but as scon as their feet touched the water it vanished. And it makes me think that almost all the obstacles of life need only be approached in order to be conquered. Difficulties but touched vanish. It is the trouble, the difficulty, the obstacle far in the distance, that seems so huge and tremend- ous. The apostles Paul and John seemed to dis- like cross dogs, for the apostle Paul tells us in Philippians, *‘Beware of dogs,” and John seems to shut the gate of heaven against all the canine species when he says, ‘Without are dogs.” But I have been told that when those animals are furious, if they come at you, if you will keep your eye on them and advance upon them they will retreat. Whether tbat be s or not I cannot tell, but I do know that the vast majority of the mis- fortunes and trials and disasters of your life that hounds your steps, if you can only get your eye on them, and keep your eye on them, and advancs upon them, and ery, *‘Begone,” they will slink and cower. There is a beautitul tradition among the American Indians that Manitou, was travel- ing in the invisible world, and one day he came toa barrier of brambles and sharp thorns which forbade his going on, and there was a wild beast glaring at him from the thicket, but as he determined to go on his way he did pursus it, and those bram- bles wére found to be only phantoms, and that beast was found to be a powerless ghost, and the impassible river that forbade him rushing to embrace the Yaratilda proved to be only a phantom river. Well, my 1riends, tae fact is there are a great many things that look terrible.across our pathway, whicli, when. weadvancaupon them, are only the phantoms, only the ap- par tions, only the delusions o! life. Diffi- culties touched are conquered. Put your feet into the brim of the water, and Jordan retreats. You sometimes see a great duty to perform. It is a very disagreeable duty. You say, “I can’t go through it; I haven't the courage, I haven't the int:lligence; to go through it.” Advance upon it, Jordan will vanish. - I always sigh before I begin to preach at the greatness of the undertaking, but as soon as I start it becomes to me an exhilara- tion. And any duty undertaken with a con- fident spirit Lecomes a pleasure, and the bigher the duty the higher the pleasure. Difficulties touched are couquerej. There are a great many people who are afraid of death in the future. (Good John Livingston once, on a sloop coming from Elizabethport to New York, was dreadfully frightened be- cause be thought he was going to be drowned as a sudden gust came up. People were sur- prised at him. 1f any man in all the world was ready to die, 1t was good John Liv.ng- ston. Bo there are now a great man ood peo- ple who shudder in passing DE Daa. and they hardly dars think of Canaan be- cause of the Jordan that intervenes. But once they are down on a sick bed, then all their fears are gone—the waters of death dashing on the beach are like tbe mellow voice of ocean shells—they smell of the blos- soms of the tree of life, ~The music of the heavenly choirs comes stealing over the waters, and to cross now is only a pleasant sail. How long the boat is coming! Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. Ckrist the Priest advances ahead, and the dying Christian goes over dry shod on coral beds and flowers of heaven and paths ot pzarl. Oh, could we make our donbts remove— These gloomy doubts that rise — And view the Canaan that we love With unbeclouded eyes! Could we bat climb where Moscs stood _And view the landscape o'er. Not Jordan’s stream nor death’s cold flood Could fright us from the shore. Again, this Jordanic passage teaches me the completeness of everything tiat God does. When God putan invisible dam across Jordan, and it was halted, it would have been natural, you would have supposed, for the water to have overflowed the region all around about, and that great devastation would-have taken place, but. when God put thedam in fromnt'of the river Hs puta dam on the other side of the river, so that, ac- cording to the text, the water halted and reared and stood there and not overflowing the surrounding country. Oh, thecomplete- ness of everything that God does! One wculd have thought that, i¢ the waters of the Jordan had dropped until they were only two or three feet deep, the Israelites might have marched through it and have come up on the other bank with their clothes saturated and their garments like those of men coming ashore from ship- wreck, and that would bave been as wonder- iul a deliverance, but God does something better than that. When the priests’ feet touched the waters oi Jordan and they were drawn off, they might have thought thers would have been a bed of mud and slime through which the army should pass. Draw off the waters of the Hudson or the Ohio, and toere would be a good many days, and perhaps many weeks, before the sedi- ment would dry up, and yet bere in an in- stant, immediately, God provides a path through the deptas of Joraan. It isso dry the passengers do mot even get their feet damp. Oh, the completeness of everything that God does! Does He make a universe? . Misa perfect clock, running, ever since it | was wound up, the fixed stars the pivots, the constellations the intermoving wheels, and ponderous laws the weights and mighty swingiog pendulum, the stars in the great dome of night striking the midnight,and the fun, with brazen tongue, toiling the hour of noon. The wildest comet h