EP NA POI Emir
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THE LOWLIEST FLOWER,
Nay, not too low!
Pale, tender flower, half hidden in the
grass ;
The sun and dew and kindly winds that biow
Will find you as they pass.
Nay, not too low!
Pure, humble life, whose wayside graces
meet
Few friendly eyes.
know
How fair you are—how sweet!
—DMadeline S, Bridges, in Home Journal.
God's watchful angels
CHAPMAN'S LABOR DAY,
BY CHARLES M.
HARGER.
less. All
through the
hot days of
July and the
greater part
of August
the wheat shockshad stood in the fierce
sun and torrid prairie winds, just us
the company of harvesters left them.
“Mother, what shall we do?” asked
Joe, discouraged, as he knelt beside
the widow's chair in the rude cabin.
‘“There has been but one thing to
do 80 far,”’ she answered. ‘It was bet-
ter to help those needing comforts
worse than ourselves than to get in the
wheat.”
‘So you have told us; but we have
worked for Mr. Clark all summer
nearly, and I don’t think we ought to
do any more for our neighbor. He can
pay us nothing and seems to expect us
to continue.”
Clark, the lam& renter on the ad-
joining section, had been ill a great
deal, and Mrs. Hawley had urged her
boys to assist him with his herding
and farming. Joe's advice, however,
won, and the next morning the Hawley
boys pitched the heavy bundles of
wheat on their own field throughout
the drowsy August hours. They worked
slowly, and the grain rattled to the
ground from every sheaf as they lifted
it to the wagon.
“I’m ashamed to be working at this
job so late in the season,” said Joe,
stopping a moment.
Gregg looked down from the wagon.
“Well, how was we to do it sooner?
We had to help Clark, and mother’s
been so miserable.”
“I know it; but it does look awful
back-handed to see the wheat shocks
a-standing in the field from July until
’most September—it’ll be that to-
morrow. Besides look at the grain
we're wasting,” as another shower of
kernels rattled down when he went on
with his work.
It was discouraging—twenty acres
of grain ahead of them and a likeli-
hood of the end of the dry weather
any day. By noon two shambling
loads had been added to the badly
shaped stack which they had begun a
month before. By night the boys
were wearied out and had broken one
of their decrepit forks.
‘“That means a trip to the store,”
said Joe; and after
started.
“I hope Clark won’t call us,” re-
marked Gregg, as the neighboring
cabin came in sight.
“Well, you know he was awful good
to father befors—before he died.”
Joe-gulped down 2 sob.
It was indeed a debt of kindness to
the friend of their departed father
that they had been paying. Their
mother realized it, if they did not,
and knew what the men had been to
each other as comrades in the war.
There was no call to them as they
passed the cabin, but their quick ear
caught the sound of a moar.
“It’s Clark,” exclaimed Joe.
see what’s the matter.”
They approached the door; it was
locked. Stout shoulders burst the
slender fastenings. There on his lone-
some bed was Clark, crying almost
like a child with distress. They could
catch enough of the old man’s story to
learn that his daughter had gone to
the next county to visit, and that he
had been very ill since the night be-
fore.
‘You go for a doctor, Gregg,” were
Joe’s orders; and the younger lad hur-
ried away through the night while the
other endeavored to make his patient
easier.
Around the store in the station
agent’s office the committee was ar-
ranging for the observance of the ap-
proaching Labor Day. The town of
Chapman had read the Governor's
proclamation and proposed to make of
the occasion a time of rejoicing. There
was to be a procession, a picnic din-
ner, speeches, music and other atirac-
tions. Every settler and every towns-
man was to be called on to contribute
to the celebration. The eommittee
had nearly completed the list of" resi-
dents, when Merser, the station agent
called the name of Hawley.
“The Hawleys can’t drive in any
procession that I manage,” said Blake,
who was to be marshal of the day.
“What have you got against em?”
meekly inquired the postmaster.
Blake glared at the little group from
beneath very savage gray eyebrows.
His fierce glances were most lost in
the gloom, but his words were not.
“We don’t want nobody in the parade
that can’t drive a decent rig an’ that
can’t keep their place lookin’ respect-
able—that’s why 1 object to em.”
“Oh, well, those boys and their
mother have a hard time,” replied the
postmaster.
‘“Since their father died last spring
—or was it winter?--they’ve been buy-
ing potatoes by the gunarter’s worth,”
put in the other committeeman, Pier-
son, the storekeeper; and I know they
“Let's
HE Haw-|
ley claim!
certainly
looked shift-
supper they |
would send the flag her husband car-
ried in the war, but didn’t say any-
thing about givin’ a team.”
“Well, we don’t want ’em, anyhow,”
persisted the ebstinate Blake; ‘‘my
chief reason is—"
What his reason was never was
known, for with a clangor and screech
the 11 o’clock express came rumbling
by, and Blake ran to the platform to
put aboard the mail and speak to the
conductor.
The long line of lighted coach win-
dows glided past the heavy Pullman
cars with lamps turned low, that the
passengers might sleep, rolled by him,
and the green and red lanterns on the
as the train sped away across the plain.
Blake turned and nearly stumbled over
a boy—a stranger.
“Hello! did you belong on the
train?” he asked.
“No, I'm lookin’ for a doctor; be
you one?” replied & piping voice.
“Not much; come inside. Here
boys,” he called to his comrades,
“which of you is a doctor?”
then, after a closer look, ‘‘bless me,
if it isn’t one ‘of th’ Hawley boys!
what's the matter, my lad?”
Gregg instinctively knew he had
found a friend and quickly told his
errand.
“Poor old Clark!” ejaculated the
| postmaster, ‘‘he’s always lookin’ for a
letter with money in it. I'm afraid
he’ll never get it.”
“Well come on, we'll find a doctor,”
said Pierson, rising; ‘‘and I believe
I'll go out with you myself to see that
Clark don’t suffer.”
He was as good as his word, and
| midnight saw three riders hurrying
| through the dry grass, the long, steady
“swish” of the horses’ feet making a
kind of music as they cantered on.
| It seemed to Joe that his brother
| would never return. Patiently he
bathed the suffering settler’s head, and
tenderly as he could he straightened
the crumpled sheets. The watch in
the little cabin, so cramped and un-
tidy, was anything but pleasant; and
it seemed that the whole night had
passed when he caught the sound of
approaching hoofs.
‘“‘He is in a bad way,” pronounced
the doctor, ‘‘and must not be left
alone. If he gets much worse he can-
not be moved. Is there any place
where we can take him?”
¢‘I know mother will care for him,”
spoke up Gregg. ‘‘He and father went
to war together, and mother thinks we
owe him a great deal of care.”
¢I don’t see anything else to do,”
decided Pierson, ‘‘although it seems
like a big burden to put on these
folks.”
¢“Never mind,” insisted the boy; ‘it
is better than leaving him here. We
have taken most of the care of him
and his place this summer.”
“What's that? You've helped him
run his farm?”
“Yes. Mother said we should; he
| needed it worse than we did.”
‘I’ve wondered how he got along;
now I see. Well, come on; we’ll take
him over for a day or two, and then
we’ll get some one to care for him.”
The little procession of four horse-
men made an odd sight as it slowly
moved to the Hawley cabin. Mrs.
Hawley was anxiously awaiting the re-
turn of her sous.
“I’ve got the fork, mother,’ called
Gregg; and indeed he had remem-
bered that essential implement.
“But there’s something else,” called
the doctor, as they lifted Clark down
and carried him inside.
‘Just think of it!” indignantly ex-
claimed the storekeeper, as he got the
physician to one side when the patient
had been made comfortable. ‘“This
poor family the only one out of this
whole prosperous neighborhood to look
aiter the old soldier in his troubles!
T’ll stir up the boys at Chapman so
they’ll think judgment has come to
them ; and they’ll do something, too—
see if they don’t.”
When Pierson left for the settle-
ment it was after a look over the claim
and a careful estimate of the family’s
situation. His first duty when he
|
| the committee for that night.
met at the depot.
“We were too fine,’
with more sarcasm than he had ever
nsed in his life before, ‘‘to let them
into our procession, and yet those
| three poor people have cared for that
sick veteran while we let him alone.”
| Blake winced, and the postmaster
| clapped his hands gleefully. It was
| long after the express went through
| when they adjourned, and then it was
with promises ‘to keep it quiet.”
Pierson the next morning sent his
son Charles on horseback in one direc-
tion, while he himself took another.
They bore a mysterious message to the
heads of families, and it was nearly
| night when they completed their
| rounds.
The day which was to mean so much
to the community as the day when
They
’
brated, dawned bright and clear on
the Hawley claim.
Joe and Gregg were in the field
early, struggling with the discolored
sheaves and the rattling kernels.
¢-It'll be a labor day for us, sure
enough,” remarked Joe; and he lauged
at his own pun.
“It’s been labor day for us all sum-
mer,” answered the other, bitterly.
«Mother didn’t need to take care of
Clark all the time.”
«“Well, bub she thought she ought
to do all she could. Never mind, we'll
get this wheat all stacked by Christ-
mas if we keep at it.”
“Yes, unless we wait until next year
and harvest two crops together,” with
don’t have provisions enough to last
sixty hours at a time.”
“I ain’t sure they want to drive in
the procession,” remarked the post-|
| have some fireworks.”
master, slowly. “When we asked for
a feeble smile. Joe was apparently
thinking of something else.
<J¢’ll be a big day. The storeman
said last night that they'd probably
volunteers Mrs. Hawley sent word she i
rear platform were becoming dimmer |
“Who's sick?” inquired Pierson; |
reached home was to call a meeting of |
he sneered,
labor’s achievements were to be cele- |
‘“Maybe we can see em from here—*
the prairie’s so level.”
Joe looked from his place of vant-
age on top of the wagon load of bun-
dles off toward the settlement, as if to
| estimate the chances of such good for-
tune befalling them.
| Something met his sight that drove
| fireworks and nearly everything else
| from his mind.
| “What's that?” he exclaimed, point-
| ing to aline of teams approaching from
| the farm.
| “Maybe it’s the procession comin’
clear out in the country,” suggested
| Gregg, who had quickly clambered up
| by his side. Both had stopped work
to gaze at the unwonted spectacle.
| “The storeman’s leading,” broke
out Joe.
{ He was right. Mounted on a fiery
| nag, Pierson, bedecked with sash and
i sword and wearing an old army over-
coat to give him a military appearance
| fitting the commander of so consider-
able a force, was issuing orders to the
| drivers with all the self-possession of
| a General at review.
| “Why, they're turning in!” said
| Gregg, as the long line of teams filed
| into the field.
{ The visitors paid no attention to the
| bewildered occupants of the farm, who
| made a pathetic picture as their little
forms, perched on the rickety load of
| wheat, were outlined against the vast
spread of prairie sky.
“‘Hurry up now, men! Get to
work!” were Pierson’s orders, as he
set the example by doffing his regalia
and the brass-buttoned overcoat.
Coats and vests were thrown aside,
sleeves were rolled up; and with an
energy that astonished Joe and Gregg
until they could do nothing but’stand
| and gaze in wonder at the proceedings,
the farmers and farmers’ sons, as well
| the novel expedition, took forks from
the wagons and began loading the dis-
colored shocks of grain.
Load after load was hauled up to the
| stacks, and one mound of grain after
another arose, until the year’s yield
of the little farm was concentrated in
what looked like mammoth yellow
eggs of straw in the midst of the
prairie.
“Now, young men,” broke out
Pierson, in pretended gruffness, com-
ing to the side of the boys’ wagon
when the last bundle was hoisted
to cap off the final stack, ‘‘we’ve some-
thing to say to you. When the town
has a Labor Day we want everybody
to attend; and we have decided to
punish you both, as well as your
mother for not doing so, by making
you ride in the procession.”
There was a twinkle that removed
any uneasiness his voice might have
caused, and when he repeated his or-
ders to Mrs. Hawley on going to the
house, and showed her a wagon, half
filled with clean straw, in which to
ride, they accepted the decree, one of
the men having volunteered to stay
with the convalescing neighbor on the
bed inside and to assist the nurse Pier-
son had engaged in removing him to
his home.
Mrs. Hawley'’s pale face brightened
as she stepped into the vehicle, and
she impulsively kissed the two boys
who bashfully clung to her side.
Down at the grove the wives and
children of the settlers were ready,
and on the arrival of the teams the
procession started. The band played,
| the horses pranced, the children
{ laughed and Pierson shouted his or-
| ders more vociferously than ever.
The center of attraction was the
Hawley wagon, which led thelong line
that wound about the sparsely settled
streets, and no one enjoyed the parade
more than its occupants.
It was well past noon when the pro-
cession returned to the grove and the
bounteous picnic dinner was spread.
Then came singing and speaking.
The orator of the day, a judge from a
neighboring county, omitted a good
deal of the speech he had prepared in
order to tell the story of themorning’s
doings and the events leading up to
them. ¢‘The chief duty of labor as
well as of capital,”’ he said in closing,
“is to help the helpless and lift up
those struggling under burdens of
| trouble and care. The lessonhasbeen
well learned by this community. This
| has been the noblest celebration of
| Labor Day I ever saw.”
| “Mother,” whispered Joe, as they
| were being driven home after the fire-
works that evening, ‘I wish Labor
| Day would come every week.”
{ “Perhaps,” she answered, ‘‘we can
| get along so well that we shall not
We are
! need another day like this.
rich in friends now, if innothing else.”
| Her prediction came true, for the
| Hawleys entered upon a brighter and
| more prosperous life.—The Independ-
| ent.
re ET meen
How to Remember Rainbow Colors,
The common people of Great Britain
| and the East Coast of our own coun-
try use many odd systems of mne-
| monies which it would be well for the
| more progressive West to adopt. One
| of these is the phrase ‘‘by vigor,” as an
aid in recalling the names of the
primary or rainbow colors. Put down
the word v-i-g-o-r, horizontally, with
the b-y in the center, and divide
the whole with the letter g, and you
will ever after have the colors of
“God’s covenantal bow’ indelibly en-
graved upon your memory. See:
Violet.
Indigo.
Blue.
Green.
Yellow.
Orange.
Red.
A reversal of this system is not alto-
gether unknown in New England.
The Rev. S. I. Gerould, of Goffstown,’
N. H., says that he has alwaysseen the’
initials of the several colors arranged
as ‘‘royg., biv,” but the first is by far
| the better, as it gives you two sensible
| Fonglish words as a basis of your fore
} mula.—St. Louis Republic.
| as many townspeople who had joined |
GARDENS OF THE SEA.
REV. DR. TALMAGE PREACHES
er CER
On the Ocean Fauna. Lessons That Can
Be Learned fromthe Mighty Deep.
——
TXT: “The weeds were wrapped about my
head."—Jonah ii., 3.
“The Botany of the Bible; or, God Among
the Flowers,” is a fascinating subject. I hold
in my hand a book which I brought from
Palestine, bound in olive wood. and within
it are pressed flowers which have not only
retained their color, but their aroma. Flow-
ers from Bethlehem, flowers from Jerusa-
lem, flowers from Gethsemane, flowers from
Mount of Olives, flowers from Bethany, flow-
ers from Siloam,flowers from the valley of Je-
hoshaphat, red anemones and wild migno-
nette, buttercups, daisies, cyclamens, ecamo-
mile, bluehslls, ferns. mosses, grasses and a
wealth of florn that keep me fascinated by
the hour, and every time 1 open it itis a new
revelation. It isthe New Testament of the
flelds. But my text leads us into another
realm of the botanical kingdom.
Having spoken to you in a covrse of ser-
mons about “God Everywhere '—on ‘‘The
Astronomy of the Bible; or, God Among the
, Stars ;” “I'he Ornitholozy oi the Bible; or,
{ God Among the Rirds;’ ‘The Ichthyclogy
| of the Bible; or, Gol Among the Fishes”
“The Mineralogy of the Bible ;or, God Among
! the Amethysts’ “The Conchology of the
| Bible; or, Gol Among the Shells;” “The
Chronolozy of the Bible ; or, God Among the
Centuries’—I speak now to you about “The
| Botany of the Bible; or, God in the Gardens
of the Sea.” Although I purposely take this
morning for consideration the least observed
{ and least appreciated of all the botanical
| products of the world. we shall find the con-
-templation very absorbing.
| In all our theological s:minaries waere we
make ministers thers ought to bs professors
| to give lessons in natural history. Physical
! science ougit to be taught side by side wit
revelation. It is the same God who inspires
the page of the natural world as the page of
the Scriptural world. What a freshening up
it would be to our ssrmons to press into
them even a fragment of Mediterranean sea-
i weed ! We should have fewer sermons
aw ully dry if we imitated our blessed i ord,
and in our discoursz, like Him, wo would
let a lily bloom, or a crow fiy, or a hen
{ brood her chickens, or a crystal of salt flask
| cut the preservative qualities of religion.
The trouble is that in many ef our theo-
iogical seminaries men who are so dry them-
salves they never could get people to come
and hear them preach are now trying to
teach young men how to preach, and the
student is put between two great presses of
dogmatic theology and squeezed until there
is no life left in him. Give the poor victim
at least one lesson on the botany of the Bible.
That was an awful plunge that the reereant
, prophet Jonah made when, dropped over the
gunwales of the Mediterransan ship, he sank
many fathoms down into a tempestuous sea.
Both befors and after the monster of the desp
swallowed him, he was entangled in seaw=ed.
The jungles of the desp threw their cordage
of vegetation around him. Some ofthis seu-
weed was anchored to the bottom of the
watery abysm, and some of it was afloat and
swallowed by the great sea monster, so that,
while the prophet was at the bottom of the
deep aiter he was horribly imprisoned he
could ex:laim and did exclaim in the words
o: my text, *“I'he weeds were wrapped about
my head.” .
Joaunah was the first (0 record that there
are growths upon the bottom of the sea as
well as upon land. The first picture I ever
owned was a handful of seaweeds pressed on
a page, and I called them ‘‘the shorn locks
of Neptune.” These products of the deep,
whether brown or green or yellow or pur-
ple or rad or intersyot of many colors, are
most fascinating, They are distributed all
over the depths and from Arctic to Antarctic.
That God thinks well of them I conclude
from the fact that he has made 6000 species
of them. Sometimes these water plants
are 400 or 700 feet long, and they cable
the sea. One specimen has a growth of
1500 feet.
On the northwest shore of our country isa
geaweed with leaves thirty or forty feet long,
amid which the sea otter makes his home,
resting himself on the buoyancy of the leat
and stem. The thickest jungles of the trop-
ics are not more full of vegetation than the
depths of the sea. There are forests down
thers and vast prairies all abloom, and God
walks there as he walked in the Garden of
Eden ‘in the cool of the day.” Oh, what
entrancement, this subsqueous world! Oh,
the God given wonders oi the seaweed! 71s
birthplace is a palace of crystal. The cradle
that roeks it is {he storm. Its grave is asar-
cophagus of beryl and sapphire, There is
no night down tuere.
There are creatures of God on the bottom
of the sea so constructed that, strewn all
along, they make a firmament besprent with
stars, constellations and galaxies of impos-
ing luster. The sea featheris a lamplighter.
The gymuotus is an electrician, and he is
surcharged with electricity and makes the
deep bright with the lightning of the sea.
The gorgonia flashes like jewels. There are
sea anemones ablaze with light. There are
the starish and the moonfish, so called be-
causethey so poweriully suzgest stellar and
lunar illumination.
Oh, these midnight lanterns of the ocean
caverns ; these processions of flame over the
white floor of the deep ; these illuminations
taree miles down under the sea; these
gorgeously upholstered casties of the Al-
mighty in’ the underworld! The author of
the text felt the pull of the hidden vegetation
of the Mediterranean, whether or not he ap-
preciated its beauty, as Iie cried out, “The
weeds were wrapped about my head.”
Let my subject cheer all those who had
friends who have been buried at sea or in
our great American lakes. Which of us
brought up on the Atlantic coast has not had
kindred or friend thussspulchered? We had
the useless horror of thinking that they were
denied proper resting place. Wesaid: “Ob,
if they had lived to come ashore and had
then expired! What an alleviation of our
trouble 1t would have been to put them in
some beautiful family plot, where we could
have planted flowers and trees over them."
Why, God did better for them than we could
have done for them. They were let down
into beautiful gardens. Before they had
reached the bottom they had garlands about
their brow. :
In more elaborate and adorned place than
we could have afforded them they were put
away for the last slumber. Hoar it, mothers,
and fathers of sailor boys whose ship went
down in our last August hurricane! There
are no Greenwoods or Laurel Hills or Mount
Auburns so beautiful on the land as there are
banked and terraced and scooped and hung
in the depths of the sea. The bodies of our
foundered and sunken friends are girdled
and canopied and housed with such glories
as attend no other Necropolis.
They were swamped in lifeboats, or they
struck on Goodwin sands or Deal beach or
the Skerries, and were never heard of, or dis-
appeared with the City of Boston, orthe Ville
de Havre, or the Cymbria or were run down
in a fishing smack that put out from New-
foundland. But dismiss your previous gloom
about the horrors of ocean entombment.
When Sebastopol was besieged in the
Anglo-French war, Prince Mentchikof, com-
manding the Russian navy, saw that the
only way to keep the English out of the har-
bor was to sink all the Russian ships of war
in the roadstead, and so 100 vessels sank.
When, after the war was over, our American
engineer, Gowan, descended to the depths
in a diving bell, it was an impressive spece
tacle.
One hundred buried ships? But it is that
way neariy all across the Atlantic Ocean.
Ships sunk not by command of admirals,
but by the command of cyclones.
But they all had sublime burial, and the sur-
roundings amid which they sleep the last
sleep are mors imposing than the Tai Mahal,
the mausoleum with walls incrusted with
precious stones and built by the great mogul
of India over his empress. Your departed
ones wers buried in the gardens of the sea,
fenced off by hedges of coralline.
The greatest obsequies ever known on the
lanl were those of Moses, where no one bat
God was present. The sublime report of that
entombment is in the book of Deuteronomy,
which says that the Lord buried him, and of
those who have gone down to slumber in the
deep the same may be said, ‘The Lord buried
them.” As Christ was buried in a garden, so
your shipwrecked friends and those who
could not survive till they reached port were
put down amid iridescence—*‘‘In the midst of
the garden there was a sepulcher.”
It has always been a mystery what was the
particular mode by whica George G. Cook-
man, the pulpit orator of the Methodist
Church aud the chaplain of the American
Congress, left this life after embarking for
England on the steamship President, March
11th, 1841. The ship never arrived in port.
To one ever signaled her, and on both sides
of the ocean it has for fifty years been ques-
tioned what became of her But this I know
about Coosman—that whether it wasiceberg
or conflagration midsea or collision he had
more garlands on his ocean tomh than if, ex-
viring on land, ‘each of his million friends
nad put a bouquet on his casket. Inthe
midst of the garden was his sepulcher.
But that brings me to notice the misnomer
dn this Jonahitic expression of the text. The
propbet not only made a mistake by trying
i 10 go to Tarshish when God told him to go
to Ninevab, but he made a mistake when he
styled as weeds these growths that enwrapped
him on the day he sank. A weed is some-
thing that is useless. It is something you
throw out from the garden. Itis something
that chokes the wheat. Itis something to
be grubbed out from among the cotton. It
is something unsightly to the eye. Itisan
invader of the vegetable or floral world.
But this growth that sprang up from the
depth of the Mediterranean or floated on its
surface was among the most beautiful things
that God ever makes, It was a water plant
known as the red colored alga and no weed
at all. It comes from the Joom of infinite
beauty. Itis planted by heavenly love. It
is the star of a sunken firmament. Itis a
lamp waich the Lord kindled. It isa cord
by whaieh to bind whole sheaves of praetieal
suggestion. Jtis a pcam ail whose cantos
are rung by Divine goodness. Yet we all
make the mistake that Jonah made in regard
to it and call it a weed.
“The weeds were wrapped about my head.™
Ab, that is the trouble on the land as on the
soa! We call those weeds that are flowers,
Pitehed up on tae beach of society are chil-
dren without home, without opportunity for
anything but sin, seemingly without God.
They are washed up helpless. They are«ille®
ragamufins. They are spoken of as the
akings of the world. They are waifs. Taey
are street arabs. They are flotsam and jet-
sam of the social sea. They are something
to be leit alone, or something td be trod on,
or something to give up to decay. Nothing
but weeds. They ara up the rickety stairs of
that garret. They are down in the cellar of
that tenement nouse. They swaiter in sum-
mers wien they sse not one blade of green
grass, and shiver in winters that allow them
not one warm coat or shawl or shoe.
Such the city missionary found in one of
our city rookeries, and when the poor woman
was asked if sy sent her children to school
sae replied : *‘No, sir, I never did send ‘em
to school. I know it, they ought to learn,
but I couldn't. I try to shame him some-
times (it is my husband, sir), but he drinks
and then beats me—Ilook at that bruise oa
my faes—Td I tell him to ses what is comin’
to his children. There's Peggy goes sellin’
fruit every nicht in those cellars in Water
street, and they're hells, sir. She's learnin’
all sorts of bad words thereand don’t get
back till 12 o’clock at nigat. If it wasn’t for
her earnin’ a shillin’ or two in them places.
I should starve. On, I wisi they was out of
the city. Yes, it is tue truth. I would rather
have all iny children dead than onthe street,
but I can’t heip it.”
Another one of those poor women found
hy a reformatory association recited her
story of want and woe ani looked up and
said, “I felt so hard to Jose the children
when they died, bur now I’m glad they're
gone.” Ask any one of a thousand such
children on the siraets, Whers do you live?”
and they will answer, “I don’t live no-
where.” Taey will sleep to-night in ash bar-
rels, or under outdoor stairs, or on tue
wharf, kicked and bruised and hungry. Woo
cares for them? Onee in a wiile a eity mis-
sionary, or a tract distrivutor, or & teacher
of ragzed schools will rescue one of them,
but for most people they are only weeds.
Yet Jonah did not mors completely mis
reprasent the red alga about his head in the
Mediterranean than most people misjudee
these poor and forlorn and dying children of
the street. Taey are not weeds. They are
immortal flowers. Down in the deep sea ot
wo=, but flowers. When society and the
chureh of God come to appreciate their eter-
nal value, there will be more C. L. Braces
and mors Van Meters and more angels of
mercy spending their fortunes and their lives
in the rescue.
Hear it, O ye philanthropic and Christian
and merciful sou!s—not weeds, bat flowers.
I abjurs you as the friends of all newsoys’
lodging houses, of all industrial schools. of
all homes for iriendless girls, anl for the
:nany reformatories and humane associa-
tions now on foot, How much they have al-
ready accomplished! Out of what wretch.
edness, into what good homes! Of 21,000 of
theses picked up out of the streets and sent
into country homes only tweleve children
turned out badly. .
In the last thirty years a number that ne
man can number of the vagrants have been
lifted into respectability ani usefulness and
a Christian life. * Many of them have homes
of their own. Though rasged boys once and
street girls, now at the head of prosperous
families, honored on earth and to be glorious
in heaven. Some of them have been Govern-
ors of States. Some of them are ministers of
the gospel. In all department gf lite those
who were thought to be weeds aave turned
out to be flowers. One of those rescued lads
from the streets of our cities wrote to another,
saying: “I have heard you are studying for
the ministry. £o am L”
My hearers, I implead you for the news-
boys of the streets, many of them the bright-‘|
est children of the city, but with no chance,
Do not step on their bars feet. Do not,
when thev steal a ride, cut behind. Whea
the paper is three cents, once in a while give
them a five cent piece and tell them to keep
the change. I like the ring of the letter the
newsboy sent back from Indiana, where he
had been sent to a good home, toa New
York newsboy's lodging house: ‘‘Boys, we
should show ourselves that we are no fools,
that we can become as respectable as any of
the countrymen, for Franklin and Webster
and Clay were poor hoys once, and even
George Law and Vanderbilt and Astor. And
now, boys, stand up and let them see you
have got the real stuff in you. Come out
here and make respectable and honorable
men, so they can say. ‘There, that boy was
once a newsboy.’” My hearers, join the
Christian philanthropists who are changing
organ grinders and bootblacks and news-
boys and street arabs and cigar wirls into
those who shall be kings and queens unto
God forever. It is high time that Jonah
finds out that that which is about him is not
weeds, but flowers.
As I examine this red alga which was
about the recreant prophet down in the
Mediterranean depths, when, in the words
of my text, he cried out. “The weeds wera’
wrapped about my head,” and I am led
thereby to further examine this submarine
world, I am compelled to exclaim, What a
wonderful God we have! Iam glad that, by
diving bell, and ‘Brooks’ deep sea soundiny
apparatus,” and ever improving machinery,
we are permitted to walk ths floor of tha
ocean and report the wonders wrought by
the great God.
Study these gardens of the sea. Easierani
easior shall the profounds of the ocean be-
come to us, and more ani more its opu enc:
of color and plant unroll, especially as **Vil-
leroy s submar#ne boat’ has been construei-
ed, making it possible to navigate under tie
sea almost as well as on the surface of tho
sen, and unless God in His mercy banishes
war from the earth whole flests of armel
saips far down under the water move onto
plow up the argosies that float the surface,
-
open the won lars 0” Go i's work'ngs in {>a
great deep and never for human devastation !
so-catled seaweeds are the pastues fields and
the forage of the inn
deep. Not one spsacies of them cst be spared
from the economy of nature.
Sunken Alps and Apennines and Himalayas
of Atlantic and Pacific oceans. A continzngl
{hat once conaeetel Europs and America, so
that in the aes nast
across from where England is to where wa
now stand. all sunken and now covered wira
the growths of the seaas it once was covered
with growths of the land.
England and Irelani ons a'l one pieces of
Jand, but now much of it so {ursunken as to
island. The islands, for the most part, aro
only the foreheads of sunken continents.
The sea conquering the land all along the
coasts and crumbling the hemispoeres wider
and wider become the suvaqueons do-
minions. Thank God thar sgilled hy-
drographers have made us meps aad charts
of the rivers and lakes and seas and shown
‘us something of the work of the eternal God
in the water world.
Thank God that the great Virzinian, Lieu«
tenant Maury, lived to give us “The Physical
Geography of the Sea,” and that men of
genius have gone forth to study the so-called
weeds that wrapped about Jonah’s head and
have found them to be coronals of beauty,
and when the tide receded these scientists
have wadea down and picked up divinsiy
pictured leaves of the ocean, the naturalists,
Pike and Hooper and Walters, gathering
them from the beach of Long Island Sounc,
and Dr. Blodgett preserving them from tug
shores of Kay West, and Professors Emerson
and Gray finding them alonz Boston harbor,
and Professor Gibbs gathering them from
Charleston harbor, and for all the other
triumphs of alzolozy, or the science of szu-
weed.
Why confine ourselves to theold anihaek-
neyed illustrations of tne wonder workinzs
of God, when there are at least five great
seas full or illustrations as yet not marsha.ec,
every root and froni ani cell and coior and
movement and habit of oceanic vegetation
erying out: ‘God! God! He made us.’ Hs
clothed us. He adorned us, He was tae
God of our ancestors clear back to the firsts
sea growth, when God divided the waters
which were above the firmament from the
waters which were under the firmament and
shall be the God of our descendants clear
down to the day when the sea shall give un
its dead. We have heard His comamand, and
we have obeyed, ‘Praise the Lord, dragons
and all deeps.’”
There is a great comfort nat rolls over
upon us from this study of the so-called sea-
weed, and that is the demonstrated doctrine
of a particular providence. When I find
that toe Lord provioes in the so-called sez-
weed the pasturage sor the thronged marine
world. so that not a fin or seals in all that
oceanic aquarium suffers need I conciude He
will feed us, and if He suits the aiza to the
animal life of the de=p He will provids the
food for our physical and spiritual neads.
And if He cioth-s the flowers of the deep
with richness of robe that looks bright as
fallen rainbows by day. and at night makes
the underworld look s&s though the 821 ware
on fire, surely He will clothe you, **O ye of
little faith!”
And what fills me with unspeakable de-
Lizht is that this God oI danths and heights.
of ocern and of continent, may, through
Jesus Christ, the divinely appointed means,
be yours and mine, to help, to cheer. to
vardon, to save, to imparadise. What
matters who in earth or hell is against us if
He s for us? Omnipotence to defend us,
omnipresence: to companion us and infinite
love 10 enfold and upliit and enrapture us.
Ani wien God does small thinzs so well,
seemingly taking as much care with the coil
of a seawend as the outbrancning of a
Lebanon cedar, and w.th the color oi a veg-
etahie growth wirieh is hidden fathoms out
of sigh: as He does with the solferino and
purple of a summer sunset, we will be deter-
mined to do well all we are called to do,
though no one see or appraciate us. Mighty
God! Roll in upon our admiration and holy
appreciation more of the wonders of this
supmarme world. My joy is that after we
are quit of all earthly hindrances we may
come back to this world and explore what
we cannot now fully investigate.
if we shall have power to soar into the at-
mospherie without fatigue I think we shall
have power to dive into the aqueous without
peril, and that the pictured and tessellated
sea floor will be as accessible as now istothe
traveler the fioor of the Alhambra, and all
the gardens of the deep will then swing
oven to us their gates as now to the tourist
Chatsworth opens on public days its cascades
and statuary «nd conservatories for our en-
trance. ‘‘1t doth not yet appear what we
shall be.” You cannot make me believe that
God hath spread out all that garniture of
the deep merely for the polyps and crustacea
to look at.
And if the unintelligent creatures of the
Mediterranean und the Atlantic ocean He sur-
rounds with such beautiful grasses of the
deep, what a heaven we may expect for our
uplifted and ransomed souls when we are
unchained of the flesh and rise to realms
beatific! Of the flora of that ‘‘sea of glass
mingled with fire,” I haveno powerto speak,
but I shall always be glad that, when the
prophet of the text, flung over the gunwales
of the Mediterranean ship, descended into
the boiling sea, that which he supposed to be
weeds wrapped about his head were nos
weeds, but flowers.
And am I not right in this glance at the
botany of the Bible in adding to Luke's mint,
anise and cumin, ard Matthew's tares, and
John’s vine, and Solomon’s cluster of cam-
phire, and Jeremiah’s balm, and Job's bul-
rush, and Isaiah's terebinth, and Hosea’s
thistle, and Ezekiel’s cedar, and ‘‘the hyssop
that springeth’ out of the wall,” and tre
‘‘roge of Sharon and lily of the valley,” and
the frankincense and myrrh and cassia
which the astrologers brought to the mau-
ger at least one stalk of the alaga of the
Mediterranean,
And now 1 make the marina doxology of”
David my peroration, for it was written]
about forty or flity miles from the place’
where the scene of the text was enacted:
**The sea is His, and He made it, and His
hands formed the dry land. Oh, come, let
us worship and bow down ; let us kneel be-
fore the Lord, our Maker. For He is our
God. and we are the people of His pasture.”
Amen. ?
Br EIN irs,
Why Soldiers Break Ranks.
There are very few bridges in the
world over which troops are allowed
to march in regular step. In general,
when coming to a bridge, particular-
ly a suspension bridge, the drums or
bands are stopped, the array is brok-
en and the soldiers pass over without
keeping step, or rather taking pains
not to keep step. The reason is
found in fact that a very slight ini-
tial vibration, if continued, is im-
parted to the whole structure, and in
a short time becomes so strong a
downward strain at every recurrence
as speedily to endanger the safety of
the strongest bridge.
The same principle is illustrated
in some houses, which can be made
to tremble from roof to foundation
by persistently and regularly press-
ing with the foot on a loose board in
one of the floors. A similar curious
circumstance is seen in the case of
certain churches in which it is dan-
gerous to play the heavy pedal pipes
of a grand organ, for the reason that
the vibration becomes so great as to
shatter the panes of glass in the win-
dows, and even to imperil the safety
of the roof.
SOME of the sweetest ‘grapes grow
near the ground.
May such submarine ships be used for laying
Oh, the marvais of tae water world! Tacss
meradie animais of to
Valleys and.
mountains and plants miles underneath tow
waves are all coverad with flora and fauna.
men eame on foot
make a channe!, and Ireiand has become an
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