the hardihood of the other in brutality, we ought to pause ere we condemn where we should all have fallen.
Look only for the Good. It will make you welcome everywhere, and everywhere it will make you an instrument to good. The lantern of Diogenes is a poor guide when compared with the Light God hath set in the heavens; a Light which shines into the solitary cottage and the squalid alley, where the children of many vices are hourly exchanging deeds of kindness; a Light shining into the rooms of dingy warehousemen and thrifty clerks, whose hard labour and hoarded coins are for wife and child and friend; shining into prison and workhouse, where sin and sorrow glimmer with sad eyes through rusty bars into distant homes and mourning hearths; shining through heavy curtains, and round sumptuous tables, where the heart throbs audibly through velvet mantle and silken vest, and where eye meets eye with affection and sympathy; shining everywhere upon God's creatures, and with its broad beams lighting up a virtue wherever it falls, and telling the proud, the wronged, the merciless, or the despairing, that there is “Good in All.”
HUMAN PROGRESS.
WE are told to look through nature
Upward unto Nature's God;
We are told there is a scripture
Written on the meanest sod;
That the simplest flower created
Is a key to hidden things;
But, immortal over nature,
Mind, the lord of nature, springs!
Through Humanity look upward,— Alter ye the olden plan,— Look through man to the Creator, Maker, Father, God of Man! Shall imperishable spirit Yield to perishable clay? No! sublime o'er Alpine mountains Soars the Mind its heavenward way! Deeper than the vast Atlantic Rolls the tide of human thought; Farther speeds that mental ocean Than the world of waves o'er sought! Mind, sublime in its own essence Its sublimity can lend To the rocks, and mounts, and torrents, And, at will, their features bend! Some within the humblest floweret “Thoughts too deep for tears” can see; Oh, the humblest man existing Is a sadder theme to me! Thus I take the mightier labour Of the great Almighty hand; And, through man to the Creator, Upward look, and weeping stand. Thus I take the mightier labour, —Crowning glory of His will; And believe that in the meanest Lives a spark of Godhead still: Something that, by Truth expanded, Might be fostered into worth; Something struggling through the darkness, Owning an immortal birth! From the Genesis of being Unto this imperfect day, Hath Humanity held onward, Praying God to aid its way! And Man's progress had been swifter, Had he never turned aside, To the worship of a symbol, Not the spirit signified! And Man's progress had been higher, Had he owned his brother man, Left his narrow, selfish circle, For a world-embracing plan! There are some for ever craving, Ever discontent with place, In the eternal would find briefness, In the infinite want space. If through man unto his Maker We the source of truth would find, It must be through man enlightened, Educated, raised, refined: That which the Divine hath fashioned Ignorance hath oft effaced; Never may we see God's image In man darkened—man debased! Something yield to Recreation, Something to Improvement give; There's a Spiritual kingdom Where the Spirit hopes to live! There's a mental world of grandeur, Which the mind inspires to know; Founts of everlasting beauty That, for those who seek them, flow! Shores where Genius breathes immortal— Where the very winds convey Glorious thoughts of Education, Holding universal sway! Glorious hopes of Human Freedom, Freedom of the noblest kind; That which springs from Cultivation, Cheers and elevates the mind! Let us hope for Better Prospects, Strong to struggle for the night, We appeal to Truth, and ever Truth's omnipotent in might; Hasten, then, the People's Progress, Ere their last faint hope be gone; Teach the Nations that their interest And the People's good, ARE ONE.
MY WASHERWOMAN.
SOME people have a singular reluctance to part with money. If waited on for a bill, they say, almost involuntarily, “Call to-morrow,” even though their pockets are far from being empty.
I once fell into this bad habit myself; but a little incident, which I will relate, cured me. Not many years after I had attained my majority, a poor widow, named Blake, did my washing and ironing. She was the mother of two or three little children, whose sole dependence for food and raiment was on the labour of her hands.
Punctually, every Thursday morning, Mrs. Blake appeared with my clothes, “white as the driven snow;” but not always, as punctually, did I pay the pittance she had earned by hard labour.
“Mrs. Blake is down stairs,” said a servant, tapping at my room-door one morning, while I was in the act of dressing myself.
“Oh, very well,” I replied. “Tell her to leave my clothes. I will get them when I come down.”
The thought of paying the seventy-five cents, her due, crossed my mind. But I said to myself,—“It's but a small matter, and will do as well when she comes again.”
There was in this a certain reluctance to part with money. My funds were low, and I might need what change I had during the day. And so it proved. As I went to the office in which I was engaged, some small article of ornament caught my eye in a shop window.
“Beautiful!” said I, as I stood looking at it. Admiration quickly changed into the desire for possession; and so I stepped in to ask the price. It was just two dollars.
“Cheap enough,” thought I. And this very cheapness was a further temptation.
So I turned out the contents of my pockets, counted them over, and found the amount to be two dollars and a quarter.
“I guess I'll take it,” said I, laying the money on the shopkeeper's counter.
“I'd better have paid Mrs. Blake.” This thought crossed my mind, an hour afterwards, by which time the little ornament had lost its power of pleasing. “So much would at least have been saved.”
I was leaving the table, after tea, on the evening that followed, when the waiter said to me,
“Mrs. Blake is at the door, and wishes to see you.”
I felt a little worried at hearing this; for I had no change in my pockets, and the poor washerwoman had, of course, come for her money.
“She's in a great hurry,” I muttered to myself, as I descended to the door.
“You'll have to wait until you bring home my clothes next week, Mrs. Blake. I haven't any change, this evening.”
The expression of the poor woman's face, as she turned slowly away, without speaking, rather softened my feelings.
“I'm sorry,” said I, “but it can't be helped now. I wish you had said, this morning, that you wanted money. I could have paid you then.”
She paused, and turned partly towards me, as I said this. Then she moved off, with something so sad in her manner, that I was touched sensibly.
“I ought to have paid her this morning, when I had the change about me. And I wish I had done so. Why didn't she ask for her money, if she wanted it so badly?”
I felt, of course, rather ill at ease. A little while afterwards I met the lady with whom I was boarding.
“Do you know anything about this Mrs. Blake, who washes for me?” I inquired.
“Not much; except that she is very poor, and has three children to feed and clothe. And what is worst of all, she is in bad health. I think she told me, this morning, that one of her little ones was very sick.”
I