picture. He has the consolation of a purpose, the purpose of expiation, through which he sees an ending. He tends ever to a goal which he is sure to reach. However long his way, it is but a pilgrimage he never makes a home.

From the fact that we can never be independent of the things we love, and from the additional fact that the capacity and the exercise of affection is needful to the perfection of human character, we may infer that we were never meant to be absolutely independent, and that such absolute independence, even if it were attainable, would be the greatest of all misfortunes. There are some most certain moral truths that sound like paradoxes. The more a man loves the less is he independent; but the more a man loves, and the more worthily, the more does he approach the possession of that perfect freedom which is as far above mere independence as the poor harvest of any joy that may accrue from selfishness is below the ecstatic fulness of the Beatific Vision.

The independence that is worth having is independence of the things that are not worth caring for. The independence which it would be madness to seek, and death to attain, is independence of the worthy objects of human affection. Weigh all things, love those that are worthy, love the worthiest most, and you will find yourself in the possession of exactly that amount of independence that it is well for you to have.

All this, however, has reference to that spiritual independence that has its throne in the inner sanctuary, and that affects chiefly a man's own personality. There is a coarser kind of independence that exists on a lower level of human life, of which it may be proper to speak a little. It is the independence that secures to a man the management of his own life without undue interference from outside. Such independence is dear, and reasonably dear to every man who can conceive its value. But observe, I say "undue" interference. And I say so because a man ought to manage his life rationally, and if the right reason be not in him, or if it be in temporary abeyance, it would be simply a calamity to him that it should not be supplied by the interference of others, whether that interference take the shape of law with its sanction, or the shape of influence more or less accentuated by those who have a claim to use it.

A man may carry on his life, though not without some hard knocks from circumstances, with very little regard to logic. He can entertain ideas which are kept from flatly contradicting each other only by never being brought face to face. He can wish the end, and turn from the means with unconcealed disgust. He may not only entertain a family of incompatible desires, but he may seek to gratify them all till fate brings his head into smart collision with one of those walls which it builds for the heads of the unwise. Often a man will spend his whole life in trying to eat his loaf, and yet have it, in striving to solve that problem of the moral squaring of the circle, in such wise that all extremes will meet in his single self. These things being so, it is not wonderful that men will sometimes seek independence by roads that end inevitably in bondage. It will

be practical, then, to glance at a few of the conditions under which alone a man need hope to secure the independence of which I speak, that independence that will place in his own hand as much of his life as his hand can hold.

First, then, such independence rigorously exacts the absence of undue pretension. A man must seek to be independent only within the limits of that sphere in which he really is, and really acts. He must be content to be himself nor seek to pawn himself off for something better or more useful. The slavery of most lives comes from men asking from the world more than they are really worth. They have not the essential quid pro quo, and quite naturally they eke out their insufficient worth by the adventitious aids of servility. But there are none of the prizes of life that are not too dearly bought if they cost a man's real self. If a man stand, say, five feet ten upon the solid earth, he has a grip of it, so to speak; and hardly any one will try to trip him up. But if he perch himself upon some stool or other, and proclaim to passers by that he is seven feet high, there arises a temptation, irresistible by average humanity, to kick the stool from under him and leave him sprawling in the gutter.

Above all, if you want to be independent, take care both to know and to do your proper work. The doing of a man's duty is the only real charter of his independence. It bestows upon a man's life a dignity on which few will infringe, and a freedom which, whoever seeks to violate, will put himself inevitably in the wrong. I know a man who is always rather taken by a touch of impudence in a new servant. He concludes that if he were not a good servant, he could scarcely afford to be impudent so soon. This may be carrying the matter too far; but there is a certain vein of likelihood in it, and, at all events, the man who does his work well may look the world in the face. Half the cringing and fawning that goes on in the world is an instinctive sacrifice to abstract justice by men who have an uneasy consciousness of duties neglected and claims unsatisfied.

PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OF JOSHUA J. JONES,

JOSE

JUNIOR, ESQ.

BY ISAAC TUXTON.

OSHUA J. JONES was born, like other great characters, while yet young. Thoughtful men were not slow in perceiving that he was as broad as he was long. From the first moment that Joshua could dig his little fist into his nurse's eye, he did so. He felt himself to be no ordinary baby. He made everybody else feel it too: which they did, particularly the nurse's eye.

As Joshua grew up, he grew out too; out and stout he grew, so that in a few years not only was he as broad as he was long, but he was as thick as he was broad. Mathematicians enthusiastically declared over and over again that he reminded them of a parallelopipedal rhombus. That remarkable figure is a solid with all its sides equal. Sporting men, who took an interest in the lad, laid heavy bets as to which side would win. Two to one was freely offered on the width, thickness was backed heavily for the second place, but betting on the height was shy, and its backers would take no odds less than five to one, which they easily got. Finally, no money changed hands, the race was declared a tie, and Joshua remains to the present day a parallelopipedal rhombus.

An anecdote of his early childhood may prove not uninteresting here. His grandfather, after whom the boy took in character and appearance, doted on him. The child regarded the old man with all that intense reverence which children have for elderly parties who stuff them with tarts and lollipops. For some years nothing occurred to mar the sweet interchange of affection between the interesting pair. When Joshua was five years old, happening to be alone with a pet cat, he had remarked that on applying a red-hot poker to her tail, the lively animal bounded into the air with a wild shriek, and on alighting on the floor, without looking to the right or left, sprang through a pane of plate glass into a back garden, and was never heard of afterwards. This event filled the little man with childlike wonder. He kept the matter to himself with a view to repeating the experiment whenever an opportunity offered. Not long after he found himself alone with his grandfather in the same room from which the cat had bounded. He had been having the usual supply of lollipops on the knee of grandpapa, who was now slumbering sweetly in his easy chair. The poker was red-hot in the fire. Joshua, in his childlike way, began to speculate what grandpapa would do, supposing the pet cat experiment were tried upon him. Would he, too, bound into the air with a wild shout, and then jump, body and bones, out through the window and disappear as the cat had done? The bright little fellow felt that his grandfather's disappearance would involve considerable loss to himself in lollipops. But lollipops had no great attractions for him just then.

After a moment's reflection, he determined not to let slip this golden opportunity; he was master of the situation. Whipping the poker out of the fire, he slipped under the arm-chair, and applied the burning iron to the venerable calf of grandpapa's leg. With a roar that shook the house, the old gentleman did his best to imitate the cat, but the cosmical law of gravitation was too much for him, and, twenty-stone as he was, he fell back into his chair, puffing, snorting, and roaring in a truly awful manner. Upon this, little Joshua, much disappointed, tried what effect a longer application of the poker to the other leg would have. The result exceeded his most sanguine expectations. Emitting a noise, the like of which it was declared had never before been heard in that neighbourhood, J. J. Jones, sen., bounded to the door, then, citius dicto, cleared three flights of stairs, upsetting the butler and the hall-clock in his headlong career, and with a supreme effort shot through the hall-door, which the footman had the presence of mind to fling wide open on seeing his master approach. The stalwart forms of three Metropolitan policemen, chatting on the flags, received the tremendous impact of twenty stone. Their otherwise robust constitutions experienced a rude shock. "Not dead but speechless," they one and all replied to the sympathising mob which speedily collected and inquired into the injuries sustained by the prostrate and shattered officers of justice. Six able-bodied men succeeded with great effort in bearing the exhausted J. J. Jones, sen., to his couch. The rest of that sorrowing crowd accompanied the remains of the three policemen to the nearest hospital where they lingered for some weeks, very much to their own satisfaction. When they resumed their "beats," they were wiser and fatter men. Our hero was found rolling on the ground in convulsions of laughter, and already getting black in the face. He was very properly whipped and sent to bed without his tea. Though his grandfather forgave him, he took care never to be alone with him again to the last day of his life.

Joshua had always had a soft heart. When he got old enough to be romantic, Dickens's Dora Spenlow's dog Jip made a deep impression on him. He resolved to have a dog Jip, who should cherish him during life, and die of a broken heart at his funeral. His first Jip was a young but healthy bull-dog. To keep him small, he gave him large doses of whiskey. Jip took kindly to the drink; grew big, blear-eyed and bloated; got delirium tremens of an aggravated type three times; and at last, after a tremendous spree with some other jolly dogs in the neighbourhood, died of spontaneous combustion. Drinking was this dog's only fault. He was nobody's enemy but his own. Joshua, with tears in his eyes, collected the remains of his humble friend, and consigned them, with an aching heart, to a neighbouring ashpit.

The second Jip was a Scotch terrier from the Isle of Sky, with all the marauding instincts of his Highland ancestors strong within him. He was bright, beautiful, and buff-coloured. He hated rats, cats, and policemen; he loved Joshua, beef-steaks, chops, and fowl of every description. This dog died of a broken heart. It was broken