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THE HEALING POWER OF MONEY.

Money makes a man laugh. A blind fiddler playing to a company, and playing but scurvily, the company laughed at him; his boy that led him, perceiving it, cried, "Father, let us be gone, they do nothing but laugh at you." "Hold thy peace, boy," said the fiddler; shall have their money presently, and then we will laugh at them."

THE INFLUENCE OF MUSIC.

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Selden.

The powers of music are felt or known by all men, and are allowed to work strangely upon the mind and the body, the passions and the blood; to raise joy and grief; to give pleasure and pain; to cure diseases, and the mortal sting of the tarantula; to give motions to the feet as well as to the heart; to compose disturbed thoughts; to assist and heighten devotion itself. Temple.

TRUTH.

When by night the frogs are croaking, kindle but a torch's fire

Ha! how soon they all are silent! Thus truth silences the liar. Longfellow.

THE DANGER OF MARRIAGE.

Marriage is a desperate thing. The frogs in Esop were extreme wise; they had a great mind to some water, but they would not leap into the well, because they could not get out again. Selden.

THE DREAD OF THE LAW.

He that will do all that he can lawfully, would, if he durst, do something that is not lawful.

THE JUDICIOUS USE OF PRIDE.

Jeremy Taylor.

In beginning the world, if you don't wish to get chafed at every turn, fold up your pride carefully, put it under lock and key, and only let it out to air upon grand occasions. Pride is a garment all stiff brocade outside-all grating sackcloth on the side next to the skin. Even kings don't wear the dalmaticum except at a coronation. Bulwer.

INCAPABILITY.

He who gives himself airs of importance exhibits the credentials of impotence.

Lavater.

PERNICIOUS EFFECT OF PUFFING IN LITER

ATURE.

Though we have no apprehensions that puffing will ever confer permanent reputation on the undeserving, we still think its influence most pernicious. Men of real merit will, if they persevere, at last reach the station to which they are entitled, and intruders will be ejected with contempt and derision. But it is no small evil that the avenues to fame should be blocked up by a swarm of noisy, pushing, elbowing pretenders, who, though they will not ultimately be able to make good their own entrance, hinder, in the meantime, those who have a right to enter. All who will not disgrace themselves by joining in the unseemly scuffle, must expect to be first hustled and shouldered back. Some men of talents, accordingly, turn away in dejection from pursuits in which success appears to bear no proportion to desert. Others employ, in self-defence, the means by which competitors far inferior to themselves appear for a time to obtain a decided advantage. There are few who have sufficient confidence in their own powers, and sufficient elevation of

mind to wait with secure and contemptuous patience while dunce after dunce presses before them. Those who will not stoop to the baseness of the modern fashion, are too often disThose who do stoop to it are always

couraged. degraded.

SEVERE SUFFERING.

Macaulay.

"Oh, what we must suffer for the sake of God's Church!" said the Abbot, when the roast fowl burned his fingers. German Proverb.

VANITY IN CONVERSATION.

The reason why few persons are agreeable in conversation is, because each thinks more of what he intends to say than of what others are saying, and seldom listens but when he desires to speak. Rochefoucauld.

DEATH AT FAULT.

A lady, of great age, once observed to a very old man, "It seems as if Death had forgotten you and me." "Hush, ma'am," said the gentleman; "if he hears you, he will remember us."

Barker.

SORROW.

Sorrow is at once the lot, the trial, and the privilege of man.

CEREMONY.

Helps.

Of all people ladies have no reason to cry down ceremony, for they take themselves slighted without it. And were they not used with ceremony, with compliments and addresses, with legs and kissing of hands, they were the pitifullest creatures in the world. But yet methinks to kiss their hands after their lips, as some do, is like little boys that, after they eat the apple, fall to the paring, out of a love they have to the apple.

BIOGRAPHY.

Selden.

Biography is the most universally pleasant, universally profitable of all reading. Carlyle.

UNREGENERATE CHILDREN.

There are four good mothers, of whom are often born four unhappy daughters; truth begets hatred, happiness pride, security danger, and familiarity contempt. Steele.

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