Second Speaker. In savage Nature's fair abode Its tender seed our fathers sowed; Then hail the banner of the free, Third Speaker. Behold its streaming rays unite Then hail the banner of the free, Fourth Speaker. The blades of heroes fence it round; Then hail the banner of the free, Fifth Speaker. Thy sacred leaves, fair Freedom's flower, Shall ever float on dome and tower, In blackening frost or crimson dew; Then hail the banner of the free, All at Once. And God love us as we love Thee, Thrice holy Flower of Liberty! SEARCH QUESTIONS. (Sunday-school exercise.) HOLMES. (The Superintendent might print or write these questions and give them out to the school, withholding the references. Offer a book, or some prize to the scholar answering the most of them correctly before school two weeks later. Ten minutes to be devoted before the lesson is taken up to reading only the correct answers, placing those of each individual in a separate pile. The one having the largest number of correct answers takes the prize. The answers should contain the Scripture references. Teachers may also employ this plan in their individual classes with good effect.) 1. What was David doing when he was called to be king? 1 Sam. xvi. II, 12. 2. What sign was given Moses that his call was divine? Ex. iv. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7. 3. What sign did Gideon ask of the Lord, that he should save Israel? Judges vi. 36, 40. 4. What miracle did God work over a borrowed axe? 2 Kings vi. 5, 6, 7. 5. How did Jonathan's son become lame? 2 Sam. iv. 4. 6. What woman called her husband foolish? 1 Sam. xxv. 3, 25. 7. How did David act before the king of Achish? 1 Sam. xxi. 13. 8. When did David scorn to offer sacrifice at the expense of another? 2 Sam. xxiv. 24. 9. How were the men of Shechem destroyed? Judges ix. 48, 49. 10. What tribe obtained a league with the Israelites by craft? Joshua ix. 3, 4, 5, 14, 15. 11. What was the ancient law in harvesting? Deut. xxiv. 19. 12. What was the bedstead of Og? Deut. iii. 21. ones at home. ing the evening. We have not said anything When passed away the lethargy, caused by the great, we know, but we have tried to say all the flowing bowl, Jones gazed around, and saw a sight which shocked his very soul. His eldest child, a boy of six, with frowzy, unkempt hair, Was staggering around the room with idiotic stare, The while his other little ones laughed loudly in their glee, His grimaces, and flounderings, and antics queer to see. "I'm only playing drunk," he said, "to imi tate papa, But if I had some liquor, I could do it better, far. good things we could. We are yet small, and our powers of mind, as well as of body, are feeble. We cannot talk as you can; we cannot think so fast, or reason so well; but as we grow older we hope to grow in wisdom and in strength. This is one of the ways by which we gain strength, and the Sunday-school instruction is good to make us wise. Who knows but some day one of us here may be the President of the United States? or better still, may go to foreign lands, to proclaim the gospel to those who sit in darkness? We may be called to fill high places of honor and trust, and it is important that we prepare ourselves now for the stations which we soon may fill. Life is passing by, and youth will soon be gone, or the night of death may overtake us. Many little ones we remember who once stood where we now stand; many faces that beamed with love and expectation, as they stood before you on an occasion like this; but to-night they look on us, seeing but unseen. They have crossed the narrow river, have entered the gate to that beautiful city, and we are left to follow. We would not forget that life with us may close as suddenly, and we hope to live so that when we die we may join the blest above. We want your prayers for us, that we may be pure and good, that Jesus may love us, and make us his own. (Turning to the superintendent.) Now, Mr. Superintendent, I suggest that we close by asking the audience to rise and join with us in singing that beautiful Sunday-school song, "God Be with You Till We Meet Again." (All rise and sing. If the Sunday-school book does not contain it, it should be printed on slips and distributed through the audience.) TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF PEACE. W HILE we act, sir, upon the maxim, “In peace prepare for war," let us also remember that the best preparation for war is peace. This swells your numbers; this augments your means; this knits the sinews of your strength; this covers you all over with a panoply of might. And, then, if war must come in a just cause, no foreign state-no, sir, not all combined-can send forth an adversary that you need fear to encounter. But, sir, give us these twenty-five years of peace. I do believe, sir, that this coming quarter of a century is to be the most important in our whole history. I do beseech you to let us have these twenty-five years, at least, of peace. Let these fertile wastes be filled up with swarming millions; let this tide of emigration from Europe go on; let the steamer, the canal, the railway, and especially let this great Paciñc railway, subdue these mighty distances, and bring this vast extension into a span. Let us pay back the ingots of California gold with bars of Atlantic iron; iet agriculture clothe our vast wastes with waving plenty; let the industrial and mechanic arts erect their peaceful fortresses at the waterfalls; and then, sir, in the train of this growing population, let the printing office, the lecture-room, the village schoolhouse, and the village church, be scattered over the country. And in these twenty-five years we shall exhibit a spectacle of national prosperity such as the world has never seen on so large a scale, and yet within the reach of a sober, practical contemplation. EDWARD EVERETT. Woman waiting for Act III-Midnight. staggering steps. Old garments stuck into broken window-panes. Many marks of hardship on the face. Biting the nails of bloodless fingers. Neglect, cruelty, disgrace. Ring the bell and let the curtain drop. Act IV.—Three graves in a very dark place. Grave of a child, who died from want of medicine; grave of husband and father, who died of dissipation; grave of wife and mother, who died of a broken heart. Plenty of weeds but no flowers! Oh! what a blasted heath with three graves! Ring the bell and let the curtain drop. Act V-A destroyed soul's eternity. No light; no music; no hope! Despair coiling around the heart with unutterable anguish. Blackness of darkness forever! Woe! woe! woe! I cannot bear longer to look. I close my eyes at this last act of tragedy. Quick! Quick! Ring the bell and let the curtain drop. T. DE WITT TALMAGE. WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY, February 22, 1732. HE first in the hearts of his country “THE men!" Yes, first! Washington has our first and most fervent love. Undoubtedly there were brave and wise and good men before his day in every colony. But the American nation, as a nation, I do not reckon to have begun before 1774. And the first love of that young America was Washington. The first word she lisped was his name. Her earliest breath spoke it. It is still her proud ejaculation, and it will be the last gasp of her expiring life. Yes! Others of our great men have been appreciated many admired-by all. But him we love. Him we all love. No sectional prejudice or bias, no party, no creed, no dogma of politics-none of these shall assail him. Yes, when the storm of battle blows darkest and rages highest, the memory of Washington shall nerve every American arm and cheer every American heart. It shall relume that Promethean fire, that sublime flame of patriotism, that devoted love of country, commended by his words, consecrated by his example! To the old and the young, to all born in this land, and to all whose preferences have led them to make it the home of their adoption, Washington is an exhilarating theme. Americans are proud of his character; all exiles from foreign shores are eager to participate in admiration of him; and it is true that he is, this day, here, everywhere, all over the world, more an object of regard than on any former day since his birth. Gentlemen, by his example, and under the guidance of his precepts, will we and our children uphold the Constitution. Under his military leadership, our fathers conquered their ancient enemies; and, under the outspread banner of his political and constitutional principles, will we conquer now. To that standard we shall adhere, and uphold it, through evil report and good report. We will sustain it, and meet death itself, if it come; we will ever encounter and defeat error, by day and by night, in light or in darkness-thick darkness-if it come, till "Danger's troubled night is o'er, Just over the way there's a flood of light, Oh! what shall I do when the night comes down And mammas have tucked them up snugly in bed. No dear mother ever upon me smiled- No father, no mother, no sister, not one In all the world loves me; e'en the little dogs run When I wander too near them; 'tis wondrous to see, How everything shrinks from a beggar like me! And a host of white-robed, nameless things, And a voice like the carol of some wild bird And tells me of such unbounded love, And away from the hunger and storms so wild— THE NEWCASTLE APOTHECARY. (Humorous reading.) A MEMBER of the Esculapian line lived at Newcastle-upon-Tyne: no man could better gild a pill, or make a bill, or mix a draught, or bleed, or blister; or draw a tooth out of your head; or chatter scandal by your bed; or spread a plaster. His fame full six miles round the country ran; in short, in reputation he was solus: all the old women called him "a fine man! His name was Bolus. Benjamin Bolus, though in trade (which oftentimes will genius fetter), read works of fancy, it is said, and cultivated the "belles lettres."* Bolus loved verse; and took so much delight in't, all his prescriptions he resolved to write in't. No opportunity he e'er let pass of writing the directions on his labels in dapper couplets, like Gay Fables, or, rather, like the lines in Hudibras. He had a patient lying at death's door, some three miles from the town, it might be four,-to whom, one evening, Bolus sent an article—in pharmacy that's called cathartical: and on the label of the stuff he wrote this verse, which one would think was clear enough, and terse,— "When taken, To be well shaken." The Next morning early Bolus rose, and to the patient's house he goes, upon his pad, who a vile trick of stumbling had but he arrived, and gave a tap, between a single and a double rap. servant lets him in, with dismal face, long as a courtier's out of place,-portending some disaster. John's countenance as rueful looked and grim, as if the apothecary had physicked him, and not his master. "Well, how's the patient?" Bolus said. John shook his head. "Indeed!-hum!-ha! that's very odd!-He took the draught?" John gave a nod. "Well ?-how?-what then? speak out, you dunce!" "Why, then," says John, "we shook him once."-"Shook him! how? how?" friend Bolus stammered out."We jolted him about." *In both of these French words the s is unsounded. |