is, great or small, that man who concentrates all his energies of body, mind, and soul in one direction is a tremendous man. [Applause.]

Blunder the next: Indulgence in bad temper. Good humor will sell the most goods, plead the best argument, effect the best cure, preach the best sermon, build the best wall, weave the best carpet. [Applause.] The poorest business firm in town is "Growl, Spitfire & Brothers." They blow their clerks. They insult their customers. They quarrel with the draymen. They write impudent duns. They kick the beggars. The children shy off as they pass the street, and the dogs with wild yelp clear the path as they come. Acrid, waspish, fretful, explosive, saturnine, suddenly the money market will be astounded with the defalcation of Growl, Spitfire & Brothers. Merryman & Warmgrasp were poor boys when they came from the country. They brought all their possessions in one little pack, slung over their shoulders. Two socks, two collars, one jack-knife, a paper of pins, and a hunk of gingerbread which their mother gave them when she kissed them good-by, and told them to be good boys and mind the boss. They smiled and laughed and bowed and worked themselves up higher and higher in the estimation of their employers. They soon had a store on the corner. They were obliging men, and people from the country left their carpet-bags in that store when they came to town. Henceforth when the farmers wanted hardware or clothing or books they went to buy it at the place where their carpet-bags had been treated so kindly. The firm had a way of holding up a yard of cloth and “shining on" it so that plain cassimere would look almost as well as French broadcloth, and an earthen pitcher would glisten like porcelain. Not by the force of capital, but by having money drawer and counting desk and counter and shelves all full of good temper, they rose in society until to-day Merryman & Warmgrasp have one of the largest stores and the most elegant show windows and the finest carriages and the prettiest wives in all the town of Shuttleford.

A melancholy musician may compose a "Dead March," and make harp weep and organ wail; but he will not master a battle march, or with that grand instrument, the organ, storm the castles of the soul as with the flying artillery of light and love and joy until the organ pipes seem filled with a thousand clapping hosannas. A melancholy poet may write a Dante's "Inferno" until out of his hot brain there come streaming up barking Cerberus and wan sprite, but not the chime of Moore's melodies or the roll of Pope's "Dunciad," or the trumpet-call of Scott's "Don Roderick," or the archangelic blast of Milton's "Paradise Lost." A melancholy painter may with Salvator sketch death and gloom and monstrosity. But he cannot reach the tremor of silvery leaf, or the shining of sun through mountain pine, or the light of morning struck through a

foam wreath, or the rising sun leaping on the sapphire battlements with banners of flame, or the gorgeous "Heart of the Andes," as though all the bright colors of earth and heaven had fought a great battle and left their blood on the leaves. [Applause.]

Blunder the next: Excessive amusement. I say nothing against amusement. Persons of your temperament and mine could hardly live without it. I have noticed that a child who has no vivacity of spirit, in after life produces no fruitfulness of moral character. A tree that has no blossoms in the spring will have no apples in the fall. A good game at ball is great sport. The sky is clear. The ground is just right for fast running. The club put off their coats and put on their caps. The ball is round and hard and stuffed with illimitable bounce. Get ready the bats and take your positions. Now, give us the ball. Too low. Don't strike. Too high. Don't strike. There it comes like lightning. Strike! Away it soars, higher, higher. Run! Another base. Faster, Faster. Good! Good! All around at one stroke. [Applause.] All hail to the man or the big boy who invented ball playing. After tea, open the checker-board. Now, look out, or your boy Bob will beat you. With what masterly skill he moves up his men. Look out now, or he will jump you. Sure enough, two of your men gone from the board and a king for Bob. With what cruel pleasure he sweeps the board. What! Only two more men left? Be careful now. Only one more move possible. Cornered sure as fate! and Bob bends over, and looks you in the face with a most provoking banter, and says, "Pop, why don't you move?" [Applause.]

Call up the dogs, Tray, Blanchard, and Sweetheart. A good day for hunting. Get down, Tray, with your dirty feet! Put on powder-flask and shoulder the gun. Over the hill and through the wood. Boys, don't make such a racket, you'll scare the game. There's a rabbit. Squat. Take good aim. Bang! Missed him. Yonder he goes. Sic'em, sic'em! See the fur fly. Got him at last. Here, Tray; here, Tray!

John, get up the bays. All ready. See how the buckles glisten, and how the horses prance, and the spokes flash in the sun. Now, open the gate. Away we go. Let the gravel fly, and the tires rattle over the pavement, and the horses' hoofs clatter and ring. Good roads, and let them fly. Crack the whip. G'long! Nimble horses with smooth roads, in a pleasant day, and no toll-gates-clatter, clatter, clatter. [Applause.]

I never see a man go out with a fishing-rod to sport but I silently say: "May you have a good time, and the right kind of bait, and a basketful of catfish and flounders." I never see a party taking a pleasant ride but I wish them a joyous round, and say, "May the horse not cast a shoe, nor the trace break, and may the horse's thirst not compel them to stop at too many taverns." In a world where God lets His lambs frisk, and His

"Better wear out than You have no more right

trees toss, and His brooks leap, and His stars twinkle, and His flowers. make love to each other, I know He intended men at times to laugh and sing and sport. The whole world is full of music if we only had ears acute enough to hear it. Silence itself is only music asleep. Out upon the fashion that lets a man smile, but pronounces him vulgar if he makes great demonstration of hilarity. Out upon a style of Christianity that would make a man's face the counter upon which to measure religion by the yard. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," is as true as preaching, and more true than some preaching. rust out," is a poor maxim. They are both sins. to do the one than the other. Recreation is re-creation. But while all this is so, every thinking man and woman will acknowledge that too much. devotion to amusement is ruinous. Many of the clergy of the last century lost their theology in a fox chase. Many a splendid business has had its brains kicked out by fast horses. Many a man has smoked up his prospects in Havanas of the best brand. There are battles in life that cannot be fought with sportsman's gun. There are things to be caught that you cannot draw up with a fishing tackle. Even Christopher North, that magnificent Scotchman, dropped a great deal of usefulness out of his sporting jacket. Through excessive amusement many clergymen, farmers, lawyers, physicians, mechanics, and artists have committed the big blunder of their lives. I offer this as a principle: Those amusements are harmless which do not interfere with home duties and enjoyments. Those are ruinous which give one distaste for domestic pleasure and recreation.

When a man likes any place on earth better than his own home, look out! Yet how many men seem to have no appreciation of what a good home is. It is only a few years ago that the twain stood at the marriage altar and promised fidelity till death did them part. Now, at midnight, he is staggering on his way to the home, and as the door opens I see on the face inside the door the shadows of sorrows that are passed, and the shadow of sorrows that are to come. Or, I see her going along the road at midnight to the place where he was ruined, and opening the door and swinging out from under a faded shawl a shriveled arm, crying out in almost supernatural eloquence: "Give him back to me, him of the noble brow and the great heart. Give him back to me!" And the miserable wretches seated around the table of the restaurant, one of them will come forward, and with bloated hand wiping the intoxicant from the lip, will say, "Put her out!" Then I see her going out on the abutment of the bridge, and looking off upon the river, glassy in the moonlight, and wondering if somewhere under the glassy surface of that river there is not a place of rest for a broken heart. Woe to the man that despoils his home!

Better that he had never been born. I offer home as a preventive, as an inspiration, as a restraint. Floating off from that, beware!

Home! Upon that word there drop the sunshine of boyhood and the shadow of tender sorrows and the reflection of ten thousand fond memories. Home! When I see it in book or newspaper, that word seems to rise and sparkle and leap and thrill and whisper and chant and pray and weep. It glitters like a shield. It springs up like a fountain. It trills like a song. It twinkles like a star. It leaps like a flame. It glows like a sunset. It sings like an angel. And if some lexicographer, urged on by a spirit from beneath, should seek to cast forth that word from the language, the children would come forth and hide it under garlands of wild flowers, and the wealthy would come forth to cover it up with their diamonds and pearls; and kings would hide it under their crowns, and after Herod had hunted its life from Bethlehem to Egypt, and utterly given up the search, some bright, warm day it would flash from among the gems, and breathe from among the coronets, and the world would read it bright and fair, and beautiful, and resonant, as before,-Home! Home! Home! Blunder the next: The formation of unwise domestic relation. And now I must be very careful. It is so with both sexes. Some of the loveliest women have been married to the meanest men. That is not poetry, that is prose. The queerest man in the Bible was Nabal, but he was the husband of beautiful Abigail. We are prodigal with our compassion when a noble woman is joined to a husband of besotted habits, but in thousands of the homes of our country, belonging to men too stingy to be dissipated, you may find female excellences which have no opportunity for development. If a man be cross and grudgeful and unobliging and censorious in his household, he is more of a pest than if he were dead drunk, for then he could be managed. [Applause.] It is a sober fact which everyone has noticed that thousands of men of good business capabilities have been entirely defeated in life because their domestic relations were not of the right kind. This thought has its most practical bearing on the young who yet have the world before them and where to choose. There is probably no one in this house who has been unfortunate in the forming of the relation I have mentioned; but if you should happen to meet with any married man in such an unfortunate predicament as I have mentioned, tell him I have no advice to give him except to tell him to keep his rourage up, and whistle most of the time, and put into practice what the old lady said. She said she had had a great deal of trouble in her time, but she had always been consoled by that beautiful passage of Scripture. the thirteenth verse of the fourteenth chapter of the book of Nicodemus: "Grin and bear it." [Laughter and applause.]

Socrates had remarkable philosophy in bearing the ills of an unfortu

nate alliance. Xantippe, having scolded him without any evident effect threw upon him a pail of water. All he did was to exclaim: "I thought that after so much thunder we would be apt to have some rain." [Laughter.] It is hardly possible that a business man should be thriftless if he have a companion always ready to encourage and assist him-ready to make sacrifices until his affairs may allow more opportunity for luxuries. If during the day a man has been harassed and disappointed, hard chased by notes and defrauded, and he find in his home that evening a cheerful sympathy, he will go back next day to his place of business with his courage up, fearless of protests, and able from ten to three o'clock to look any bank full in the face. During the financial panic of 1857 there was many a man who went through unabashed because while down in the business marts he knew that although all around him they were thinking only of themselves, there was one sympathetic heart thinking of him all day long, and willing, if the worst should come, to go with him to a humble home on an unfashionable street, without murmuring, on a sewingmachine to play "The Song of the Shirt." [Applause.] Hundreds of fortunes that have been ascribed to the industry of men bear upon them the mark of a wife's hand. Bergham, the artist, was as lazy as he was talented. His studio was over the room where his wife sat. Every few minutes, all day long, to keep her husband from idleness, Mrs. Bergham would take a stick and thump up against the ceiling, and her husband would answer by stamping on the floor, the signal that he was wide-awake and busy. One-half of the industry and punctuality that you witness every day in places of business is merely the result of Mrs. Bergham's stick thumping against the ceiling. But woe to the man who has an experience anything like the afflicted man, who said that he had during his life three wives-the first was very rich, the second very handsome, and the third an outrageous temper. "So," says he, "I have had 'the world, the flesh, and the devil.'" [Laughter.]

Want of domestic economy has ruined many a fine business. I have known a delicate woman strong enough to carry off her husband's store on her back and not half try. I have known men running the gantlet between angry creditors while the wife was declaring large and unprecedented dividends among milliners' and confectioners' shops. I have known men, as the phrase goes, "With their nose to the grindstone," and the wife most vigorously turning the crank. Solomon says: "A good wife is from the Lord," but took it for granted that we might easily guess where the other kind comes from. [Laughter.] [Laughter.] There is no excuse for a man's picking up a rough flint like that and placing it so near his heart, when the world is so full of polished jewels. And let me say, there never was a time since the world stood when there were so many