POETRY.-ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS. Poetry. THE OLD PSALM TUNE. You asked, dear friend, the other day, | I hear my brother's ringing tones Why still my charmed ear I've heard in old St. Peter's dome, When clouds of incense rise, When skilled and cultured art But yet, dear friend, though rudely As once on earth they rung; And friends that walk in white above For they who sing are of the blest, Whose hours are one eternal rest On heaven's sweet floating tide. Their souls and hearts keep time Sometimes a sweetness falls On those they loved and left below, And softly homeward calls. Anecdotes and Selections. -Mrs. Stowe. A LESSON IN THE WOODS.-Some sixty years ago there lived on the borders of civilization a man who had an aged, infirm, and blind father. The old man frequently broke the crockery on which his food was served. His son's wife complained of it, and the son at last determined to take a block of wood and hew out a tray or trough on which to feed his father. Accordingly he took bis axe and went to the forest, followed by his little son. He found a poplar that looked as if it would THE FIRESIDE. suit his purpose, and he began to cut out a block of the desired size. Having swung his axe a few moments, he became weary, and his son said, "Father, what are you going to make?" The father replied, "I am going to make a trough for your grandfather to eat out of." The little boy loved his grandfather very much, and supposed it all very kind, and said, "I am so glad; won't it be nice? Father, when you get to be old and blind, I will make a trough for you." The father, conscience-stricken and fearing sorrow for himself, took up his axe, returned home, and ever after seemed to treat his aged parent kindly. TAKE CARE OF THE MINUTES.-As in money, so in time, are we to look to the smallest portions. Take care of the minutes, and the hours and years will take care of themselves. Gold is not found, for the most part, in great masses, but in little grains. It is sifted out of the sand in minute particles, which, melted together, produce the rich ingots which excite the world's cupidity. So the small moments of time, its odds and ends, put together, may form a beautiful work. Hale wrote his contemplations while on his law circuit. Dr. Mason Good translated “Lucretius” while, as a physician, he rode from door to door. One of the Chancellors of France penned a bulky volume in the successive intervals of daily waiting for dinner. Kirke White studied Greek as he was going to and from a lawyer's office. Burney learned French and Italian while riding on horseback; and Benjamin Franklin laid the foundations of his wonderful stock of knowledge in his dinner hours and evenings, while working as a printer's boy. FOPS.-I must pity that young man who, with a little finery of dress and recklessness of manner, with his coarse passions daguerreotyped upon his face, goes whooping through these streets, driving an animal much nobler than himself, or swaggering into some haunts of show, and calls it enjoying life." He thinks he is astonishing the world! and he is astonishing the thinking part of it, who are astonished that he is not astonished at himself. For look at that compound of flash and impudence, and say if on all this earth there is anything more pitiable! He know anything of the true joy of life! As well say that the beauty and immensity of the universe were all enclosed in the field where the prodigal lay among the husks and the swine!-Chapin. The Fireside. MAKE YOUR OWN HOME HAPPY. I THINK I have written to you about making your home a happy place for the children. Now let me say a word or two about making it a happy place for yourselves. And you may do this, if, as the Quakers do, you "try to make everything comfortable at home." One good plan is, never to sit up late at night. No good comes of that. "Early to bed and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise," THE FIRESIDE. is a good old poetic proverb that should never be forgotten. Indeed, every person, rich or poor, must do one of these things in order to do the other. "We cannot burn a candle at both ends." If we sit up late, we must get up late; and if we do, then all things will be in confusion. If you lose time in the morning, you must run very fast if you catch it again all day. Get a fair start to begin with, and then you will go on comfortably. Our Queen is, and her husband the Prince and the old Duke of Wellington were, all early risers, winter and summer. Get up early. A good wash, early in the morning, to open your eyes, strengthen you for the weather, and brighten up your faculties, is a fine thing, both for yourselves and the children. Then set open the windows of every sleeping room about the house, to let out the foul air which you have been making by breathing it over and over again all night, and to let in the fresh pure air. When you have done this (excuse my plainness), turn down the upper sheet and covers of all the beds, leaving them thus exposed to the fresh sweet air, until after breakfast. This is the way to make your sleeping-rooms healthy places, and keep away fevers. Breakfast time comes. And now I want to whisper a word in the ear of the wife. When you put the things on the table for breakfast, always do one thing-do you wonder what that is?-I will tell you— always lay the Bible on the table; and when the breakfast is over, sit still, and have one chapter read from the Old or New Testament before you get up. I do so: and if you have not done so yet, I advise you to begin to-morrow morning. You always have breakfast: you must eat, or you cannot work. Your body requires food, and the soul requires food too; and why not have it every morning fresh and pure from the fountain? The Bible is a fountain of life-its words are spirit and life-they lead to eternal life. Why go without this refreshment every morning? I am sure, too, that where the Bible is read every morning, the five or ten minutes used in sitting still to hear it are not lost. It silences bad passions, snubs evil tempers, gives good advice, encourages industry, promises God's blessing, and points to a better world. If you wish to get through the day well, read some of your Maker's good words every morning. I am not going to tell you what to do all the day through—but if you begin in this way I think you will be in a fair way for having a cheerful and happy day. Try my plan: it is worth trying; and see if it does not help to make your home a happier place. And yet there are some other things I should like to mention, and which I ought to mention, but I find I shall not be able now, as my space is filled up. Well we can talk about them another day. I want, if I can, to make every poor man's fireside, where these pages are read, a happy place-a happier place to him, and his wife, and his children, than any other place in the world; for one thing I do know, that if our own homes are not happy places, we shall not find a happy place in all the world. PAUL PRUDENT. THE PENNY POST BOX. The Penny Post Box. APPALLING COLLIERY EXPLOSION. AN explosion, with terrible results, occurred in a colliery near Barnsley on Dec. 11th. At the distance of about a mile and a half from Barnsley is a small village known as Hoyle Mill, and the people living there-almost all of them either colliers or related to colliers-were, shortly after one o'clock in the afternoon, startled by the sound of an explosion which shook the ground like an earthquake. Those who chanced to be near the Oaks Colliery saw a dense volume of smoke issuing from one of the shafts, and were so made aware of the seat of the calamity. Within a few minutes a large crowd, mainly composed of women and children, collected on the pit bank. Most of these were half-wild with grief, and, in their frantic movements from one part of the bank to another, implored information about relatives whom they knew to be below. It was known that nearly four hundred men and boys were in the pit. Preparations were commenced with great promptitude to rescue the poor fellows. These preparations were made under the direction of Mr. T. Dymond, the managing partner of the firm to whom the colliery belongs. It was determined to descend the second shaft, as it was found that the explosion had destroyed the wire rope in the other, and as the thick volume of smoke which still ascended made a descent there impossible. The police officers of the district now arrived, and found considerable difficulty in keeping a clear space about the pit's mouth, for they had to deal with an excited crowd of not less than three thousand people. At length they succeeded, and a party of men descended the shaft. In a short time they returned, bringing with them several dead bodies, all of them badly burned. Continual descents were made in the shaft which remained open, and up to about five o'clock more than thirty bodies of men and ads had been landed at the bank. Several of these were dead, and most of the others were so badly burned that there seemed little hope of their lives being saved. Among those first sent up were several ads of from twelve to fourteen years of age. The bodies, which were carried from the mouth of the shaft to the cabin, were so disfigured hat their relatives, in many cases, found it difficult to identify them. There were anxious mothers and sisters who, unable to make out the eatures of the charred and blackened faces, turned to the clogs on the eet and the buttons on the clothes for means of identification. In a ew cases the men who were got out of the pit alive appeared to be in he greatest agony; but most of them seemed to have been so enumbed, possibly by the foul gases evolved by the explosion, as to ave lost all sense of feeling. A volunteer party of explorers, numbering amongst them several entlemen well known in the neighbourhood, were in the workings, THE PENNY POST BOX. when another explosion occurred, and were all killed but one. When this man was brought to bank, he looked round silently, and seemed tongue-tied; but after a little while he told his marvellous tale with so eager a haste to rid his breast of all the secrets of that Golgotha in which he had passed a day and a night, that the hearers saw how dangerous the mental excitement might be to him, and gently hushed him in the midst of his story. Brown, the man saved, was one of the exploring party who descended the shaft the previous morning. Others had been down in the working all the night before-the night of Wednesday, on which day the terrible accident occurred. With them was Mr. Jeffcock, a mining engineer of wide reputation throughout those districts of the northern coal country. When his companions were ready to ascend, he refused to do so, saying that he would stay below and devise plans for ventilating the pit. They might send his breakfast down to him. However, Mr. Dymond and his friends had not long been out of the pit when a shock was heard and felt for some distance around. Then it was that Mr. Jeffcock and the volunteer party who had just gone down, all except the man who was saved, met their deaths. Brown had gone into a dip. He knew his way well; to this, and to his coolness and courage, he owes, under the Divine mercy, his life. Three explosions happened while he was in the pit; that one by which his companions were killed; another in an hour's space of time; and lastly, the explosion in the evening, when a lurid flame shot up above the mouth of the shaft, and when all hope of saving a single life was abandoned. At five o'clock this morning, those who stood near the down shaft were startled by the warning sound of the bell, the hammer of which Brown had seized and struck. They lowered a bottle of brandy; it was taken from the cord, and thus the surprising truth was learned that there yet breathed a human life below. One of the engineers standing there was a young gentleman named Mammatt. He asked who was ready to go down with him, and he had not to ask twice. Another-whose name is, I think, Hepworth, and if it is not I shall hereafter be careful to record it correctly, as a brave man's name deserves to be recorded-said that he would help Mr. Mammatt; and they went down together in a mere bucket, which was lowered by a rope, taking more rope with them. There was no lack of light at the bottom of the shaft. A blazing cabin showed them where the man Brown was waiting to be rescued. He told of bodies that were near, but Mr. Mammatt could not find any within a distance of forty yards. Rightly deciding that the immediate thing to be done was to save the one life in their hands, the two young engineers tied their man to the bucket, and were drawn up with him, clinging to the rope. Another fearful colliery accident has also taken place at Talke, in Staffordshire. Over eighty men and boys have been killed. Some of the men were local preachers among the Methodists. When their bodies were found they were in the attitude of prayer. |