ngs of "innocent sins," and the shavings the wood, and
the wood the coal. Sin is gradual. It does not break out on a man
until it has long circulated through his system. Murder, adultery,
theft, are not committed in deed until they have been committed in
thought again and again.

"Don't write there," said a man to a boy who was writing with a diamond
pin on a pane of glass in the window of a hotel. "Why not?" inquired
the boy. "Because you can't rub it out." Yet the glass might have
been broken and all trace of the writing lost, but things written upon
the human soul can never be removed, for the tablet is immortal.

"In all the wide range of accepted British maxims," said Thomas Hughes,
"there is none, take it all in all, more thoroughly abominable than
this one, as to the sowing of wild oats. Look at it on what side you
will, and I defy you to make anything but a devil's maxim of it. What
man, be he young, old, or middle-aged, sows, that, and nothing else,
shall he reap. The only thing to do with wild oats is to put them
carefully into the hottest part of the fire, and get them burnt to
dust, every seed of them. If you sow them, no matter in what ground,
up they will come with long, tough roots and luxuriant stalks and
leaves, as sure as there is a sun in heaven. The devil, too, whose
special crop they are, will see that they thrive, and you, and nobody
else, will have to reap them."

We scatter seeds with careless hand,
And dream we ne'er shall see them more;
But for a thousand years
Their fruit appears,
In weeds that mar the land.
JOHN KEBLE.

Theodora boasted that she could draw Socrates' disciples away from him.
"That may be," said the philosopher, "for you lead them down an easy
descent whereas I am forcing them to mount to virtue--an arduous ascent
and unknown to most men."

"When I am told of a sickly student," said Daniel Wise, "that he is
'studying himself to death,' or of a feeble young mechanic, or clerk,
that his hard work is destroying him, I study his countenance, and
there, too often, read the real, melancholy truth in his dull, averted,
sunken eye, discolored skin, and timid manner. These signs proclaim
that the young man is in some way violating the laws of his physical
nature. He is secretly destroying himself. Yet, say his unconscious
and admiring friends, 'He is falling a victim to his own diligence!'
Most lame and impotent conclusion! He is sapping the ve