I wonder if Joseph created this trust and carried it out merely because he was a man of business, or because he enjoyed the game he was at, as does Russell Sage. Until I began to study this story, I never knew what the parable of the wise and foolish virgins meant, but it seems plain to me now. Joseph was like the wise virgin. The thirteen years which he spent as a slave and in prison he gave entirely to living each moment to the glory of God. He wasted no time in bearing hatred towards his brethren, or thinking how much better he was than the position he occupied, or wishing God wouldn’t forget him quite so long, but would try and be a little more attentive to him personally. No, he simply did each act in the best and sunniest way, and the day when Pharaoh sent hastily for him and they brought him hurriedly out of the prison, he stopped and shaved himself and changed his raiment. Why? Because he was a gentleman and he had been in the habit of daily shaving and of daily caring for his body in the best possible way. And when we read that he came in to Pharaoh we know exactly how he walked, with the calm quietness that belongs to a person that has sufficient self-respect to last through the night and lap over into the next morning. Gibbon, in his “History of Rome,” says that the hatred between the religions began about the fourth century; that people before that had been willing that people should worship as they thought best, the idea being that all were striving for the same noble end. I wonder if there was something of this beautiful spirit in Egypt. It has made a tremendous impression upon me that Moses, a Hebrew, in telling the story says that the Egyptians would not eat with the Hebrews because it is an abomination for Egyptians to eat with Hebrews. One would have thought that Moses would have put the Hebrew first, naturally caring most for his own. And I keep wondering whether he put them in the inferior position of making them second because of that same exquisite courtesy which Lincoln exercised when he always mentioned the North first, as though they were the more guilty in everything connected with the War; or was it because the Egyptians were the most powerful nation, and, as a matter of fact, should be mentioned first? This, however, is but a side issue to the wonderful fact that though the Egyptians would not eat with the Hebrews, yet Pharaoh and Potiphar immediately saw, and Pharaoh publicly announced, that the Spirit of God was in Joseph. Why, I hardly know anyone who is an enthusiastic church worker that feels that the spirit of God is really and surely in a church worker of another denomination. [Illustration: MRS. MARY H. FLANNER, Poet and Entertainer. ] THE MOCKING-BIRD. O, naught to me the nightingale, Save as its exquisite harmony Sings from Keats’ incomparable ode, A hint—a dream-dipped memory.