Here is the development of life apparently without the agency of the mother, and what a marvel! The chemist may place together in a body in a warm place, just such elements or substances: he may carefully weigh the water, the albumen, the phosphotic compounds, the sulphur, the iron, soda, etc., and construct a very accurate egg mixture, but out of it all there will never come a living chick. In this, we obtain some idea how little we actually know about life, how dark is the region where the life principle begins, or where the vital forces originate. The indefatigable man of science has pushed his inquiries close up to the boundary between the inanimate and the animate; but he has never been able to obtain the least glimpse of anything upon the _life_ side of the line. However great maybe our curiosity, our skill or knowledge in this state of existence, there is not the least probability that we shall ever be able to endow matter with life, or know much more than we do at present of its origin or nature. * * * * * AUNTIE, to a little four-year-old who is resting his head on the table--"Ah, Louis, you are sleepy; you will have to go to bed." "Oh, no, auntie, I aren't sleepy; but my head is loose, so I laid it down here." * * * * * HE WAS ONLY A NEWSBOY. It was a very small funeral procession that wended its way slowly from the King's County Hospital to the Holy Cross Cemetery at Flatbush, New York. There were no handsome carriages, no long string of hacks, only the hearse containing a small, plain coffin, followed by a solitary coach. But the mourning was just as sincere as at the largest and most imposing funeral. And it was not confined to the four boys who accompanied the body of their dearest friend to its last resting-place. A hundred hearts were touched by grief. A hundred faces were wet with tears. "It's only a newsboy," said a policeman. True, only a newsboy, a waif from the streets of the great city. But no philanthropist was ever kinder, no friend more true, no soldier braver, than little Joe Flanigan. Every newsboy about the offices of New York's great journals knew and loved him. All owed him a debt of gratitude for the many good deeds he had done in his humble way.