SLANDER AND EVIL SPEAKING. A lady who had been in the habit of spreading slanderous reports once confessed her fault to St. Philip Neri, who lived several hundred years ago. She asked him how she could cure it. "Go," he said in reply, "to the nearest market-place, buy a chicken just killed, pluck its feathers all the way, and come back to me." She was greatly surprised, wondering in what way a dead chicken could help her overcome her evil habit; but she did as he bade her, and came back to him with the plucked chicken in her hand. "Now go back," he said, "and bring me all the feathers you have scattered." "But this is impossible," she replied: "I cast the feathers carelessly, and the wind carried them away; how can I recover them?" "That," he said, "is exactly like your words of slander. They have been carried about in every direction. You cannot recall them. Go and slander no more." It was a striking way of teaching a very important lesson. 1778 He who slanders his neighbors makes a rod for himself. --_Dutch._ 1779 He will always be a slave, who does not know how to live upon a little. --_Horace._ 1780 Slaves cannot breathe in Britain; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free; They touch our country, and their shackles fall. --_Cowper._ 1781 SLAVERY. O execrable son! so to aspire Above his brethren, to himself assuming Authority usurp'd, from God not given. He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By His donation; but man over men He made not lord; such title to Himself Reserving, human left from human--free. --_Milton._ 1782 _Sleep._--I never take a nap after dinner, but when I have had a bad night, and then the nap takes me. --_Sam'l Johnson._ 1783 We are all equals when we are asleep. --_Spanish._ 1784 If you want the night to seem a moment to you, sleep all night. 1785 O sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole. --_Coleridge._ 1786 _Sleep._--Even sleep is characteristic. How charming are children in their lovely innocence! How angel-like their blooming hue! How painful and anxious is the sleep and expression in the countenance of the guilty. --_W. Von Humboldt._ 1787 When I go to sleep, I let fall the windows of mine eyes. --_Shakespeare._ 1788 The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. --_Eccles. v, 12v._ 1789