If you are in doubt whether to write a letter or not--don't! The advice applies to doubts in life besides that of letter writing. --_Zoroaster._ 483 Our doubts are traitors, And make us love the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt. --_Shakespeare._ 484 THE ORPHAN BOY'S DREAM. The room is old--the night is cold,-- But night is dearer far than day; For then, in dreams, to him it seems That she's returned who's gone away! His tears are pass'd--he clasps her fast,-- Again she holds him on her knee; And, in his sleep, he murmurs deep, "Oh! mother, go no more from me!" 485 _Dreams._--Children of night, of indigestion bred. --_Churchill._ 486 We sacrifice to dress, till household joys And comforts cease. Dress drains our cellar dry, And keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires, And introduces hunger, frost and woe, Where peace and hospitality might have reign'd. --_Cowper._ 487 Those who think that in order to dress well, it is necessary to dress extravagantly or grandly, make a great mistake. Nothing so well becomes true feminine beauty as simplicity. No real happiness is found In trailing purple o'er the ground. --_Geo. D. Prentice._ 488 _Numbers vi, 3._--"He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink." A heathen king, who had been for years confirmed in the sin of drunkenness by the evil practices of white men on the Sandwich Islands, had been led to forsake the dreadful habit. He said lately to a missionary, "suppose you put four thousand dollars in one hand, and a glass of rum in the other; you say, you drink this rum, I give you four thousand dollars, I no drink it; you say you kill me, I no drink it." 489 THE RIGHT ANSWER. In an address to a temperance society, Admiral Capps told a story which is printed in the New York _Tribune_.--A man who had ruined his health with alcohol sat looking sadly at his wife, to whom he had made many promises of reform. "Jenny," he said, "you are a clever woman, a courageous, good woman. You should have married a better man than I am." She looked at him, thin-limbed and stoop-shouldered, prematurely old, and answered, quietly, "I did, James." 490 _Genesis ix, 21_--"Noah drank of the wine, and was drunken."