IN 404 Honorius was emperor. At that time, in the remote deserts of Libya, there dwelt an obscure monk named Telemachus. He had heard of the awful scenes in the far-off Coliseum at Rome. Depend upon it, they lost nothing by their transit across the Mediterranean in the hands of Greek and Roman sailors. In the baths and market-places of Alexandria, in the Jewries of Cyrene, in the mouths of every itinerant Eastern story-teller, the festive massacres of the Coliseum would doubtless be clothed in colors truly appalling, yet scarcely more appalling than the truth. Telemachus brooded over these horrors till his mission dawned upon him. He was ordained by heaven to put an end to the slaughter of human beings in the Coliseum. He made his way to Rome. He entered the Coliseum with the throng, what time the gladiators were parading in front of the emperor with uplifted swords and the wild mockery of homage—“_Morituri te salutant._” Elbowing his way to the barrier, he leapt over at the moment when the combatants rushed at each other, threw himself between them, bidding them, in the name of Christ, to desist. To blank astonishment succeeded imperial contempt and popular fury. Telemachus fell slain by the swords of the gladiators. Legend may adorn the tale and fancy fill out the picture, but the solid fact remains—_there never was another gladiatorial fight in the Coliseum_. One heroic soul had caught the flow of public feeling that had already begun to set in the direction of humanity, and turned it. He had embodied by his act and consecrated by his death the sentiment that already lay timidly in the hearts of thousands in that great city of Rome. In 430 an edict was passed abolishing forever gladiatorial exhibitions.—_Good Words._ * * * * * ALL merit ceases the moment we perform an act for the sake of its consequences. Truly in this respect “we have our reward.”—_Wilhelm von Humboldt._ CHAUTAUQUA TO CALIFORNIA. By FRANCES E. WILLARD, President N. W. C. T. U. I. I.—SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. In one thing Chautauqua and California are alike—each is a climax, and both are “made up of every creature’s best.” My sufficient consolation for missing one of them this year is, that I saw the other. Let us speed onward, then, taking Chautauqua as our point of departure, in a Pickwickian sense only, unless for the further reason that it has the high prerogative of making all its happy denizens believe it to be the center of gravity (and good times) for one planet at least; the meridian from which all fortunate longitude is reckoned and all lucky time-pieces set. Our swift train, “outward bound,” races along through the old familiar East and the West no longer new.