is shaped by a deal of stinking breath and blown adown the wind to be forgotten like the bray of an asthmatic burro, to perish like the snows of yesteryear, that should be our concern--not what the idle gabble of Mrs. Grundy proclaims us, but what we actually are. Public opinion is an ever-shifting rainbow. The "heretics" of one age are the saints of the next: the "cranks" of our own time may be the philosophers of the future; the despised rebels of a century ago are the men whose graves we bedeck with our garlands. Soon or late, those who court the many- headed monster, who "flatter its rank breath and bow to its idolatries a patient knee," are trampled beneath its iron heel; but those who take duty for guiding star and are strong enough to withstand the gibes of malice and the jeers of ignorance will find that the years are seldom unjust. It has been well said that one eternity waited for us to be born, that another waits to see what we will do now that we are here. Do what thou canst and do it with all thy might, remembering that every fice that doth bark at thee this day, every goose that stretches forth its rubber neck to express its disapproval, will be dead in hell a hundred years hence, its foolish yawp gone silent forevermore, but that thy honest act affects in greater or less degree all God's universe. I am neither a Jeremiah with a lung full o' lamentations, nor a Jonah rushing round like a middle of the roader and proclaiming, "Yet forty days and the woods will be on fire." I do not believe that we can pick ourselves up by our own embroidered boot-straps and hop blithely astride a millennium built to order by McKinley, Bryan, or any other man; but I do believe that the human race is slowly but surely working the subsoil out of its system, is becoming ever less the beast and more the god. Nations grown corrupt with wealth and age may fall, but others strong in youth and innocence will arise. Old faiths may be forgotten, but from other and purer altars will ascend the smoke of sacrifice. Freedom may be wounded grievously in her very temple by Anglomaniacs who needs must have a royal master, yet her banner, torn but flying, will stream triumphant over the grave of tyranny. The black night of barbarous ignorance may often engulf the world, but "Thou, Eternal Providence, wilt cause the day to dawn." The Star of Bethlehem cannot go down in everlasting darkness--the bow of promise gleams softly luminous behind the thunderbolt. I care not whether the Noahian tale be true that never again will the shifting axis of the earth pour the sea upon the plain--the rainbow is nature's emblem of peace, her cestus of love, and in its splendor I read a promise that never again will this fair earth of ours be swept with sword and fire, deluged with blood and tears. Not to the past, but to the future, do I look for the Saturnian age, when the demons of need and greed will be exorcised, when love will be the universal