They tell me that certain animals in the lower forms of life eat their young—a form of disease which we recognize in the sick hen which eats her egg and the swine which devours its young. Good God! Has our boasted civilization reached the sick and abnormal stage of its existence that it would live upon its young? Has too much wealth and too much glory and too much selfishness and high living made again of some men the man-eater that lived before Adam, except that the hair of his body and his tusks and his claws are gone, and now he is the clean-looking, well-fed, well-groomed son of hell that would fatten on the blood of his own breed? Talk not about his being a Christian, a follower of the sweet and beautiful Savior—the Christ, who, when he had hunted in all the mystic chambers of his God-like mind for some simile to express perfect purity and what we might hope to see in heaven, took the little poor ones in his arms and said: “This is what you must become—this is the kingdom of heaven.” Once Sargent S. Prentiss, the greatest orator who ever saw the light of day in this country, because his speech was poetry and fire and reason, made a speech in New Orleans in behalf of the starving poor of Ireland. It was only ten minutes’ long, but it sent a shipload of food to Ireland. And he used in that speech a thought which Shakespeare has never surpassed. “He who is able and will not contribute to such a cause as this is not a man and has no right to wear the form. He should be sent back to the mints of nature and there reissued out of baser metal, a counterfeit on humanity!” THE TESTER-BED AND ITS OLD-TIME COVERINGS By Susie Gentry Just now, when everyone who can has a “tester-bed,” the subject of these relics and their coverings is an interesting one. The days of mahogany and rose-wood were also the days of handicraft of both needle and loom; and many were the beautiful articles of needlework and textiles that added grandeur and dignity to the tester—the _chef d’oeuvre_ of the mechanic’s art. For every-day wear there were the hand-spun and woven white counterpanes in a variety of patterns: “The Honey-comb,” “Snowball,” “Walls of Jericho” and “O and N” were the most common designs. These were finished around three sides with a hand-tied or woven fringe, in depth from three inches to that of a hand’s length; they were very large, and hung down all around almost to the floor, that the trundle-bed under the big bed might not be visible.