“Don’t let de flesh ob dis wurl’ fool you. Things ain’t whut dey seem. Water looks mighty good, specially to Baptists, but whut we Meferdists want to do is to keep on a hoein’. De wicked of Noah’s day didn’t hoe any. Didn’t dey git water enough? De Egyptians didn’t hoe enny, but follered de Israelites into de Red Sea. Didn’t dey get water enough? Ole Jonah didn’t obey de Lord an’ hoe to de mark, an’ de water swallowed him fust an’ de whale swallered ’im next. Let dat be a warnin’ to you to stick to de tex’ of de Bible an’ de doctrine of de church, an’ when you get thirsty keep on a-hoein’. It’s hard now, but it’ll be sweet bye and bye. It’s hot now, but it’ll be cold bye and bye. You git mighty thirsty an’ you think de taters ain’t never goin’ to come, but when de winter rains come, an’ de winds blow, an’ you sot down round de big fiah wid de sweet brown ’possum an’ dem taters, you work so hard fur to get in de heat, an’ sweat, an’ thirst ob summer, den will de heart ob de faithful be glad, den will you shout an’ sing: “Ho! every one that thirsteth, ho!” This last appeal was too much. The congregation arose in a body at the words ’possum and potatoes and went off to hoe, leaving the old man with no one to pass around the hat. A RACE FOR LIFE. I saw a race--a race for life, too--that interested me the other day more than any that I have seen this year. It occurred in mid-air, in a kingdom not our own; but the fresh air was sweet where the race for life went on, and the fields were green beneath, and the brooks purled below and the sun shone gloriously over all, and to the poor creature who raced for his life I doubt not but he took it all in and life was as sweet to him as it is to us. It was a golden-winged butterfly, one of those beautiful creatures that is more of heaven than of earth, more of the blossom than of the brown heath, and it seemed cruel to me that this beautiful thing, thrown off from the film of a rainbow and made with an organism so spiritual that it lives on the nectar of flowers, dwells on the bosom of a nodding lily and floats on the breath of a zephyr, must come under the great selfish law of life and be forced to fight for its brief but beautiful existence. Man must fight, we know--and all history, if it lie not, is but a chronicle of battle, blood and death, in which the survival of the fittest and the achievements of human destiny have been gauged by the brains that were behind gunpowder, and the courage that comes of God. Man, beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes--it is a survival merely--and “nature, red in tooth and claw,” has been demonstrated to be more merciful than nature rotting in the decrepitude of age. But, O, that this ethereal thing--half rainbow and rose, half light and lily blossom, half child and cherubim--might have been spared!