liteness would never treat the man in the pulpit with such gross incivility. In conclusion, there are a great many things to which I might further call your attention, but time fails me. Sometimes a donkey comes into God's house with his hat on until he takes his seat, or he comes in without cleaning his feet, or he will loll and roll upon his pew, or he will sleep and snore, but often the preacher is to blame for this latter vice-soporific asininity. Sometimes a fellow will twist and screw on his seat and make the preacher nervous and irritable, but it is also possible that the preacher sometimes has the opposite effect of sleep upon some auditors. Cultivated people, however, avoid these incivilities. It is said that a Frenchman of culture and refinement will listen to a performance or the most insipid and ludicrous conversation with deepest attention and pleasure, apparently, lest he might otherwise offend or embarrass the speaker or actor. No matter how you feel about a place, a person, or a performance, never display your sense of displeasure, ridicule, or criticism at the time. It is asinine to do so. I always try to show consideration and respect, no matter what the character of the audience I visit or the discourse I hear or the performance I see. It is but politeness for me to behave in other people's houses, however humble, obscure, or low; and children and young people should above all remember when they are in God's house, and remember that when away from home they represent their parents and their rearing. Your conduct is the exponent of your training. When you misbehave you represent your parents, and if you properly represent them by bad conduct, you tell a bad story of parentage and of yourself as well. It is at least a matter of good policy to behave well in God's house whether you feel like it or have been trained to it or not. I should hate for the world to think badly of my mother and father, even if I had no respect for myself. Never play the donkey nor ask the world to write you down as an ass. According to Esop, in his fable of the old lion, the ass is the "disgrace of nature." Surely no human being having a high sense of honor and of self-respect would covet the characterization of this sketch, and yet it is not unfrequently the case that no instruction nor rebuke will correct the incorrigible leather-head who misbehaves in the house of God. Sometimes he becomes offended, and his asininity becomes all the more apparent and prominent, and it is a remarkable fact that nothing short of age and experience can generally cure this asinine malady. Like his prototype, beating often does him no good in this respect, and it is a blessing that the weight and the wisdom of years, at last, wear out and prune off this detestable habit. Young people, let me congratulate you on your good behavior, and let me beg you for the future that you save yourselves from the character of that beast which has been stigmatized as the "disgrace of nature." HE picture presented on the opposite page is a symbolic representation of a young man starting out to kill time. "The old man of the scythe and the hour-glass" is bending before his thrusts, dead to all the young man's advantages and opportunities in life, as he repeatedly pierces him with the sword of pleasure, ease, or indifference. Old Time holds up the glass in which the young man's sands of existence are gradually running out; and the scythe, with which he is at last to be cut down, swings upon the old man's shoulder. The youth smiles complacently as he plies his sword, and he indicates the thoughtless and careless indifference of the young in wasting time. The past, to him, is too short to give the admonitions of experience; the present suggests only gratification; and "Procrastination, the thief of time," flatters him with the ever delusive promise of "time enough yet" in the future. Wildly, fearlessly, recklessly, this youthful devotee of pleasure thrusts his sword, ever following old Time in the rear and piercing him in the back, instead of taking him by the forelock. He is regardless of the fact that Time is bald upon the back of the head; that behind him all opportunity and effort, however good, are lost. Thousands earnestly and |