lords to wring extortionate rents from their defenceless tenantry, and to maintain all their iniquitous powers a little longer. The Queen will sign this tyrannical coercion act, yet her lord high chamberlain, the Earl of Kenmare, himself one of the notorious evicting landlords of Kerry, has the audacity to invite the officials of Irish cities and towns to assist in celebrating her Majesty's jubilee. Nearly all the elected officials, however, have very properly refused to attend, and the Mayor of Cork, in his dignified reply to the invitation, declares it to be little short of an outrage upon the self-respect of the Irish people. And that is the way it will strike American observers.

To ask the representatives of Ireland to join in crying "Hallelujah" over the fifty years of Victoria's reign is, to say the least, a grotesque impertinence. The years of her majesty's rule furnish an Irish chronicle so dark that it cannot be paralleled in any other country on the face of the earth. Mr. Mulhall's Statistics of the World, published in 1884, and recently quoted in the House of Commons by Sir William Vernon Harcourt and Mr. Gladstone, tell the terrible story in cold figures which astound by their stupendous magnitude.

On page 188 of that work, under the title, "Deaths by Famine (Ireland, 1847)," appears the appalling total, 1,029,000 souls. On page 175, under the title, "Evictions (Ireland)," is given a detailed statement of the number of families evicted each year from 1849 to 1882 inclusive. In these thirty-three years no fewer than 482,000 families, numbering 2,410,000 souls were flung out on the roadside by eviction, or about thirty-five per cent. of the population. At page 168, under the title "Emigration (Ireland)," the detailed statement of the emigration from Ireland for the same thirty-three years shows the enormous total to have been 3,130,000 souls.

These statistics only deal with two-thirds of the period covered by her majesty's reign. In face of these astounding facts and of the long series of odious coercion acts under cover of which this wholesale extermination and expatriation was carried out, it certainly savors of cruel and gratuitous insult to invite the Irish nation to swell Victoria's jubilee shoutings.

THE COERCION BILL.-The Westminster Review has this to say in an article on the "Eighty-Seventh Coercion Bill": "For the moment ministers will probably succeed in carrying their programme, or at least a portion of it, through. But the day of awakening has come, and the day of reckoning is close at hand. Ministers and parliaments do not live forever. The people finally have their fate in their hands. From all parts of the country from north and south and east and westthe people have signified their hostility to the proposals of government in terms loud, resonant, and unmistakable. The present tide of indignation may ebb after the bill has been passed into law, but it will flow in full strength once more when the government proceed to put their Coercion Act in operation."

UNDER A CRAZY QUILT.

HE slept, and dreamt that the kangaroo
Had given a fancy ball;

The elephant came with the festive gnu,
The mouse with the ostrich tall.

A funny giraffe, that did nothing but laugh,
Dropped in with a centipede;

And a cricket and flea, that had just been to tea,
Waltzed round with remarkable speed.

Then all, ere they left, made a graceful bow,
And out in the moonlight sped;

Except a ponderous brindle cow,

Which stopped to stand on its head.

The little boy woke, and grinned at the joke

Sprang out of his bed with a lilt;

"I can dream it all over," said he, "while they cover
Me up with this crazy quilt."

BRIDGET O'LEARY: THE EFFECTS OF INDULGENCE IN DRINK.

IN a dimly-lighted room, a young girl, on whose fair head scarce sixteen summers have shed their golden light, kneels by the bedside of her sick mother. No tears fall from her burning eyes. She has forced them back so often lest they should pain or alarm the invalid, that she believes they will never come again to ease the heavy weight that oppresses her breast.

Four little ones are nestling round the fire, with that sad, mystified look, so painful to behold, that clouds the face of a child when a first grief casts a shadow on its path.

"I am sure you are worse to-night, dear mother. Shall I send for the doctor?" said the eldest girl, with a wistful look at the sick woman.

"No, Bridget; he has done all he can for me. You must try to be brave resigned, my child."

"Oh, mother! You don't think you will get better then?"

"I never thought so from the first, my darling. You are young for such a task, but I know you will be good to the children; you will be a second mother to them for my sake. It is a great comfort to me to feel that you will, especially as your father is obliged to be often so long absent from home. I may linger some time, or I may be called away in a moment—so the doctor very kindly, but candidly, told me this morning. I think it best to tell you, because the shock will be less painful when the end comes.

Bridget rose from her knees. A stifled sob escaped her lips as she silently took the children out of the room. Bidding the maid servant put them to bed, and then go to rest herself, she returned to her mother's room, and quietly took her seat by the fire, resolved to sit up the whole night.

Bridget O'Leary had been for eight years the only child of her fond parents. Her father, a commercial traveller, being often away from home, she was the special solace and companion of her mother during those first years of her married life. When other children came, she loved and

cared for them for her mother's sake.

The young girl's life had been one of comparative ease and comfort for her position, and until now, no great sorrow had checked the natural buoyancy of her spirits. But this sorrow had come so unexpectedly that it seemed to paralyze her. She sat brooding over it, while her mother sank into a deep sleep. Mrs. O'Leary had been ill for two months, but Bridget had always looked forward with hope to her recovery.

As hour after hour passed wearily away, the young watcher never once closed her heavy eyelids. To keep awake she took the fatal dose which more than once she had found to secure wakefulness, a double dose of which she had sometimes taken to send her to sleep when her services were no longer needed and she could safely indulge in it.

So subtle and various are the influences that lead to the "national vice," that those who have the charge of the young need to be very careful not to leave alcoholic drinks in their way. Mr. O'Leary and his wife were sober people. Brandy was ordered by the doctor for the invalid, and in order to get it genuine, as they thought, it was procured in a half-gallon stone jar. This was left open and might be freely taken by any one in the house.

Poor Bridget! The long, long night came to an end. The faint streaks of the gray morning light stole into the room. Still her mother slept. The tired watcher crept noiselessly to the bedside. She had never looked on death, but she shivered with an undefined feeling of dread as she looked at the closed eyes that would never again smile on her.

Sudden death is a terrible trial to surviving relatives even when the long illness of their beloved one has prepared them for it, and by the grace of God they were able to make an act of resignation.

The effect of this trial on Bridget, was to change the once happy, sweet-tempered girl into a gloomy woman, harassed by cares, which,

after all, were imaginary, in bringing up her younger brothers and sisters.

Unsanctified sorrow, not borne with resignation, is one source from which intemperance springs. Poor Bridget sought to drown her grief in the tempting dram, so often resorted to to cheer the drooping spirits. There are not many cases, however, like hers. If her father had not been so often from home for long periods; or if she had had some elderly relative to help and advise her, her propensity might have been discovered and checked in the bud. But Bridget was never seen to be the worse for drink at this period of her existence; she had gradually become accustomed to the fatal draught, but it was sapping the springs of life, and producing a fearful and incurable disease.

At eighteen, she married a respectable and flourishing tradesman, and for a time became more temperate. But the old temptation came again, and she did not resist it. Her husband discovered the painful fact. Bitter words were uttered, and retorted by his wife. Night after night when he returned home from business, the same harrowing scene took place, with sometimes a slight change for the better in the unhappy

woman.

*

Ten years miserable years to husband and wife, and their only child a lovely girl-passed away. Then came the end.

Bridget's case was an uncommon one. Brandy undiluted had been taken in steadily increasing quantities from the beginning. - from the age of sixteen. Hoping her sad fate would be a warning to the young, she related to her attendant, with heartrending pathos, before her sufferings brought on delirium, how in the beginning she had been tempted to take the fatal dram to keep her awake, and then to drown her grief in oblivion.

But one cannot enter into the details of that terrible death-bed. A fire burning internally that no earthly power could quench consumed her. And so she died—one who was possessed of no ordinary personal attractions, and well fitted to adorn the station of life in which she was placed.

THE CRAB AND THE MONKEY: A JAPANESE STORY OF

GREEDINESS.

ONCE upon a time there was a crab who lived in a hole on the shady side of a hill. One day he found a bit of rice cake. A monkey who was just finishing a persimmon, met the crab, and offered to exchange its seed for the rice. The simple-minded crab accepted the proposal, and the exchange was made. The monkey ate the rice cake; but the crab backed off home and planted the seed in his garden.

A fine tree grew up, and the crab was delighted to think of the nice fruit he was to have. He built a nice new house, and used to sit on the balcony watching the persimmons.

One day the monkey came along, and, being very hungry, he exclaimed, "What a fine tree you have here! Could you give me one of those nice ripe persimmons? I will not trouble you to pick it; I will go up for it myself."

"Certainly," answered the crab. "Will you please throw down some to me? We will enjoy them together."

Up went the monkey, but he had no idea of throwing fruit down to the crab. He first filled his pockets; then he ate all the ripest persimmons as fast as he could, and threw the seeds at the crab.

"Ha, ha!" laughed the crab, pretending to enjoy the fun, so as to outwit the monkey. "What a good shot you are! Do you suppose you could come down from that tree head foremost?"

"Yes, indeed!" said the monkey; "of course I can ;" and immediately turned around and started down the tree. Of course all the persimmons dropped out of his pockets. The crab seized the ripe fruit and ran off to his hole. The monkey, waiting till he had crawled out, gave him a sound thrashing and went home.

Just at that time a rice mortar was travelling by with his several apprentices,— a wasp, an egg, and a seaweed. After hearing the crab's story they agreed to assist him.

Marching to the monkey's house and finding him out, they laid a plot to dispose of him when he came home. The egg laid in the ashes on the hearth, the wasp in the closet, the seaweed near the door, and the mortar over the lintel. When the monkey came home he lighted a fire to steep the tea, when the egg burst and so spattered his face that he ran howling away to the well for water to cool his face. Then the wasp flew out and stung him. In trying to drive off the wasp he slipped on the seaweed; and then the rice mortar, falling on him, crushed him to death. The wasp and the mortar and the seaweed lived happily together ever afterward. This is a sample of what happens_to greedy and ungrateful people.

THE PALM-TREE.

"MAMMA, were the palms that were strewn before our Blessed Lord like those given to us in Church?"

"No, Harry, for we do not have palms in this country. The palm grows near Jerusalem. It is a tall, straight tree, sometimes one hundred feet high. The trunk is full of rugged knots, which are the remains of the decayed leaves; for it is not solid like other trees, but its centre is filled with pith covered by a tough bark, which, with age, , grows hard and woody. To this bark the leaves are closely joined. In old trees the leaves are sometimes six or eight feet long, and very broad.

"There are many kinds of this tree. One sort, the palmetto, is found on the American Atlantic coast, from Florida to South Carolina. The cocoa-nut, the sago, and the date-tree belong to this family of