able in the extreme. All looked at him as he passed, and all with a sense of indignation. His story was known. Two years before there had come to him, by inheritance, a fortune of twenty thousand dollars, to one of his antecedents a fortune princely indeed. With the twenty thousand dollars came, also, one of the finest farms of that region. When he drove by that day, every dollar was gone. Fast men, fast women, fast living, carousing, gambling, drinking, had done it all. The splendid opportunity had been traded away, "for so much trash as may be grasped-thus." He wanted pleasure -the wild, loose life-and he had it, for two years; then the dump-cart! "Take my name from your church book," said a young man, standing by my side, by the altar of a city church. "Strike it out. I want my liberty." Up to that hour that young man had been steadily rising in the esteem of all who knew him. The church had been to him as a ladder assisting him to the heights of popular regard. The prospect before him was as fair as human heart could wish. Then came the tempter, whispering of "unnecessary restraint," of "freedom from ecclesiastical straitjackets," of "larger liberty," of "repudiation of old-fogyism," and he fell; disappearing, as did the young man of the Scriptures, "sorrowful because he had great possessions," because he could not make the sacrifice demanded by the faith he had avowed; because he had neither the wisdom nor the courage to stand in the life which, thus far, had so powerfully contributed to his success. Appeal was useless, and with a sinking heart we watched him going out, like another Judas, into the night. "J. died last night. Come and conduct funeral service." So ran the telegram. As we read it, there rose before us the form and face of one of the most brilliant and promising young men of our acquaintance, one once a member of a Christian church, honored by all, "excellent and of good report" in every way, a fond husband, an affectionate father, a successful man of business-afterward, an agnostic and a failure. Death had come and there remained but a shadowed grave; shadowed by the remembrance of a life wasted, of powers misused, of influence perverted in the advocacy of ideas repudiated, it is true, on the threshold of eternity, but repudiated too late to counteract the evil of those wasted years. These are but samples from the ever-unfolding book of human experience. Everywhere about us, in the churches, in the shop, the mill, the office, the trading goes on. It goes on, too, in colleges and schools, no less than in the ordinary walks of life. Every year hundreds of young men are sent home from halls of learning, branded with a reputation sure to follow them through life. Before them have been the great possibilities for education and mental development open to the youth of America as to the youth of no other land of earth; behind them fathers and mothers willing, at any cost of personal sacrifice, to furnish the means wherewith to afford to their children privileges, the like of which they were never permitted to enjoy; about them instructors, abounding in the learning of the schools, and rich in stores of practical wisdom, ready to act as counselors and friends; all that anyone could ask, in the way of opportunity, within their grasp. Young men, working their way amid poverty, privation, and want, looked upon them, envious of their condition, angered, almost, at the contrasts presented in their respective conditions and experiences. The verdict was, "expelled." Opportunities of acquisition of knowledge, of mental discipline, of preparation for useful service, of winning fame and fortune, all counted as nothing, when laid over against the delirious pleasure of a single forbidden hour. Opportunities lost, generally speaking, are lost forever; they come not back again. "A thousand years a poor man watched Before the gate of Paradise; It oped and shut. Ah! was he wise?” A few years ago there arose in the West a congressman, a man who flashed and flamed for a brief day athwart the horizon of our political life; then, like a meteor, he disappeared. In an unlucky hour a letter so full of grotesque spelling that even Mrs. Partington would have blushed to own authorship thereof, found its way into print, with the congressman's name attached. The country burst into a laugh, and the man was doomed, literally laughed out of the court of public opinion. Not even his pitiful plea that some one had "mucilated" his letter could avail. The glamour was gone and, with the glamour, the ambitious politician. Deficiencies of like character have robbed many a man of distinction which otherwise might have been his. Never stopping to think of the value of opportunities for the gaining of education; refusing to believe that they would have anything to do with manhood, too late, they would have given fortunes for the acquisitions those lost opportunities would have afforded. Yet the trading goes on. Everywhere the gambling spirit prevails. 66 Trading in futures," men term those transactions where they buy and sell that which, as yet, is not, and that which, likely, may never be, but of all "tradings in futures" none are so frightful in their outcome as those in which honor, reputation, good name, respect of men, hope of success, everything, is bartered for the pleasure that simply destroys; that happiness that perishes with the using. Looking out over the wrecks of human lives, lining, in every direction, the coasts of human experience, marking the fallings of men and that which ruined them, how significant become the solemn, and, as some think, almost mocking words of one who, favored with opportunities such as have come to but few of any age, or clime, yet turned aside to vanity, dying at last of weariness and vexation of spirit. "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." Seize, then, the chance that comes to you. Do as did the dying Garfield when told that there was but one chance out of a hundred for him to live. Say with him, "I will take that chance!" "Be wise! The tide is at its height, Which now may waft thee to the wished-for shore; Waiting for Something to Turn Up. Τ REV. ALPHEUS BAKER HERVEY, PH.D. HIS was the motto of that extraordinary man, whose interesting biography we owe to the pen of Mr. Charles Dickens, the late Wilkins Micawber. If closely pressed, we should have to admit that his career was not especially distinguished by what we call success. As a business man he does not shine forth an example to the world. It does not appear that Her Majesty ever selected him, as she did Bessemer, and Mason, and many others, for knightly honors, as a recognition of his great services to the wealth-producing activities of the nation. He was often deeply concerned in business transactions, and was justly celebrated for the number and variety of the legal papers which he signed and executed. Few in his day were more familiar with the stamped paper on which subjects of the British Crown record their contracts. His were always contracts to pay certain sums due, for value received. Though a distinguished man of affairs, his sense of meum et tuum was that obscure or defective that he considered himself to have fully discharged a debt when he had signed one of these bills. In consequence, those having the misfortune to be his creditors, taking a different view of the matter, and not finding these bills passing current like those of the Bank of England, subjected this great "financier" to endless troubles, by means of writs, and civil processes, and deputy sheriffs, and debtors' prisons, and things of that sort. Indeed, one can hardly read the story of this remarkable man, whose history so brilliantly illustrates our theme, without coming to see that it requires almost as much genius, and quite as much trouble, to manage |