he understood the art of telegraphy quite well. He used to frequent the Western Union Telegraphic Office in Port Huron, where he learned much; and it was then that he duplexed the workings on the Grand Trunk Cable between Port Huron and Sarnia. This was considered a very wonderful feat, and was a great convenience to the Grand Trunk Railroad, as it made their business much easier. It is not known, however, whether Edison was ever paid for doing this. The winter having been exceedingly severe, the masses of ice had formed to such an extent and with such force as to sever the cable between Port Huron and the city of Sarnia. The river, which was a mile and a half wide at that point, was totally impassable, and all telegraphic communications were prevented. But Edison was not to be daunted by such difficulties. His inventive mind soon thought of a remedy. He would make short and long sounds express the dots and dashes of telegraphy, and jumping on a locomotive, he made the whistle sound the message. "Halloo, Sarnia!" he said in this way. Sarnia, do you hear what I say?" At first there was no response from the Sarnian operator. Again and again the short and long toots shaped themselves into the dots and dashes of telegraphy. The spectators on the bank watched with immense excitement. And at length the It was perfectly intelligible, and the connection between the two towns was once more open. answer came. Now, young Edison began to be talked about, and his wonderful abilities were recognized, so that he found no difficulty in obtaining employment. E. C. KENYON. QUIET WORK ONE lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee, One lesson which in every wind is blown, One lesson of two duties kept at one Though the loud world proclaim their en mity Of toil unsever'd from tranquillity! Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows pose, Too great for haste, too high for rivalry! Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring, Man's fitful uproar mingling with his toil, Still do thy sleepless ministers move on, Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting; Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil, Laborers that shall not fail, when man is gone. MATTHEW ARNOLD. HABIT No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved. And this is an obvious consequence of the principles we have laid down. A "character,' to as J. S. Mill says, " is a completely fashioned will"; and a will, in the sense in which he means it, is an aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and definite way upon all the principal emergencies of life. A tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain "grows their use. Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed. Rousseau, inflaming all the mothers of France, by his eloquence, to follow Nature and nurse their babies themselves, while he sends his own children to the foundling hospital, is the classical example of what I mean. But every one of us in his measure, whenever, after glowing for an abstractly formulated Good, he practically ignores some actual case, among the squalid "other particulars" of which that same Good lurks disguised, treads straighton Rousseau's path. All Goods are disguised by the vulgarity of their concomitants, in this work-a-day world; but woe to him who can only recognize them when he thinks them in their pure and abstract form! The habit of excessive novel reading and theater going will produce true monsters in this line. The weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the play, while her coachman is freezing to death on his seat outside, is the sort of thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale. Even the habit of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are neither performers themselves nor musically gifted enough to take it in a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the character. One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pass without prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up. The remedy would be, never |