ious. They are apt to be the property of one idea. They begin to think there is no use in anything. They look upon the happiness of others as a kind of folly. They hate joyous folks, because, way down in their hearts, they envy them. :0: The Race of Life. There is a quiet about the life of a farmer, and the hope of a serene old age, that no other business or profession can promise. A professional man is doomed some time to feel that his powers are waning. He is doomed to see younger and stronger men pass him in the race of life. He looks forward to an old age of intellectual mediocrity. He will be last where once he was the first. But the farmer goes, as it were, into partnership with nature-he lives with trees and flowers -he breathes the sweet air of the fields. There is no constant and frightful strain upon his mind. His nights are filled with sleep and rest. He watches his flocks and herds as they feed upon the green and sunny slopes. He hears the pleasant rain falling upon the waving corn, and the trees he planted in youth rustle above him as he plants others for the children yet to be. :0: The Colonel's Faith in American Labor. I believe in American labor, and I tell you why. The other day a man told me that we had produced in the United States of America one million tons of rails. How much are they worth? Sixty dollars a ton. In other words, the million tons are worth $60,000,000. How much is a ton of iron worth in the ground? Twenty-five cents. American labor takes 25 cents of iron in the ground and adds to it $59.75. One million tons of rails, and the raw material not worth $24,000. We build a ship in the United States worth $500,000, and the value of the ore in the earth, of the trees in the great forest, of all that enters into the composition of that ship bringing $500,000 in gold is only $20,000; $480,000 by American labor, American muscle coined into gold; American brains made a legal-tender the world around. :0: A Panic Picture. No man can imagine, all the languages of the world can not express what the people of the United States suffered from 1873 to 1879. Men who considered themselves millionaires found that they were beggars; men living in palaces, supposing they had enough to give sunshine to the winter of their age, supposing they had enough to have all they loved in affluence and comfort, suddenly found that they were mendicants with bonds stocks, mortgages, all turned to ashes in their aged, trembling hands. The chimneys grew cold, the fires in furnaces went out, the poor families were turned adrift, and the highways of the United States were crowded with tramps. Into the home of the poor crept the serpent of temptation, and whispered in the ear of poverty the terrible word "repudiation." I want to tell you that you cannot conceive of what the American people suffered as they staggered over the desert of bankruptcy from 1873 to 1879. We are too near now to know how grand we were. Ingersoll on Cookery. Give your wives and Cooking is one of the fine arts. daughters things to cook, and things to cook with, and they will soon become most excellent cooks. Good cooking is the basis of civilization. The man whose arteries and veins are filled with rich blood made of good and well cooked food, has pluck, courage, endurance and noble impulses. Remember that your wife should have things to cook with. In the good old days there would be eleven children in the family and only one skillet. Everything was broken or cracked or loaned or lost. There ought to be a law making it a crime punishable by imprisonment, to fry beefsteak. Broil it; it is just as easy, and when broiled it is delicious. Fried beefsteak is not fit for a wild beast. You can broil even on a stove. Shut the front damper-open the back one, then take off a griddle. There will then be a draft downwards through this opening. Put on your steak, using a wire broiler, and not a particle of smoke will touch it, for the reason that the smoke goes down. If you try to broil it with the front damper open, the smoke will rise. For broiling, coal, even soft coal, makes a better fire than wood. There is no reason why farmers should not have fresh meat all the year round. There is certainly no sense in stuffing yourself full of salt meat every morning, and making a well or cistern of your stomach for the rest of the day. Every farmer should have an ice house. Upon or near every farm is some stream from which plenty of ice can be obtained, and the long summer days made delightful. Dr. Draper, one of the world's great est scientists, says that ice water is healthy, and that lt has done away with many of the low forms of fever in the great cities. Ice has become one of the necessaries of civilized life, and without it there is very little comfort. :0: What a Dollar Can Do. Ainsworth R. Spofford-says Col. Ingersoll-gives the following facts about interest : "One dollar loaned for one hundred years at six per cent., with the interest collected annually and added to the principal, will amount to three hundred and forty dollars. At eight per cent. it amounts to two thousand two hundred and three dollars. At three per cent. it amounts only to nineteen dollars and twenty-five cents. At ten per cent. it is thirteen thousand eight hundred and nine dollars, or about seven hundred times as much. At twelve per cent. it amounts to eighty-four thousand and seventy-five dollars, or more than four thousand times as much. At eighteen per cent. it amounts to fifteen million one hundred and forty-five thousand and seven dollars. At twenty-four per cent. (which we sometimes hear talked of) it reaches the enormous sum of two billion five hundred and fifty-one million seven hundred and ninety-five thousand four hundred and four dollars." One dollar at compound interest, at twenty-four per cent., for one hundred years, would produce a sum equal to our national debt. Interest eats night and day, and the more it eats the hungrier it grows. The farmer in debt, lying awake at night, can, if he listens, hear it gnaw. If he owes nothing, he can hear his corn grow. Get out of debt as soon as you possibly can. You have supported idle avarice and lazy economy long enough. When I was a farmer it was not fashionable to set out trees, nor to plant vines. When you visited the farm you were not welcomed by flowers, and greeted by trees loaded with fruit. Yellow dogs came bounding over the tumbled fence like wild beasts. There is no sense-there is no profit in such a life. It is not living. The farmers ought to beautify their homes. There should be trees and grass, and flowers and running vines. Everything should be kept in order; gates should be kept on their hinges, and about all there should be the pleasant air of thrift. In every house there should be a bath-room. The bath is a civilizer, a refiner, a beautifier. the fields, tired, covered with dust, ing. Above all things keep clean. to be a pig in order to raise one. evening, after a day in the field, put take a seat under the trees, 'mid the perfume of flowers surrounded by your family, and you will know what it is to enjoy life like a gentleman. When you come from on clean clothes, |