HONESTY REWARDED. A LADY one day met a very poor man, dressed in tattered clothes, and looking very feeble and sickly. She took out her purse, and intending to give him a couple of shillings, she gave him by mistake a couple of sovereigns. She was in haste and passed on quickly, but had not gone many yards when she heard steps behind her, and looking round, she saw the beggarman shuffling after her, and holding out his hand. She turned to speak to him, and then he said that he thought she must have made a mistake in giving him the gold. The lady said she had, but that she would not take back her gift; and she added, “Though I am sure you do not wish to be rewarded for doing right, yet I must beg you to take the purse, which contains no more gold, but some of the silver, which I meant to give you." The man was not willing to do so, but the lady insisted on his receiving it, and then she went on her way, thinking to herself, “What a poor lodging has Honesty taken up with !” TBE BLIND. THERE are now about 30,000 blind people in Great Britain. Many of these are in the humble ranks of life, and have no means of support but their own labour. They would be a heavy burden on their relatives and friends were it not that there are, in many large towns, institutions for teaching the blind various ways of maintaining themselves. The work which seems best to suit those who have lost their eye-sight is the manufacture of rugs, mats, baskets, brushes, and such like; and many of the blind learn to weave the wire or the willow twigs into fancy baskets, and other articles so delicate that it would puzzle even a seeing person to excel them. Many blind people live altogether in the institutions, but others of them, after they have learnt some trade, return to their homes, and there support themselves; so that now and then in a village, on a sunny afternoon, you may see a blind basket-maker, as in the picture, sitting outside his cottage-door, and weaving away at his basket to the wonder of the children, who stop in their play to look at him. The blind are very fond of music, and many of them play or sing very skilfully. In some churches the organ is played by pupils from the Schools for the Blind. But it is not only in such home works as these that the blind excel. Some of them have done feats so wonderful, that we cannot understand how they manage them : for instance, Holman, a blind man, travelled round the world; William Metcalf was a most successful maker of bridges; and John Metcalf was the surveyor and projector of roads in mountainous and difficult districts. The roads about Buxton and in the Peak of Derbyshire were made or altered by his direction. It is even said that a German rifleman could hit the bull's-eye if he heard a hammer struck near it. Of late years a plan has been found out for making books which the blind can read. The letters are embossed on the page, and stand out boldly from the sheet; and as the blind have a much more delicate touch in their fingers than seeing-people have, they run their fingers over the page, and read as quickly as we do by the use of our eyes. The blind are almost always cheerful, and seem contented under the heavy trial which God has laid upon them. Are we thankful for the gift of sight? and do we make the right use of the eyes that God has given us? There was once an Italian bishop who was much ill-used, but he bore all his persecution patiently. A friend asked him how he did so. "He answered, “ By making a right use of my eyes. I first look up to heaven as the place where I am going to live for ever. I next look down to earth, and think bow small a space of it will soon be all that I shall want. I then look round, and think how many are far more wretched than I am." “Because," I replied, “I will not be false to my mother, to whom I promised I never will tell a lie." “Child," said the robber, “hast thou such a sense of duty to thy mother, at thy years, and I am insensible at my age of the duty I owe to my God? Give me thy hand, innocent boy," he continued, “ that I may promise repentance upon it.” He did so. His followers were struck with the scene, and said to their chief,— “You have been our leader in guilt, be the same in the path of virtue.” And they instantly, at his order, restored the spoil, and gave up their wicked manner of life. NEVER TELL A LIE. HOW simply and beautifully has Ab 1 del Kader, of Ghilon, impressed us with the love of truth in a story of his childhood. After stating the vision which made him beg his mother to let him go to Bagdad, and devote himself to God, he thus proceeds :- I informed her of what I had seen, and she wept ; then taking out eighty dinars, she told me, as I had a brother, half of that was all my inheritance ; and she made me swear, when she gave it to me, never to tell a lie, and afterwards bade me farewell, exclaiming, “Go, my son, I consign you to God: we shall not meet until the day of judgment." I went on till I came near Hamandai, when our caravan was plundered by sixty horsemen. One fellow asked me what I had got. “Forty dinars," said I, “are sewed under my garments." The fellow laughed, thinking, no doubt, I was joking with him. “ What have you got ?" said another. I gave him the same answer. When they were dividing the spoil, I was called to a hill where the chief stood. “ What property have you got, my little fellow ?" said he. "I have told two of your people already," said I. “I have forty dinars sewed in my garments." He ordered them to be ripped open, and found my money. "And how came you," said he, in surprise, “to declare so openly what had been so carefully concealed ?". THE FOOL'S REPROOF. MHERE was a certain nobleman, says 1 Bishop Hall, who kept a fool, to whom he one day gave a staff, with a charge to keep it until he should meet with one who was a greater fool than himself. Not many years after, the nobleman fell sick, even unto death. The fool came to see him ; his sick lord said to him, “I must shortly leave you." “ And whither art thou going ?” said the fool. “ Into another world," replied his lordship. “And when will you come again ?” asked the fool; “ within a month ?" “No," replied the nobleman. “ Never,'' repeated the fool; “ and what provision hast thou made for thy entertainment there, whither thou goest ?” “None at all !” replied the nobleman. “No!” said the fool ; “none at all ! Here, take my staff, for with all my folly, I am not guilty of such folly as this." HAIR, OUR bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made; but there is hardly any part more wonderful than the hair of our head. Though a hair is often so fine that you can hardly see it, yet it is a tube with an opening all through it, which conveys moisture to it, from the bulb-like root which is planted in the skin. When the fluid which gives its colour to the hair, ceases to flow through the tube, then the hair becomes white, and when the root dies, then the hair falls off. The strength of the hair often depends on the health and strength of the body; so that often we see that the hair of a sick person becomes thin and poor. The hair is affected also by any shock to the nerves: there are true stories told of men whose hair has become grey in a single night, when some great sorrow had befallen them, or some terrible danger stared them in the face. It seems that much work of the brain is not good for the hair, at least, we very often see that those men who are great statesmen or students are either bald or else have very thin hair, while those who are occupied with handwork rather than head-work have thick and vigorous hair, even to old age; and perhaps this may be one reason why some savage tribes have such wonderful growths upon their heads. For instance, here is a picture of a woman of the tribe of Cafusos, a race of people whose hair stands straight on end from the forehead, and is about eighteen inches long, and so thick that no comb will go through it; and, as a companion, we have a picture of a Papua, a man of New Guinea, where the natives have such a supply of curly wool that a tra Womau of the Tribe of Cafusos. veller called them “the mop-headed Papua.” It shows the loving wisdom and care of God, that where there is a blazing sun there should be provided for the native such a protection for the seat of life in the brain, while in cold northern climates the hair of the natives is generally straight and thin compared with these natural wigs shown in our pictures. And while God has made the hair of different races to be of widely different kinds, the people of different lands have chosen most different ways of decking the hair that God has given them. The Chinese shave off all their hair Man of New Guinea. to one thick lock at the top of their head, which they cherish with the greatest care; it is the greatest grief to a Chinaman, if anything happens to his pig-tail. In one of our large prisons, one of the warders was once alarmed at the dreadful sounds that came from one of the cells; and on opening it, found that it was caused by the frantic distress of two poor Chinamen; who had been convicted of thieving, and so had their heads, or rather their tails, rabs, men and boys, always have their heads shaved, except a tuft on the crown, which is left for the convenience of carrying their heads, in case they should be slain by an infidel; for they take it for granted that their heads would be piled up in heaps after a battle, and they cannot bear to think that an infidel should carry them by their beards, or by putting his unclean hand into their mouths. The Circassians, instead of cutting off their hair, let it grow long, and wear it in long plaits, at the end of which they fasten ribbons and bells. The Red Indians work up feathers, beads, fish-bones, and such like with their crests of hair, so as to make themselves look more fierce, when they put on their war-paint. Even among men of our own civilised race, the various dressing of the hair has often been the mark of a man's politics or religion. In our own civil wars, the close cropped hair, and the thick moustache, told of the follower of Oliver Cromwell; just as in the present civil strife in America, the short peaked beard, with the rest of the face close shaven, betokens a political admirer of Abraham Lincoln. St. Paul says, that “if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him.” (1 Cor. xi. 14), referring, probably, to some superstitious rites, in which the hair was used to produce an effect, as it is to this day, by the dervishes of the East; for these fanatics make claim to special sanctity on account of the length of their hair; and on certain public occasions, they howl, and dance, and whirl themselves round, their lon hair flying about their heads, an making them look still more fiendish. But St. Paul says that “if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her,” but yet she ought not to be taken up with decking it; he did not think well either |