"EVENING STAR" SATURDAY SUPPLEMENT OF ENTERTAINING READING.

No. 45.1

AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1876

[Price.- ONE PENNY.

LIGHT FOR ALL.

You cannot pay with money The million sons of toil — The sailor on the ocean, The peasant on the soil, The labourer in the quarry, The hewer of the coal; Your money pays the hand, But it cannot pay the soul. You gaze on the cathedral, Whose turrets meet the slcy ; Remember the foundations Thnt in earth and darkness lie; For, were not those foundations So darkly resting there, Yon towers could never soar up So proudly in the air. The workshop must be crowded. Tiiat the palace may be bright; If the ploughman did. not plough, Then the poet could not write. Then let every toil be hallowed That man performs for man, And have its share of honour- As part of one great plan. See, light darts down from heaven, And enters where it may ; The eyes of all earth's people Are cheered with one bright day. And let the mind's true sunshine Re spread o'er earth as free, And fill the souls of men, As the waters fill the sea. The man who turns the soil Need not have an earthy mind ; The digger 'mid the coal Need, not be in spirit blind : The mind can shed a light On each worthy labour done, As lowliest things are bright In the radiance of the sun. The tailor, ay, the cobbler, May lift their heads as men— Better far than Alexander, Could he wake to life again, And think of all his blood-shed, (And all for nothing too !) And ask himself—' What made I As useful as a shoe ?' What cheers the musing student, The poet, the divine ?' The thought that for his followers A brighter day will shine. Let every human labourer Enjoy the vision bright— Let the thought that comes from heaven Be spread like heaven's own light! Ye men who hold the pen, Rise like a band inspired, And. poets, let your lyrics With hope for man be fired ; Till the earth becomes a temple, And every human heart

Shall join in one great service, Each happy in his part..

SONNET

Midst all the turmoil of the busy day, And in the peaceful stillness of the night, Recurs thy name, dear Karl; whene'er I pray I yearn to see thy features, fair and bright, And wish withiu my heart that thou wert here.

And yet, in memory's glass, I see thy face, And in my fancy feel thy spirit near, Thy voice, thy form, and every manly grace. E'en in my dream there comes a gentle sound, "Which yields its tune to love's unceasing sway, And o'er my loneliness young joys abound — Hhe golden promise of the happy day, When my dear Xarl will be restored to me, ; With English news, across the briny sea

THE OLD FRIENDS.

Where are they scattered now, The old, old friends ? One made her dwelling where the maples grow, And mighty stream through solemn for ests flow, And never, from the pine-crowned land of ¥ snow A message sends. Some meet me oft amid Life's common ways; And, then, perchance, a word or smile declares That warm hearts throb beneath their load of cares ; For love grows on, like wheat among the tares, Till harvest days, 'But Rome are fallen sslecp !' The words are sweet! Oh, friends at rest beneath the pleasant sc>d, My feet still tread the weary road ye trod Ere yet your loving souls went back to God! I When shall we meet ? Oh, thou divine st Friend, When shall it be That I may know them in their garments white ? And sco them with a new and clearer sight, Mane own familiar friends—made fair and j bright, Like unto Thee !

Liebig's Boyhood.

Liebig was distinguished at school as '.booby,' the only talent then cultivated in German schools being verbal memory. On one occasion, being sneeringly asked by the master what he proposed to become, since he was so bad a scholar, and answer ing that he would be a chemist, the whole school burst into a laugh of derision. Not long ago, Liebig saw his old school master, who feelingly lamented his own former blindness. The only boy in the same school who ever disputed with Liebig the station of ' booby' was one who never could learn his lesson by heart, but was continually composing music, and writing it .down by stealth in school. The same individual Liebig lately found at Vierna, distinguished as a composer, and conductor of the Imperial Opera- I House. I think his name is Reuling. It is to be hoped that a more rational system of school instruction is now gaining ground. Can anything be more absurd or detestable than a system which made Walter Scott and Justus Liebig ' boobies' at school, and so effectually concealed their natural talents, that, for example, Liebig was often lectured before the whole school on his being sure to cause misery and broken hearts to his parents, while he was all the time conscious, as the above anecdote proves, of the possession of talents similar in kind to those he has since displayed. —Dr Gregory.

The Forget-me-not.

[FEOM THE GEKMAN OF AIUCHLER.]

The exquisite German legend of the origin of the humble flower's touching name, (the Forget-me-not), is known to many — perhaps not to all. We give the legend as received in Germany, and leave our readers to judge of its -beauty. A lover and his mistress were walking on the steep banks of a rapid river ; the lady was struck by the beauty of a little flower, new to her, and growing on the sharpest declivity of the almost perpendicular bank. The veronica, according to some, the muse-ear, as others say, was the plant, to obtain which for his beloved, the young man immediately sprang down the cliff to secure the treasure. At the moment when the prize wa3 won, the earth gave way under the lover's tread, who in the act of falling, threw the flower towards his mistress, uttering the words, ' Forget me not,' and was precipitated into the foaming current, which bore him many miles from the spot of the catastrophe. The body being found, was followed and borne to the grave by his affianced bride and her companions, arrayed in white, and scattering flowers of the 'forget-me-not' along their mournful path. This flower is a favourite subject among German poets. The following is the poem : Silent o'er the fountain gleaming, In the silvery moonlight hour, Bright and beauteous in its seeming, Waves a friendly, fragile flower. Never let it be mistaken ; Blue —as heaven's own blessed eye, By no envious clouds o'ertaken When it laughs through all the sky. Flower of heaven's divinest hue ! Symbol of affection true ! Whisper to the poer heart-broken Consolation—heaven-spoken! Loved one ! —like the star of morning Are thine eyes —so mild and fair — Innocence with light adorning Their pure radiance everywhere ! Maiden mine ! attend my lay : Be this flow'ret n'er forgot—■ Whispering through the far-away, ' Oh, forget—forget me not.' Dnty stern may bid us sever, Tears bedew our parted lot ; Yet these flowers shall murmur ever, ' Ah, forget—forget me not !' List, beloved ! what it sayeth ; List each blossom's whispered sound ! As its lowly head it layeth On the dew-besprinkled ground. Bethink ! each dewdrop is a tear, That brims its dark blue eyes; Remember —when you wander near— ' Forget me not, it sighs !

' In the advertising columns of a New York paper is the following, from the notice published by the property clerk of the Police Commissioners: —' Also a horse and a watch stolen from the pocket of a a man who was asleep in the street.'

At a recent exhibition of paintings, a I lady and her son were regarding with much interest a picture, designated as 1 Luther at the Diet of Worms.' The boy asked. Mother. I see Luther and the table, but where are the worms ?'

' Suicide is becoming very prevalent in my city,' said a Chicago gentleman to an inhabitant of a neighboring town. — ' Well, really, sir. I don't know of any city where it could prevail with greater advantage to the world at large.'

' What's going on ?' said a well-known bore to Douglas Jerrold. ' I am,' was the reply, and on he went.

Smith, Brown, and Jones.

Mil. Smith is an upright man. He acts with fairness iv all his dealings. He would wrong no man of a farthing. He 'would not injure his neighbour by word or deed. His fame is pure before the world. His word was never broken ; and his promise is as good in the market as another man's bond. He holds up his head, is not ashamed to look any body in the face, and walking erect in the dignity of conscious honesty, is called upright accordingly.

Mr Brown, again, is a downright man. He may or may not exhibit the moral rectitude of Mr Smith. He may not, strickly speaking, be an upright man ; but he does not thereby forfeit his title to be classed among the downright. The phrase implies not so mnch a moral quality as a manner and a peculiarity. The upright man may hold his tongue; but the downright man will speak out, loudly and boldly, without fear of the conse quences. Mr Brown always allows his indignation to find vent. He speaks his mind; and if he combines both uprightness and downrightness, calls a rogue a rogue, and a lie a lie, and cares not whom he offends by so doing. A great conqueror is, with him, a great murderer ; a duellist, an assassin; a fraudulent brankrupfc, a robber. He condemns in plain terms what he does not approve, and never deals in inuendos,,' or hints his doubts.' Neither will he indulge in courtesies when his mind is full of bitter meanings, and call him an ' honourable gentleman' whom he imagines to be the very reverse, nor designate another as his' noble friend' whom in his heart he considers his very ignoble enemy. He has no patience with, or toleration for, any kind of terms which tend to gloss over error. Even where no deception is attempted, he does battle on behalf of plain speaking. When people talkofoperatives, he talks ot workmen; the endearing word ' wife' is not banished from his vocabulary for that of 'lady;' and ' man' is a word of dignity and significance with him, instead of being degraded to imply something the opposite of a gentleman- If a man who is not habitually downright were to say a tithe of the strong things that Mr Brown may say with impunity, he would get knocked down for his frank ness ; but the very audacity of the down right man takes the world by surprise, and forces it into admiration. It forgives the insolence for the sake of the courage, and the harshness for love of the sincerity. Mr Brown, moreover, has a clear head for detecting a sophism, and a knackof getting at the gist of a dispute, though it may be swathed about in redundancies and circumlocutions. He clenches an argument with homely common sense, and drives a truth into the mind of an antagonist with as much force, and as little ceremony as a carpenter drives a nail into a block. He is a man, to use a very common phrase, who will' stand no nonsense,' and would rather a thousand times be thought rude, boorish, and disagreeable (which he very generally is), than call a spade other than a spade, compromise an opinion, or abandon a prejudice that he had once defended. In every condition of life, in the very extremity of distress and yjoverty, a man may be upright, and will be the better for it; but to be downright is not overprudent in him vrho has his fortune to make, or any worldly advantages to expect from his fellows. If a man be vich, his down rightness is not much in his way. It may even become ornamental to him, and pass for caustic witand interesting eccentricity. The worst that will be said of him is, that his ill-nature is extremely piquant and original. If he be poor, it will receive no such honourable appreciation, but be universally condemned as unjustifiable misanthropy. It is rather a dangerous weapon in any one's hands, but doubly dangerous in the grasp of those who have not high birth or station, or the right of rich revenues, to privilege them to wield it.

Mr Jones, the straightforward man, has the candour of the downright man with out his incivility. Ho uses clear and intelligible language on all accasions, but docs not hold himself bound to select the brashest phrases which can be found. Integrity also belongs to his character; but, being more conspicuous!/ marked by straightforwardness, no one thinks of speaking of his uprightness. The notable points in the straightforward man are the directness and openess with which he acts in his intercourse with the world. He takes the broad highway, and not the crooked path. His objects may partake of the usual business character of selfish ness, but he does not make them worse by attempts to disguise them. No; he says, I am here a man of business, and persue my interests, leaving others to do so too, as they have a right to do. Thus everybody knows at once ' what he would be at;' and arrangements are made and bargains struck with half the trouble which they would cost in others hands. Sometimes this straightforwardness is felt as a little out of taste ; but all are sensible of.its being extremely convenient, und

generally acknowledge in the long-run ! that Mr Jones's mode of doing business is the best. It is amusing to see a quirky or circumambient man come into dealings with Mr Jones. He is apt to be confounded by the very transparency of the other's mind. It puts him out. He could manage admirably with one who took cunning ways too, however much he might be upon his guard; but straghtforwardness is a new mode of fence, and he sinks under it. It is the same way with the sophist, and the man who has a bad cause to defend by clever arguments. The arrow-flight directness of Mr Jones's common sense overthrows him at the first encounter.

Straightforwardness is not always combined with wisdom ; but when it is, it becomes a masterful power. Even by itself it can hardly fad to elevate its possessor in the esteem of mankind. As a rogv.:; is defined to be ' a fool with a circumbendibus,' so may one who has no had designs and no circumbenipus about dim be said to possess a kind of wisdom. In Don Quixote, we see straightforward ness united with hallucinations ; and it is interesting to reilect how that one good quality—the good faith, simplicity, and thorough honesty of the poor hidalgo— makes him rcsdoctable amidst all his absurdities. Generally, however, the straightforward man is no fool, but one in whom all the elements are well com Dined, with a keen eye, a clear head, a good heart, a passionate love of truth, and an unfaltering determination to pursue it.

We trust, as the world gets older, upright and straightforward men will increase amongst us, and downright men become more scarce. The first qualities are unquestionably virtues ; but the last is at the best anunpleasant characteristic. Bownrignt men do not see things quite in their true light. They are oddities in our social scene. The soft words which they deprecate and whichtheyneverwill consent to use, what are they but the result of an improved civilisation ? In a ruder age, when bad actions were more frequent and of a grosser nature than now, it would have been cowardice and baseness in any who could see the evil to speak of it mildly. But now, when a tolerably equable stand ard of good conduct exists in all classes aiming at being' called respectable, and when a vast tribunal instantly condemns any occasional aberration, softer terms are sufficient ; and merely to express surprise at any little delinquency, conveys, in these days, a severer reproof than would have been borne two hundred years ago by a violent public declamation.

Two Mighty Hunters—Very.

Said Mr Magruder, in the boarding-house last night 'I here they're having great goose hunting now over on Long Island,' ' Are they r" said Maguflin. ' I never had much luck shooting geese. 'I suppose not,' said Magruder, com passionately; ; not much used to lire-arms, hoy ? I never read about gecso but wluit I think of a day's sport I had down on Shinnecock Bay one day last year. The geese were flying very thick, and I took my V gun and •' ' Your V guv ?' interrupted Mr Ma guflin ; ' what is a V gun ?'

' You. will learn further on in the nar ration,' answered Magruder, continuing his story —'and went down there. One morning we saw coming up from the south what I supposed to be the largest flock of geese that ever flew. They came along in a traingle, with a leader on the point towards us. I got a fi.siierman to hold the V gun, and I took aim and let her go. The charge cleared both wings of tfcie leader, and then spread out like a V, and —I am afraid yi>u will scarcely believe me, Mr Magufiln, but it just went down the inside of each line of birds and carried away their inner wings as though, they had been chopped oIF with a hatchet Losing their balance from having only one wing apiece, they were thrown violently together by the continued flapping of the outside wings. Every bird was killed by the shock of the collision and they fell to the earth in a line tliat measured '14)1 feet. Thgre were just 8U1) birds; 40-i pairs and the old head goose that was the leader.

' Your speaking of long-necked crea tures,' said Mr Maguffin calmly, 're minds me of my giraffe hunt in South Africa. Great sport, giraffe hunting. We had one hunter who was such a fast run ner that he would often get clear a-head of the party and catch a giraffe all by himself. Then he'd take a couple of turns of the giraffe's neck around a tree and hold him until we camo up. One day I was out alone, and I came across two tremen dous giraffe's together away from the woods. I sneaked up behind them grabbed them by their heads and tied 'em together by their necks, and there I had 'em.

' Parhaps you'll kindly tell us,' said Mr Magruder, ' how you got hold of their heads.'

' What ? You don't mean to tell me, Mr Magruder, that you don't know how they huut giraffes ? Why, you ignorant coon giraffe hunters always wear stilts !'

Luther and Calvin.

AN AMERICAN ORATOR'S OPINIONS,

Dubing the American Centenial opening ceremonies, one of the speakers gave his views upon two, among others, of Europe's greater divines. He said of

I MARTIN LUTHER, llt was a mistake to suppose that Martin Luther originated the Reformation, or that he was the father of it in any sense. The Reformation would have come if Luther had not been, and the moral grandeur of his figure in history is derived from his ability to discourse the signs of the times, to read the horoscope of the period and confess the era of God. If you inquire for those mighty thoughts and sublime impulses which are the seeds of human history you ascend to thoso heights where genius o'ertops intelligence, and insight becomes inspiration. The settlement of this continent by a strong and powerful race, who planted on these shores the seed of a new historic period, was the result of the Reformation. It was a movement that had its origin in the noblest moods ot the human mind. Let no cheap animosities between Catholic and Pro testant dim the clear, calm, historic vision ; let no jealousies of the provincial isms of human feeling intrude themselves into that august presence. Among the men who contributed by force of moral genius to reduce the chaotic elements of that period to order and form, thus supplying the practical working materials of progress, there is one whose name and whose principles have been singularly associated with the origin and life of American institutions. I mean the lawyer, theolgian, statesman of Geneva. Of

JOHN CALVIN, He said : It was he who gathered up the scattered moral powers of the Reformation, condensed them in definite dogmatic, popular forms, and administered the affairs of religion in a republican spirit, thus making his horrible decretum fateor the seed plot of republican liberty. If hia doctrine was cruel, it was the offspring of a cruel age. It was not Protestant or Catholic that was cruel; it was the condi tion of the human mind. That terrible doctrine, which now is like the nest of a former year, from which the brood has flown, pervaded Christendom, and sent forth a mighty raco that fought- against tyranny everywhere, always sided with the people, gave victory to the plebeian Round head over the lordly Cavalier, and sent forth a new Israel to take possession of this promised land of mankind and liberty. Calvinism was dispersed throughout Europe, and probably influenced more minds than any other system of doctrine or polity devised by man. Scotland was imbued with it, and through her philoso phyit tinged the thought of the intellectual world. " Tho Huguenot stock of South Carolina inherited it. William Perm was taught by a famous Calvinist,. The early Dutch colonists of New York wcro of that lineage, and the settlers of Plymouth were of that athletic race.

Mark Twain Sold.

1 ava.s profoundly moved. I said, 'My son, bring the old party round. I have got some jokes in that lecture that will make him laugh if there is any laugh in him ; and, if they miss fire, I have got some others that will make him cry or kill him, one or the other.' Then the young man blessed me, and wept on my neck, and went after his uncle.' He placed him in full view, in the second row of benches that night, and I began on him. 1 tried with mild jokes, then with severe ones ; I dosed hiua with bad jokes and riddled him with good ones ; I fired old stail jokes into him, and peppered Jiim fore and aft with red-hot new ones ; I warmed up to my work, and assaulted him on the right and on the left, in front and behind; I fumed and sweated and charged and ranted till I was hoarse and sick, and frantic and furious ; but 1 never moved him once—l never started a smile or a tear, never a ghost of a smile, and never a suspicion of moisture. I was asto'iished. I closed the lecture at last with one despairing shriek, with one wild burst of humour, and hurled a joke of supernatural atrocity full at him- Then I sat down bewildered and exhausted. The president of the society came up and bathed my head with cold water and said:

' What made you carry on so towards the last?' I said, ' I was trying to make that confounded old fool in the second row laugh.' And he said, ' Well, you were wasting your time, because he is deaf and dumb, and as blind as a mole.' Now, was that siny way for that old man's nephew to impose on a stranger and an orphan like me ? I ask you, as a man and brother, if that was any way for him to do ?

( Don't you think you have a prejudice against the prisoner r" asked a lawyer of a wituess. 'Very likely,' was the reply; 'I have caught him s-, Cil i mg two or three times !'