clumsy, partial power, enriching the already rich, and despoiling the poor. On Louise already hedged about with love, he lavished love, and Millicent, orphaned, desolate, even nameless, he thrust from him. And he did it before her own eyes, and in a way that impressed itself deeply upon her infantine consciousness. Why, of course, he did, he said to himself. There must always be such distinction. Maid and mistress were not to be on a level. She was no worse off than thousands of her class. Worse off? Was she not infinitely better off? It was a remarkable streak of luck that had brought her to their door, and, in short, they were acting the philanthropic benefactors to the utmost extent; and so the doughty Colonel betook himself to his newspaper, and home-talk, and the opera, glad that that question was permanently settled, and satisfactorily and exultantly settled. And the next night he was just as uncomfortable as ever, and had to settle it all over again. But no one had blamed him, or suggested anything, or complained of aught. It was only that a little sturdy figure stood aloof and mute, as if appalled at this token of things to be, and a great, strong, mighty man-of-war was trying to hold his own against her. His head was bent on carving her fate one way, and his heart was equally bent on molding it another way. So his soul was disquieted. And all the while he did not know what ailed him. How complicate, how wonderful is man! Only, when the children were brought in sometimes after dinner, it was curious to note how careful he was to give the one as many tidbits as the other, and never failed he to secure Millicent her proper turns in the swing, but meted out exact and equal justice. Vain struggles. So it fell on Christmas eve. The cold and stormy night, the bitter, blinding snow made his warm, bright home look doubly warm and bright, as he beat along the sidewalk, and mounted the slippery steps. Never from house of his, even on Christmas eve, had rung such shouts and peals of laughter as now greeted his happy ears; for this man-child, unable to wait the perfect dawn of Christmas, had sent before him a foretaste of its delights in two tiny, dainty kittens, which had been brought into the library and were now disporting themselves with the tiny, dainty maidens. Mack had two minds on the subject, and growled, and snuffed, and snapped, and walked away scornfully, and stretched himself on the hearth-rug, and the kittens crept up the babies' shoulders, and curled up under the sofas, and the babies curled up after them, and made them ride on Mack's surly shoulders; and there was much bobbing of strings, and leaping of kittens in violent, determined, and unsuccessful somersaults, and such wild shrieks of delight, that the Colonel laid down his newspaper, and Mrs. Pierreham left the piano to laugh at the capers and carols of the quintette. Their joyous excitement was at its highest when the door opened and the inevitable nurse appeared. The little girls rushed to Mrs. Pierreham with a bounding and buoyant good-night, a little more prolonged than usual, as nurse had disappeared for a moment with the kittens, and then Louise rushed with equal vehemence to her uncle, who dropped his paper and, taking her in his arms, left many a kiss on her glowing cheeks before she struggled playfully away from him. He was just resuming his newspaper with his usual "good-night, little Millicent," when he glanced at her half askant and was struck by the sudden contrast to her late merry mood. She stood in the very attitude of sorrow, her chin quivering, her blue eyes filled with tears. Then, as if her little heart were breaking and could bear no more, that low, mournful, inarticulate wail burst from her hitherto sealed lips. "Good gracious!" exclaimed the Colonel, starting headlong from his chair. He caught up the little creature, he crushed her to his breast, he kissed every curve and dimple of her sad face into smiles, and as her fair, floating hair fell over his bronzed face, and he felt about his neck the clinging of her tender, helpless arms, a new soul was suddenly born within him, and he felt, -"Surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it not." But he was not exactly what we call an "active Christian." He was only a modest and, religiously, you might almost say, a shame-faced man, and thus, as the happy little pair danced out of the room he did not frame his sentiments into so pious a phrase as might be desired, but took up his newspaper and fumbled first in one pocket, and then in another, and then snapped out crossly, "where the deuce is my handkerchief?" whereat Mrs. Pierreham-so to speak-snickered, but immediately crossed over and gave him hers, and nearly suffocated him into the bargain; and though the Colonel muttered some thing about being fooled by a lot of women, and felt that he had made a fool of himself, as indeed he had, though he was a little in error as to the time, he knew in his heart he was the happiest colonel in the whole United States Army. I met him last summer at Newport, and as we were seated on the veranda of the Ocean House, he introduced me to his wife. I was charmed with her quiet, agreeable manners, her sensible, sprightly talk, and especially with a certain invisible, intangible under-current of sympathy between herself and her husband, something not in the least demonstrative or definite, but altogether spiritual and spontaneous. As we sat pleasantly chatting of all things in heaven and earth, a little girl skipped along the hall and ran up to Colonel Pierre | ham. She was a bewildering little beauty all air, and fire, and bloom, and swift splendor, and glancing grace, and if she had not been born of the sunset and starlight, the sparkle of seas, and the whiteness of white lilies, she would have been about eight years old. "Let me present you to my daughter Millicent," said Colonel Pierreham. "Our only child, sir," added that pompous old warrior, and visibly swelled and strutted, as if the child were his own especial discovery fore-ordained from the foundation of the world, and not thrust upon him with deft, unseen persistence, he all the while valiantly but vainly kicking against the pricks! Why Not? TOPICS OF THE TIME. IN a little book, by Rev. Dr. Dorus Clarke, of Boston, just issued by Lee and Shepard, we find the sentiment of Christian unity, so popular during the meetings of the Evangelical Alliance so frequently expressed, and so cordially responded to by those in attendance-supplemented by a practical proposition which demands from the Christian public a candid consideration. Dr. Clarke declares the existence of sects to be a reproach and not a commendation of Christianity—that "it was not so in the beginning, will not be so in the end, and ought not to be so now." Then, after disposing of the usual apologies made for the creation and preservation of sects, he declares that Christ founded a church, and not a sect, and that the unity for which He prayed was an open and organic one, as well as a spiritual one that the world might know that the Father had sent Him. tarianism an absurdity. They are an open confession that nothing essential to Christianity divides them, and keeps them divided,—an open confession that sectarian divisions are based upon non-essential differences of belief, policy, and practice. The day is past for defending sectarianism from the divine or Christian side of the question. Christianity will have nothing to do with such a defense. The founder of our religion never founded a sect, and the religion itself is not responsible for one that exists. So far as the church exists it is spiritually a unit in the eye of Him who founded it. That it is divided into parties which compete with one another, and quarrel with one another, and regard one another with jealousy, and are full of party spirit, is man's affair entirely, for which he is to be held responsible, and for which he is most indubitably blameworthy. The grand obstacles that stand in the way of organic union are, first, a failure to appreciate the necessity and desirableness of such a union, and, second, the established sectarian organizations and interests. Now in our political affairs we accept the adage: "In union there is strength," as our axiom. No one thinks of questioning it. A num The larger part of Dr. Clarke's book is devoted to an effort to show how all sects may resolve themselves into one,-or, rather, how all the sects may become one church,—at least, all those who accept the Bible as the authentic and authoritative Word of God. We should mar his work by undertaking|ber of free and independent States could gather, as to condense it; so we leave our readers to examine it in detail in the book itself, while we allude to the obstacles that stand in the way of the consummation so devoutly to be desired. the Evangelical Alliance did, in a representative assembly, on a common basis of love of, and devotion to, liberty. The members could be one in spirit, and every time they spoke of liberty they would meet the applause of the multitude. Yet, when these members should separate, each would go to his own, and exercise his liberty in building up his own, even at the expense of his neighbor. The fact that all believe in liberty forms no practical union. A union which lives alone on a sympathy of this sort would not make a nation, and would not be considered of any practical value among the nations of the world. The fact that all these States are founded on the principle of liberty, and that all can sympathize in the love, and praise, and enjoyment of liberty, does not save them from selfishness and jealousy, and competition and quarrel; while against a common foe they present no united front, and no concentration of united power. The analogy between the position of such States and the Protestant Christian sects, in the aspect in which we present them, is perfect. The fact that these sects have a common basis of sympathy, in that love of the Master on which they are founded, does not make them an organic Christian church, in any open, appreciable, practical sense. It does not restrain them from controversies, quarrels, and competitions, or the outlay of that power upon and against each other which ought to be united, and brought to bear upon the common enemy. All sectarian and party spirit in the church is of the earth, earthy; and is not only contemptible as a matter of policy, but criminal as a matter of principle. When all Christians become able to see it in this light, and they are thus regarding it more and more, the first grand obstacle to the obliteration of sects, and the organic union of the church, will have been removed. The established sectarian organizations and interests will prove, we suppose, the most serious obstacles in the way of reform. The absolute abolition of all sectarian machinery, of all sectarian schools of theology, of all sectarian newspapers and magazines, the amalgamation of diverse habits and policies, the remanding of sectarian officials into the Christian ranks,-officials many of whom have found their only possibility of prominence through their adaptation to sectarian service,—all this will involve a revolution so radical, will call for so much selfdenial for the sake of a great, common cause, that the Christian world may well tremble before it, particularly when it sees in these obstacles something of the horrible pit of selfishness into which sectarianism has plunged it. But this revolution can be effected, and it must be. It is foolish to say that the world is not ready for it. The laity are already far in advance of the clergy on this subject; and if the clergy, who are their recognized leaders, do not move soon in the right direction,-soon and heartily, -they will find a clamor about their ears which it will be well for them to heed. Through whatever necessary convulsions, Protestant church unity will❘ come. Men who have come to see that they are kept apart by no difference that touches vital Christianity, will not consent to remain divided. A free, enlightened, united, Protestant Christianity, arrayed against the repressive despotism, and the corrupting superstition of the Church of Rome, and against an unbelieving world,—now puzzled and repelled by the differences among Christians,-would be the grandest sight the world ever saw; and men may as well stop praying for the millennium until VOL. VII.-24 they are ready to pray for that which must precede it. This first, and then purified, reformed, and enlightened Rome; and, then, the grand and crowning union of all! The American Restaurant. THE typical American restaurant is an establishment quite as well individualized, and quite as characteristic, as anything of the kind to be found in the world. The French café, the German beergarden, and the English chop-house, all have their characteristic habits, appearance, and manners; but the American restaurant is like neither of them. It can only be conducted by an American, and, we regret to say, it can only be frequented and enjoyed by Americans of the second and lower grades. The aim of the conductor seems to be to sell the greatest amount of food in the shortest possible time-an aim which the guests invariably second, by eating as rapidly as possible. We have seen, in a Broadway restaurant, a table surrounded by men, all eating their dinners with their hats on, while genuine ladies, elegantly dressed, occupied the next table, within three feet of them. In this restaurant there was as much din in the ordering of dishes and the clash of plates and knives and forks, as if a brass band had been in full blast. Every dish was placed before the guests with a bang. The noise, the bustle, the hurry, in such a place, at dinner time, can only be compared to that which occurs when the animals are fed in Barnum's caravan. We do not exaggerate at all when we say that the American restaurant is the worst-mannered place ever visited by decent people. No decent American ever goes into one when he can help it, and comparatively few decent people know how very indecent it is. Our best hotels have no equals in the world, and, in asserting this, we know what we say, and “speak by the card." Our best restaurants are mainly kept by foreigners, or, if not, are modeled upon the French type. Nowhere in the world can there be found better cooking, more quiet and leisurely manners, or better service, than in the restaurants of the hotels above alluded to, or the best class of eating-houses. These, however, are direct or indirect importations; while the American restaurant, pure and proper, serves the needs of the great multitude of business meu-clerks, porters, and upper-class laborers generally. These do not eatthey feed. Thousands of them would regard it as an affectation of gentility to remove their hats while feeding; and they sit down, order their dinner, which,-pudding, pastry, vegetables, and meat, -is all placed before them in one batch, and then "pitch in." The lack of courtesy, of dignity, of ordinary tokens even of self-respect, would be amusing if it were not so humiliating. It is useless for the incredulous American to ask the question, "where have you been?" When in a second-rate restaurant a guest asks for fish-balls and hears his order repeated to the cook by the colored waiter as "sleeve-buttons for one!" and hears his neighbor's order for pork and beans transformed into "stars and stripes," he begins to wonder, indeed, whether "civilization" is not a failure," and whether "the Caucasian" is not " played out." The average American, in the average American restaurant, eats his dinner in the average time of six minutes and forty-five seconds. He bolts into the door, bolts his dinner, and then bolts out. There is no thought of those around him, no courtesy to a neighbor, no pleasant word or motion of politeness to the man or the woman who receives his money-nothing but a fearful taking in of ammunition-the feeding of a devouring furnace-and then a desperate dash into the open air, as if he were conscious he had swallowed poison, and must find a doctor and a stomach-pump, or die. A favorite method of devouring oysters is to stand, or to sit on a high stool, always with the hat on; oysters on the half-shell and the eater under a half-shell. There may be something in the position that favors deglutition, we don't know. The penalty a man pays for getting his lunch or his dinner at a reasonable price is to encounter the offensive scenes we have described. The penalty he pays for eating where he finds the manners of civilization is an unreasonable price. When a man pays half a dollar for a bit of cold meat, or seventy-five cents for a steak, or a quarter of a dollar for a couple of boiled eggs, he recalls sorrowfully and wonderingly, if he has ever traveled, the nice little breakfasts he used to get at Madame Dijon's in Paris for two francs, his dinners in the Palais Royal for three, his daily board, with rooms, at the Pension Picard, in Geneva, for five, and his luxurious apartments with an elaborate table d'hôte at all the principal hotels of the Continent for ten. Is there any necessity for such prices as we are obliged to pay at the best restaurants or any apology for them? Any man who keeps house, and does his own marketing, knows the first cost of the expensive dishes placed before him in these restaurants, and he knows there is no just relation between the cost and the price charged, after all allowance has been made for cooking, service, rent, &c. Sometime or other there will be a change, we suppose. When the times of inflation are gone by, when on one side men will content themselves with reasonable profits, and on the other, money comes harder and slower, we shall have a reform of prices in the better class of eating-houses. Our expectations in regard to the second-rate places are more indefinite. It takes several generations to train a people to ideas of refinement and good manners at the table. The average German has nothing to boast of yet in this respect, and we can only hope that the American, with his greater sensitivness and quicker instincts, will reach the desired point before him. THE American boy is very fond of gunpowder. There is a touch of the savage in him at his best estate. He likes to handle dangerous weapons, to make a noise, to read and hear stories of savage beasts and savage men, of bloody encounters and feats of daring and devilry. Nothing distinguishes the boy-mind from the girl-mind more definitely than its delight in the shocking details of violence. There is a good side to this; but the writers are few who see and consult it always in their narratives and writings. An act of physical courage, a gallant demonstration of prowess, an exhibition of free life out of doors, the brave meeting and conquest of difficulties on flood or field -all these may make a healthy appeal to the budding instincts of manliness in a boy. Beyond these lie the dangers in which current boy-literature is so sadly fertile. Of boys' books there are many that never could have been written by men of conscience; and there are periodicals, prepared exclusively for boys, which it is a shame to write, a sin to publish and sell, and a curse to read. Comparatively few of our people know what base, criminal, dirty things are prepared by tens of thousands for American boys, and scattered and sold all over the land. There lies before us now, an American edition of an English periodical, entitled: The Boys of England and America, a Young Gentleman's Journal of Sport, Sensation, Fun and Instruction. The first page bears a picture of a horse and man prone on the ground, and other men on horses, one of whom has fired a pistol. The title of the bloody scene is: "By Jove!' cried Jack, 'I've hit the brigand !'" We open the book further on, and find a story, entitled " The Three Runaways, or the adventures of Tom, Dick and Bob;" and in a startling picture, "There lay Richard Atherton in a state of unconsciousness." Jack Harkaway among the Brigands" points a pistol at the breast of a distinguished looking person, and discharges it, in another picture. “Rob Rodney, a story of School and the Sea," is illustrated by a picture of a lad hitting his master in the face with an inkstand, and we are informed in the opening paragraph of the story, that "for a scapegrace some considerable talent is necessary. A dunce may be a blackguard or a villain, but could never attain that singular mixture of good spirit, good humor, bad behavior, good looks, and bad habits, good fortune, and great impudence, which go to make up that anomalous character." In the next picture we open to: "The bodies of the ruffians were stretched on the floor." A story entitled, "The Devil's Dice," shows that gentleman in a heavy overcoat, which does not entirely cover his tail, saying: "Here is the paper; read it, and sign!” This brief glance at some of the contents sufficiently betrays the quality and animus of a magazine which is published by Edwin J. Brett of London, is distributed in this country by an advertised general agency, and sold by "all booksellers." To say that this periodical in its influence upon the boys of the country, and that all other periodicals, modeled upon it, or managed with the same spirit, are a moral nuisance, is to call them by the mildest name which the facts justify. Their only influence must be to excite a craving for bloody scenes, to nourish the instincts of the savage and the bully, to breed contempt for authority, and to make that seem admirable and worthy of imitation which is most reprehensible and most heartily to be shunned. It is sad trash all. In a Christian community, it ought never to find a man willing to sell it. There is much that is excellent in the literature prepared for American children. There is much of parental culture and Sunday school instruction; and the good people of the country are doing a great deal to train up a generation of virtuous men and wom, en, but the brutalizing and debasing power of periodicals like the one under special notice, nullifies a large amount of the good work done. They are passed from hand to hand, and are either openly or covertly read by hundreds of thousands of American boys, who, in future disorderly behavior and crime, will certainly profit by the lessons which they teach. THE OLD CABINET, handed my coat to the benevolent gentleman with a Quaker hat and blue spectacles, my gold watch to a celebrated stock-gambler—(who is so much im. pressed by the generous confidence, and the general sublimity of the scene, that he is a reformed man from that moment)--and am only hesitating whether to place my pocket-book in the keeping of the pretty factory-girl with a pink parasol, or in that of the THERE is something demoralizing about New Year's. Not at all that demoralization is the main outcome of the institution; but a man must be strong in the faith to withstand the effect upon his moral system of the knowledge that New Year's brings even to the best of us. For it is at this season of the year that a man, so to speak, takes stock of himself. He takes his good resolutions, his good deeds, his bad impulses and actions, his mixed motives-clerical-looking gentleman, who may turn out to in fact, his whole moral belongings and accomplishments, down from the shelves, dusts them, looks them over, and enters them in his books. There may be profit, growth, advance; but there is apt to be a melancholy side to the fairest showing. For suppose that, on the whole, we have reason to be encouraged by the condition of affairs revealed there are few of us who do not find with each New Year's an increased sense of limitation. For we are creatures of inheritance, and of habit; the spirit may be willing, but O, how weak the flesh ! It is not merely that we are too apt to fail in the spiritual, with all our striving; but strange barriers loom along the intellectual horizon. As we grow older, the very element of Time, which in our youth seems such a vague, shadowy enemy-if not a friend of infinite largesse-comes bearing down upon us, mighty, resistless-an army with banners. There are so many things that for so many years I have been hoping to do before each succeeding New Year's Day. The contemplated crusades of boyhood even yet haunt me as things destined to fortunate occurrence. Surely the summer day is yet to come when I shall take up my adventurous march on the Crosswicks turnpike; the same night pitch | my rag-carpet tent in the mysterious Pines; sleep to the entrancing music of the hyena and the jackal, and sally forth the next day to slay a white Polar bear with my ivory paper-cutter. Shall I confess how often, since last New Year's, I have stood looking over the railing of the ferryboat, and imagined that at last the Moment had come: the Child had fallen into the water; I had be a pickpocket in disguise,-before taking the final, heroic plunge. I was quite certain I would have a Christmas story ready by this time! For, bless you, I had found my plot at last; or, at least, my theme. There was to be a woman in white, with a child in her arms, standing on the steps of Dr. H.'s church, across the street ; a kind of an apparition you know, although, of course, the explanation would be very simple, and would only need to be hinted at in the last paragraph in order to make it perfectly satisfactory, without destroying the weird, supernatural effect. You see the way I came upon the illusion was this No! I'll have that done by next Christmas. I'll have that done, or something better ! For, after all, let me give you a bit of optimism, after having shown the gloomy side of the picture; The New Years have helped me to this belief, that a man is very apt to get, in some form or other,-a man is very apt to accomplish, in this way or that, -the honest thing he honestly and earnestly desires to win and accomplish. But the story may not be a story, remember, or else no story of mine-perhaps only a good deed, such as giving the plot to Saxe Holm. THE New Year's thought and the Christmas thought are very near together. When that thrice blessed day is named, let him be accursed who is not of good cheer. So hear the optimist again: Although in this Year of Grace, when to serve God and believe in Christ, according to this D.D., is to be |