ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS.

HOW TO CONVERT AN INFIDEL.-Do not try to disprove his error. Perhaps that error, because no error is wholly erroneous, is better for him than no faith at all. But make you truth live and convincing. Through every entrance force its life home on his life. Let him hear it in your voice, see it in your face, feel it in your whole life. Make it claim its true kinship with the truth that is lying somewhere in the midst of all his error. Would you go a hundred miles merely to make a Mohammedan disbelieve Mohammed? Who would not go half around the world to make him believe Christ, and know the richness of the Saviour?

He

THE SLUGGARD'S PURPOSE.- "The desire of the slothful killeth him, because his hands refuse to labour." Prov. xxi. 25. He is full of wishing, but far from working. As the cat, he would fain have the fish, but is not willing to wet his feet. His desires are destitute of suitable endeavours, and therefore rather harm than help him. Like Ishbosbeth, he lieth on his bed till he is deprived of his life. thinketh to be hurried in haste to heaven, to be carried as passengers in a ship, asleep in their cabins, to their haven, but is all the while in a deceitful dream. There is no going to those heavens where Christ is in glory, as the sick man came to the house where Christ was, in his estate of ignominy, let down in a bed.

TRUST IN GOD.-To trust in God when our warehouses and bags are full, and our tables spread, is no hard thing; but to trust Him when our purses are empty, but a handful of meal and a cruse of oil. left, and all the ways of relic stopped, herein lies the wisdom of a Christian's grace. Yet none are exempted from this duty; all are bound to acknowledge their trust in Him by the daily prayer for daily bread; even those that have it in their cupboards as well as those who want it; the richest prince as well as the meanest beggar. Whatever your wants are, want not faith, and you cannot want supplies. -Charnock.

RICH TOWARD GOD.-He that has no love of God, no large spiritual affections, no share in the unsearchable riches of Christ, no sympathies with his brethren, is in fact "wretched and miserable, and poor and blind, and naked," and shall one day find out that he is so, however now be may say, "I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing." He only is truly rich, who is rich towards God-who is rich in God-who has made the Eternal and the unchangeable the object of his desires and his efforts. He in God possesses all things, though in this world he were a beggar, and for him to die will not be to quit, but to go to, his riches.-Trench.

THE YOKE OF YOUTH.-"It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth." He who overcomes in his youth, will remain victor in his age; and the feet which have perseveringly trodden the flinty way of early endeavour, will find the decline of life smooth as a meadow-path.

THE FIRESIDE.-NOTES AND QUERIES.

The Fireside.

good laundresses, and it is almost impossible to keep the iron from sticking unless this precaution is observed. Always use cold starch for shirt collars. Mix thoroughly two teaspoonsful of starch in half a cup of water, dip the collar; wring, pat, spread on a clean towel, and when all are done, roll up the towel, and iron in about an hour.

HINTS FOR WASHING-DAY.-A uut hands. This is a secret known to all Hattie says:-"The evening previous to wash-day I boil in two gallons of soft water, four ounces each of sal-soda and sliced bar soap until dissolved. Put the fine white clothes in one tub, the coarse ones in another. To the water in the boiler add enough cold water to make it lukewarm, pour over the clothes, cover the tubs with a blanket. In the morning add a pail of hot water to the fine clothes, rub them well from this, rub again in fresh water, boil twenty minutes, suds, rinse in blue water, hang out to dry. Treat the coarse clothes the same way. My coloured clothes are washed, rinsed, and starched before hanging out. In starching muslins, shirt bosoms and wristbands, after the shirt bosoms have been dipped and wrung out as dry as possible, I use boiled starch rubbed in and patted well with the

WOOLLEN CLOTHES.-When woollens are worn threadbare, as is often the case in the elbows, cuffs, sleeves, etc., of men's coats, the coats must be soaked in cold water for half an hour; then taken out of the water and put on a board, and the threadbare parts of the cloth rubbed with a half-worn hatters "card," filled with flocks, or with a prickly thistle, until a sufficient nap is raised. When this is done, hang the coat up to dry, and with a hard brush lay the nap the right way.

Notes and Queries.

E. H.-No doubt. There has been a good deal of foolish puzzle-making in the way some good men have looked at the parables, the inimitable parables of our Lord. Perhaps the worst is that misuse of the neighbour going at midnight and asking for loaves. One is inclined to listen, after all the silly spiritualizing, to the blunt Spanish Expositor of the Parable of the Prodigal Son-"If you ask me what the fatted calf means, it means a calf, and nothing but a calf." The parables were given to be understood, not as puzzles for dry-as-dusts.

M. M.-Rom. xvi. 25-27, is a hard sentence; but if you read all between "stablish you" and verse 27 as a parenthesis, you will at once see what it is the apostle is writing about. This will the more fully appear if you read thus,

FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY.

LETTER FROM ROME.

GREAT transformations have been wrought in this historic city since the occupation by the Italian government. Rome is, at present, one of the cleanest and best governed cities in Europe. Beggary, which was formerly the plague of travellers, and the prominent feature of the streets, is almost wholly suppressed, except about the churches. The present king, Humbert, seems to have adopted a policy which combines prudence with progress, and the prospects of Italy have not been so bright and promising for centuries. Her people are still priest-ridden, and degraded by superstition, but this no longer has the protection of the law, and a Protestant missionary in Rome is as secure in the liberty to teach and preach as the Pope in the Vatican. Besides, a public school system has been established, and the attendance of all children up to the age of fourteen years made compulsory. The principal hindrance to prosperity at present seems to be the heavy taxation made necessary by the many public improvements, and the large standing army. One gentlemen stated recently that his taxes amounted to forty-three per cent. of his rentals. As he quaintly expressed it, "The only difference between the old regime and the new is this, then we saw nothing but priests, and now we see nothing but soldiers." The two objects which first impress the visitor to Rome are St. Peter's and the Colosseum. One was the glory of the city of the Cæsars, the other is the glory of the city of the Popes. These two have been singularly connected in my own experience. A few days after arriving in Rome a party of us were invited to visit a Protestant evening school, under the direction of Rev. Mr. Van Meter, formerly of New York. We were driven to the Vatican and found the school under the very shadow of it. It was bearding the lion in his den, and defying the Pope under the very windows of his palace. The hall in which the school is held had recently been repaired, and the school permanently established in that place. But Leo. XIII. is not the man to suffer such audacity to go unpunished. Every man who aided in the work of repairing the school-room, every carpenter, mason, and painter who worked upon it, had already been excommunicated by the Pope, and the most terrible curses have been pronounced upon them. The parents who continue to send their children to the school had also shared the same fate, and yet upon our arrival we found the rooms crowded with men, women, and children, eager to support the school in spite of the thunders of the Vatican. A few days latter all the desks were filled with men