"Nor are the religious interests of this class of population neglected. About six thousand slaves in Texas are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and a much larger number receive catechetical and pulpit instruction. Our interest in the slave does not expend itself in a mawkish sensibility, shedding crocodile tears over imaginary wrongs, but it seeks them out, and announces to them the precious truths of the ever blessed Gospel. H. S. T." MAKING UP A SALARY.-A correspondent of the New York Examiner gives the following instance of sharp practice in "obtaining goods under false pretenses," a resort to an expedient which can hardly be too severely condemned. A pastor of a neighboring church who occupied the pulpit on a Sabbath evening with a Baptist brother who there preached his farewell sermon, was requested by one of the deacons to announce, at the conclusion of the services, that the congregation wished to tender a collection, as a mark of their esteem for the man who had just pronounced his farewell. The congregation generously responded, and the boxes were passed, but when the retiring pastor spoke to one of the deacons of the matter at the close of the service, he was coolly informed that the collection was for the purpose of making up a deficiency in his salary!

THE SOUTH NOT SO EASILY SUITED.-We find, in the Texas Christian Advocate, a spirited reproof of the time-serving policy of the American Tract Society, in first resolving to publish wellwritten essays on the Christian aspects of slaveholding, and then timorously declining to do so, and begging pardon for having made the proposal. Such unmanly double-dealing does not suit the high-minded Southerner. Speaking of the society's course, our Texas brother says:

"Finding that they were about to lose the whole Sonth, they have sent out a circular entitled 'Recent Action of the American Tract Society,' in which they declare openly that they will not proceed according to the action of the last anniversary; that is, that they will not publish anything on the subject of slavery. We have received one at this office. It is exceedingly apologetic and deprecatory, and pleads mightily for pacification. We shall not publish it. We do not care a cent whether they publish on the subject or not. The action they have taken on the subject is the cause of offense, and until that is squarely and unequivocally taken back, we are against the Society totally, and will labor for its destruction with what might God has given us. And we ask the question: Aro those Southern Churches which have heretofore affiliated with the American Tract Society, going to receive this pitiable apology for an unremoved cause of offense? We shall wait to see. Any Church that does act so unworthily, is not better than the Society itself, and should be denounced as in the same category."

How very different the position of the Methodist Tract Society upon this subject. The General Conference ordered Wesley's Thoughts on Slavery, and similar tracts to be published. They have been issued accordingly in large numbers, and many thousand pages have found their way among the people of the South.

SMOKING AND TIPPLING.-A letter-writer, in the Christian Observer, speaking of these two bad habits among ministers, says:

"At the last Wesleyan Conference, which was held in Liverpool, the tobacco question came up, in the case of the young preachers. Several candidates for holy orders were constrained to plead guilty to the charge of smoking, and they were required by John Wesley's law to abandon the habit. President West also said, in the course of the discussion, that great difficulty had been found in securing accommodation for smok

ing preachers, from the aversion of respectable householders to the practice, and dread lest their sons should be contaminated by bad example. No preacher,' says the Discipline, 'is to use tobacco for smoking, chew

ing, or snuff, unless it be prescribed by a physician; and all our people are desired not to provide pipes or tobacco for any of our preachers.'

"Some of our Temperance champions, whose vigilance lets no chance slip, have seized the occasion to remind the Wesleyan Conference that it is as much bound by rule to put down spirit-drinking as sinoking. Yet it is notorious that ninety-nine out of every hundred of the itinerants regularly take the alcoholic stimulant, in the form of grog, wine, porter, or beer, without com

punction and without shame; and total abstinence by them is regarded as a weakness, if not a shame. How sad, when drunkenness is so rampant in the land, and so many members of the Church are lost annually through the insidious ravages of strong drink,' that self-denial should be proscribed and ridiculed even by the very authorities of the leading Churches in Great Britain."

THE AMUSEMENTS of a great city are less affected by the pecuniary pressure than almost any other branch of business. To "drive away dull care," many people resort to theaters, the opera, and concert-room, and thus the "harder" the times the greater the demand for something, by such people, to restore cheerfulness. It is not unlike the resort to liquor when a man finds himself overwhelmed with trouble. Some

city paper gives the details of the receipts of places of amusements nightly in New York. It is estimated that ten thousand dollars are expended every night at the fifteen principal The same paper says places of amusement. that probably two thirds of this money comes from strangers, at least twenty or thirty thousand of whom are always in this city. The sum put down as received nightly by the Academy of Music, is two thousand dollars.

WHAT DOES IT COST TO VISIT EUROPE?-This interesting question is thus satisfactorily answered by a correspondent of the Boston Post:

"This is a question that I am asked not unfrequently, and something may be said in answer that will be of advantage to the inexperienced traveler. Were I to state that I spent ten or forty thousand dollars during my first visit to Europe-and it was nearer the latter than the former-it would really be saying nothing definite, so I will tell what may be done. Stay-athome people often have very singular ideas of the expenses of foreign travel. I am not writing for the information of beggars, robbers, or gamblers, but for those who take money enough to pay all their expenses, personal and otherwise. During my last visit to Europe I visited England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland, Northern Italy, and Sardinia, and was gone from home about one hundred days. When I have been asked what it cost me, I

have asked my questioner to 'guess' the amount. The sum named has been usually two thousand or two thousand five hundred dollars. It was about one fifth the latter sum-to wit: five hundred-and the very same scenes can be visited now for one half that suni, and travel respectably. Money being usually an important consideration, we wish, in travel, as in other investments, to get as much value as possible for our dollar. I believe travelers usually do not get more than one half what they might. If a man wishes to become well acquainted with the English people in their domestic and social relations, and their political condition, he must stay a while, making his home with them."

TWO MILLIONS OF TONS OF SILVER.-The ocean holds dissolved two millions of tons of silver.

To three French chemists the discovery is due. They took gallons of water from the coast of St. Malo, a few leagues from land, and analyzed it in two ways. A portion of the water they acted upon by the usual tests for silver, and the presence of the precious metal was clearly

ascertained. The remainder of the water they evaporated, and the salt they obtained they boiled with lead. This gave them a button of impure lead, which they subjected to what is termed cupellation. This rather grand word denotes a very simple process. The button is placed upon a little tiny saucer made of lime, and is submitted to a heat sufficient to melt lead, but not high enough to affect the silver, should any be present. The lead soon begins to melt, and as it melts it is sucked up by the porous little saucer, or cupel; it grows smaller and smaller until no lead remains, and in its place is a little brilliant speck, far brighter than the boiling lead. The cupel is then removed from the fire, and as it cools the red-hot spark cools too, and you have a homœopathic globule of silver, very much like one of those small pills that druggists delude smokers into buying to take away the smell of the fragrant weed. The operation is very simple, and is the ordinary mode of procuring silver from the ore. Analyses are being made in this way every day at the mint. When the presence of silver is doubtful, the work is most exciting. An English ore was so tested the other day, and, sure enough, after a few minutes of anxious watching, shone forth a bright spark about the size of a pin's head. The ore proved a very rich one, and we shall most likely soon hear more about it.

SHAMS IN CHURCHES.-A writer in one of the Boston papers complains of the "elaborate disfigurement" produced by the alterations in a church at Roxbury. It has been "poorly painted in fresco, and a pulpit of most singular proportions substituted for the old one, which everybody thought was sufficiently ugly." Behind the pulpit is a falsehood, in a church, where everything should be as it pretends to be, an attempt at perspective; and the door strangely opens through this perspective of rows of columns; so that "when the preacher enters, the astonished spectator sees the base and part of the shaft of sundry majestic columns turn upon hinges, leaving the elegant capitals and the remainder of the shafts suspended until the door is closed and the pleasing illusion restored." It looked to the critic like a scene at the theater in the daytime; though there the doors are usually in correct position, and the theater more natural than the church. There

AN ARITHMETICAL QUESTION.-Will you please propound, Mr. Editor, this question, which, simple as it may seem, puzzles me and my teacher. We cannot agree as to the answer.

Perhaps some of your readers can set us right. A shoemaker had a pair of boots which cost He sold them for five dollars and a half, but him, all expenses included, just four dollars. the purchaser paid him a fifty dollar bill, which, being unable to change, he carried to a grocer on the corner who changed it, and the purchaser departed with the boots and forty

four dollars and a half. In an hour or two the grocer brings back the bill, which proved to be a counterfeit, and the shoemaker gave him, in return for it, fifty dollars in good money. The question is, how much did he lose by the trans

action?

SMALL CHANGE.

TYRO.

The pressure in the money market has been severe, but it has called out a great deal of small change. Poets and punsters have been busy, and old stories have been revamped, to throw, if possible, a gleam of cheerful sunshine upon the darkness of the present, and the gloom that hangs over the business pects of the future. The mothers of this generation are furnished with new versions of nursery rhymes wherewith to comfort their little responsibilities; e. g.:

Sing a song of specie,
Gotham all awry,
Seven and fifty Bank birds
Knock'd into pi;
When the Banks were open'd
The Cashiers tried to sing;
Wasn't that a pretty dish

To send to Gov'nor King?

The King was up at Albany
Fighting off the brokers,
The Cashiers were in Wall-street,
Working hard as stokers;
Presidents were shinning

Up and down the street,
Out rush'd a Brown bear

And knock'd them off their feet.

Hark! hark! the Banks do bark,

The brokers have come to town, Some with bags" and some with "rags," To hunt the specie down.

There was a man in our town,

Who was so wondrous wise, He jump'd into the Savings Bank, And drew out his supplies. And when he got his specie out, With all his might and main,

He rush'd into another bank,

pros

And concluded that, all things consider'd, he might as well deposit it again.

Note shaver! Note shaver!

Fly away home;

Your notes are protested,
Your fingers will burn.

SABBATH BREAKING. A little girl of our neighbor's, who knows the fourth command in the decalogue, was lying in her bed one bright Sabbath morning, when her eye happened to catch a mammoth "grandfather gray-beard," showing forth some fine gymnastic feats of lofty tumbling, tall running, etc., on the carpet, upon which she broke forth in great distress: "O! Sister C., do look at that little sinner down there, playin' on Sunday."

A GOOD RETORT. "You are very stupid, Thomas," said a country teacher to a little boy eight years old. "You are like a donkey, and what do they do to cure him of his stupidity?" "Why, they feed him more, and kick him less,"

said the urchin.

ous.

A SILVERY ODOR. -Jones is getting luxuriThe other day he purchased a bottle of the "Balm of a Thousand Flowers." We met him shortly after, and asked him how he liked it, remarking at the same time that it ought to smell sweet. "O very sweet," said Jones "What does it smell strongwith a wry face. est of?" we asked. "Well," replied the little joker, "it smells strongest, I should say, of fifty (s) cents!"

AN ORTHODOX NOSE.-A clergyman in England, whose nasal protuberance indicated bibulous rather than biblical propensities, arrived one Saturday night at a country town, the rector of which was an indolent man of the old school, and was always too happy to get any one to relieve him of his duty. The sexton was not long in reporting the presence of a strange clergyman at the inn, and the rector immediately told him to beg the favor of his taking the service to-morrow and dining with him afterward. recollecting at the moment the rumors of the irregular proceedings and unusual tenets that had been current ever since the time of Wesley, the rector was about to recall his invitation, re

But

marking that "one ought to know something about a stranger in these days, as there were so many of these Methodist fellows about the country." "O, he is all right, sir," was the clerk's reply; "if you only saw his nose."

--

DISSATISFIED DOMESTICS.-We have all heard of the housemaid who, about to leave a family rather unexpectedly, and urged to give a reason for it, simply said: "I can't stay; the young ladies speak such bad grammar."

A friend of ours had a female cook, who was equally sensitive in another direction. One evening she came to her mistress and gave warning. The lady was thrown into consternation, for she had a great reverence for her talents.

"What is the meaning of this?" said she; "is there anything amiss? Surely we treat

66

Then why do you wish to go?" "Because I don't give satisfaction, mum." "You surprise me!"

"It is true, mum," whimpered the cook, raising her apron to her eyes; "master put salt in his soup both yesterday and to-day!'

MATRIMONIAL ADVERTISEMENTS.-A gentleman, advertising for a wife, very prudently adds: "It would be well if the lady were possessed of a competence sufficient to secure her against excessive grief, in case of an accident occurring to her companion." A lady, advertising for a husband in the Tribune, is very particular to have it understood that "none need apply who are under six feet," upon which an exchange remarks, "That female is strongly in favor of hy-men!"

A Yankee who had just come from Florence, being asked what he had seen and admired, and whether he was not in rapture with the Venus de Medici, replied, "Well, to tell the truth, I don't care about those stone gals."

mize in his stable expenditure. His horses get but little to eat besides grass, and they are consequently much higher in bone than in flesh. It happened one day that this gentleman's servant, when riding along the road on a miserable Rosinante, was overtaken by the newspaper proprietor, driving a remarkably fine horse under a well-appointed gig.

"Good morning, my man," said he, addressing the sharp-looking gossoon as if he had been our own correspondent;' "that's a fine fat horse you're riding."

Why, thin, I don't know; I think 'tis the way he might be fatter," responded the groom, looking dubiously at the great man.

"O, not at all-couldn't possibly be fatter. Now, tell me, my friend, what does your master feed him on, to have him in such uncommonly high condition?"

"Why, thin, I'll tell your honor. We feeds him on the ould Post newspapers, an' they don't agree with him at all!"

METEMPSYCHOSIS AND REVENGE.-Jem: "Now spos'n you was to be turned into an animal, what would you like to be, Bill?”

Bill: "O, I'd like to be a lion, because he's so

Notes, Critical and Practical, on the Book of Numbers. By GEORGE BUSH. Very few who have undertaken to write commentaries on the Sacred Scriptures are so well qualified for the task as the author of these Notes. He is an excellent Hebrew scholar, and master of an admirable English style. His Notes on the preceding books of the Pentateuch have been for several years before the public, and have acquired for him a high reputation. He is always clear in his statements, and embodies in them not only the results of much study, but a vast amount of practical instruction. The series thus far has our highest commendation, and we trust the learned author will continue his labors.

Biblical Commentary on the New Testament. By DR. HERMANN OLSHAUSEN. This great work has been for some years before the public in England and the United States as a part of Clark's Foreign Theological Library. That translation was made by several scholars of very diversified ability. Hence, while some portions were executed with accuracy, others were done in a slovenly style, and, in many instances, the author was made to say, in English, what he had not said in the original German. Even with all its defects the English work acquired an extensive circulation on both sides of the Atlantic; but those spirited publishers, Sheldon, Blakeman, & Co., of this city, determined to

give the public a new edition, in which the blunders which appeared in the former translation should be corrected, and the commentary presented in a style worthy of themselves and of the author. The whole was placed under the supervision of DR. KENDRICK, the able professor of Greek in the University of Rochester. Four volumes, bringing the work down to the end of the Epistle to the Galatians, have been published; and we do but echo the general verdict, already pronounced by all who are capable of forming a judgment, when we say that the whole is well done; that the translation is immeasurably superior to Clark's, and the typog raphy admirable. Every Biblical student should have a copy of Olshausen, and to ministers of the gospel of every shade of religious creed it is almost indispensable. .

Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church, with Tunes for Congregational Worship. The Discipline of the Church for whose special benefit this volume is published, enjoins it as a duty upon the ministry "to exhort every person in the congregation to sing, not one in ten only." The exhortation is seldom given, and more seldom heeded. The ladies and gentlemen who usually sit in the front gallery to a great extent monopolize this part of public worship; not, in all cases, because they wish to have it so, for great multitudes who can and