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 wait at night for a bold man-eater, who had stalked up and picked up a man on an open railway truck as the train slowed down into the station. Parenti lay on the floor, Hubner was in an upper berth, and Ryal was on the seat of the carriage, with his rifle. Ryal was on guard, but unfortunately he fell asleep. At 2 o'clock in the morning the man-eater they were hunting entered the carriage, picked up Ryal, jumped through the window, and fled to the forest, where the unfortunate man's whitened bones were long afterward found.—, Leslie's Weekly.

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ASPIRATION

Does not every man at times feel the aspiration to realize the man he "might have been":

Across the fields of long ago He sometimes comes to me, A little lad with face aglow— The lad I used to be.

And yet he smiles so wistfully, Once he has crept within— I think that he still hopes to see The man I might have been!

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Climb on! Climb ever! Ne'er despond, Tho from each summit gained There stretch forth ever heights beyond— Ideals to be attained! Life's rescript simply is to climb, Unheeding toil and tire; Failure hath no attaint of crime, If we but still aspire.

—, "Character Lessons."

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The spirit of man is not intended to grovel on low levels or to gravitate downward under carnal influences. Man is the only creature on earth so constructed physically as to be able to gaze upward.

"He died climbing" is the simple inscription on a monument to an Alpine guide, who perished when attempting the ascent of a peak. That record is a noble tribute to a hero. His attitude should be ours—looking upward and pressing forward. He was pressing on in the pathway of duty. Many a splendid career, intercepted at the critical juncture, might be described by the same sententious record. "He died climbing" may be said of many a young and ardent enthusiast—of Mackay, soon cut off in Uganda; of Bishop Hannington, reaching the border of the same land and martyred there; of Patteson, soon slain in Melanesia by islanders who mistook him for a slave-catching captain; of Henry Martyn, who did not live to see any of the results of his mission; of Wyclif, who sent forth the Bible in English but was not permitted to see the beginning of the Reformation. All these "died climbing." (Text.)

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Theodosia Garrison points out in these verses that aspiration, even when it fails of realization, is good for the soul:

Let me remember that I failed, So I may not forget How dear that goal the distance veiled Toward which my feet were set.

Let me forget, if so Thy will, How fair the joy desired, Dear God, so I remember still That one day I aspired. (Text.)

—Ainslee's Magazine.

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W. H. T. Squires expresses the normal law of the soul—that its desires are to rise and climb—in these verses:

Up from the mists of marsh and fen, Up from the gloom of the glen, The mountains rise to kiss the skies, They spurn the plain that lowly lies— Up from the forest's fitful shade, Up to the heights that God hath made.

Up from the stains of sordid strife, Up to a loftier life My spirit cries, "Aspire! aspire!" Climb we the heights from high to higher Up, lest the fleeting daylight fade, "Up!" is the law God hath laid.

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See ;.

ASSIMILATION

The alfalfa plant is a rank species of grass that grows in the western sections of our country. It is valuable for horses