s traveling in the
invisible world and came upon a hedge of thorns, then saw wild beasts
glare upon him from the thicket, and after awhile stood before an
impassable river. As he determined to proceed, the thorns turned out
phantoms, the wild beasts powerless ghosts, and the river only a shadow.
When we march on obstacles disappear. Many distinguished foreign and
American statesmen were present at a fashionable dinner party where wine
was freely poured, but Schuyler Colfax, then Vice-President of the
United States, declined to drink from a proffered cup. "Colfax does not
drink," sneered a Senator who had already taken too much. "You are
right," said the Vice-President, "I dare not."

A Western party recently invited the surviving Union and Confederate
officers to give an account of the bravest act observed by each during
the Civil War. Colonel Thomas W. Higginson said that at a dinner at
Beaufort, S. C., where wine flowed freely and ribald jests were bandied,
Dr. Miner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was told that he
could not go until he had drunk a toast, told a story, or sung a song.
He replied: "I cannot sing, but I will give a toast, although I must
drink it in water. It is 'Our Mothers.'" The men were so affected and
ashamed that some took him by the hand and thanked him for displaying
courage greater than that required to walk up to the mouth of a cannon.

When Grant was in Houston several years ago, he was given a rousing
reception. Naturally hospitable, and naturally inclined to like a man of
Grant's make-up, the Houstonites determined to go beyond any other
Southern city in the way of a banquet and other manifestations of their
good-will and hospitality. They made great preparations for the dinner,
the committee taking great pains to have the finest wines that could be
procured for the table at night. When the time came to serve the wine,
the head-waiter went first to Grant. Without a word the general quietly
turned down all the glasses at his plate. This movement was a great
surprise to the Texans, but they were equal to the occasion. Without a
single word being spoken, every man along the line of the long tables
turned his glasses down, and there was not a drop of wine taken that
night.

Don't be like Uriah Heep, begging everybody's pardon for taking the
liberty of being in the world. There is nothing attractive in timidity,
nothing lovable in fear. Both are deformities and are repulsive. Manly