homes.

Intelligence is emancipating man. Ignorance is a constant invitation
to oppression. So long as workmen are ignorant, governments will
oppress them; wealth will oppress them; religious machinery will
oppress them. Education can make man's wrists too large to be holden
of fetters. In the autumn the forest trees tighten the bark, but when
April sap runs through the trees the trunk swells, the bark is strained
and despite all protests it splits and cracks. The splitting of the
bark saves the life of the tree. The soft, balmy air of April is
passing over the world and succeeding to the winter of man's
discontent. Old ideas are being rent asunder and old institutions are
being succeeded by new ones. God is abroad destroying that he may
save. In every age he makes the discontent of the present to be the
prophecy of the higher civilization. Despite all the pessimists and
the croakers, the ideas of manhood were never so high as to-day, and
the number of those whose hearts are knitted in with their kind was
never so large nor so noble. The movement may be slow, but it is
because the social organs are complex and intricate. With long
patience man must work and also wait.

In the world of business, also, the time element exerts striking
influence. To-day our land is filled with men who have sown the seed
of thought and purpose, but whose harvest is of so high a quality that
with long patience must they wait for the fruition. How pathetic the
reverses of the last four years. The condition of our land as to the
overthrows of its leaders answers to the condition in Poland when
Kossuth and his fellow patriots, accustomed to life's comforts and its
luxuries, went forth penniless exiles to accustom themselves to menial
toil, to hardship and extreme poverty. His heart must be of iron who
can behold those who have been leaders of the industrial column, who
now stand aside and see the multitude sweep by. Just at the moment of
expected victory misfortune overtook them and brought their structure
down in ruins. And because the seed they have sown is not physical,
but mental and moral, the fruition is long postponed.

Walter Scott tells the story of a wounded knight, who took refuge in
the castle of a baron that proved to be a secret enemy and threw the
knight into a dungeon; one day in his cell the knight heard the sound
of distant music approaching. Drawing near the slit in the tower, he
saw the flash of swords