ntentment in pursuit of the
phantoms of wealth, and what is wealth? It can not purchase a moment of
happiness. Marble halls may open wide their doors and offer her shelter,
but happiness will flee from a palace to dwell in a cottage. We crush
under our feet the roses of peace and love in our eagerness to reach the
illuminated heights of glory; and what is earthly glory?

"He who ascends to mountain tops shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high above the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
'Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head."

I saw a comedian convulse thousands with his delineations of the
weaknesses of humanity in the inimitable "Rip Van Winkle." I saw him
make laughter hold its sides, as he impersonated the coward in "The
Rivals;" and I said: I would rather have the power of Joseph Jefferson,
to make the world laugh, and to drive care and trouble from weary brains
and sorrow from heavy hearts, than to wear the blood-stained laurels of
military glory, or to be President of the United States, burdened with
bonds and gold, and overwhelmed with the double standard, and three girl
babies.

THE FALSE IDEAL.

It is the false ideal that builds the "Paradise of Fools." It is the
eagerness to achieve success in realms we cannot reach, which breeds
more than half the ills that curse the world. If all the fish eggs were
to hatch, and every little fish become a big fish, the oceans would be
pushed from their beds, and the rivers would be eternally "dammed"--with
fish; but the whales, and sharks, and sturgeons, and dog-fish, and eels,
and snakes, and turtles, make three meals every day in the year on fish
and fish eggs. If all the legal spawn should hatch out lawyers, the
earth and the fullness thereof would be mortgaged for fees, and mankind
would starve to death in the effort to pay off the "aforesaid and the
same." If the entire crop of medical eggs should hatch out full fledged
doctors, old "Skull and Cross Bones" would hold high carnival among the
children of men, and the old sexton would sing:

"I gather them in,
I gather them in."

If I could get the ear of the young men who pant after politics, as the
hart panteth after the water brook, I would exhort them to seek honors
in some other way, for