oks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Here are some advantages of adversity as pointed out by _Punch_:

You wear out your clothes.

You are not troubled with visitors.

You are exonerated from making calls.

Bores do not bore you.

Tax-gatherers hurry past your door.

Itinerant bands do not play opposite your windows.

You avoid the nuisance of serving on juries.

No one thinks of presenting you with a testimonial.

No tradesman irritates by asking, "Is there any other
article you wish to-day, sir?"

Impostors know it is no use to bleed you.

You practise temperance.

You swallow infinitely less poison than others.

Flatterers do not shoot their rubbish into your ears.

You are saved many a debt, many a deception, many a
headache.

And lastly, if you have a true friend in the world, you are
sure, in a very short space of time, to know it.

THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD.

BY THEODORE O'HARA.

Theodore O'Hara (1820-1867) has been said to have produced the one perfect
and universal martial elegy that the world has known. "The Bivouac of the
Dead" has been translated into almost every European language, and since
it was written, more than half a century ago, it has been almost as
popular in England as in the United States.

On the field on which was fought one of the most stubbornly contested
battles of the Crimean War is a large monument which bears the last four
lines of the first verse of O'Hara's poem, and over the gateway of the
National Cemetery at Arlington the whole first stanza is inscribed, while
there, as at Antietam and other national cemeteries, the entire poem is
produced, stanza by stanza, on slabs along the driveways.

O'Hara was a native of Kentucky, and served in the army during the war
with Mexico. He wrote "The Bivouac of the Dead" on the occasion of the
removal of the bodies of Kentucky soldiers from the field of the battle of
Buena Vista to their native State.

At the outbreak of the Civil War O'Hara entered the Confederate army as a
colonel. He died in Alabama in 1867, and his body was removed to Kentucky
and laid beside those of the soldiers he had commemorated.

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo!
No more on life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On fame's eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread,