Those We Love the Best.

They say the world is round, and yet I often think it square,

So many little hurts we get

From corners here and there. But one sad truth in life I've found While journeying to the west: The only folks who really wound Are those we love the best.

The choicest garb and sweetest grace
Are oft to strangers shown.

The careless mien, the frowning face,
Are given to our own.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeing guest,
And deal many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.

Love does not grow on every tree,
Nor true hearts yearly bloom.

Alas for those who only see

This truth across the tomb.
But soon or late the fact grows plain
To all through sorrows test-
The only ones who give us pain
Are those we love the best.

-Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Down the Road to Opedee.

Nigh the sleepy, creepy Wabash,
Loafin' lazy to'rds the sea,
There's a little railroad station

That is known as Opedee.
An' as I set hyur a thinkin'
It sorter all comes back,
An' I see the moonlight glisten
Down the shining railroad track.
An' the headlight too a flashin',
Just as plain as plain can be,
As the cannon ball goes dashin'
Down the road to Opedee.

Don't you see the corn a wavin'?

Kaint you hear the Bob White's call?
Aint the golden-rod a noddin',

An' a mindin' you of fall?
An' the August crickets chirpin'
By the roadside in the grass,

An' the hoss-weeds an' the mullins
Wavin' at you as you pass?
An' the Katydids a yelpin'

An' the frogs a sassin' back,
As the engine cuts the breezes,
Down the shinin' railroad track.
I'm just plum sick of fashion,
An' that's whur I'd rather be,
On the cannon ball a dashin'
Down the road to Opedee.

But they aint no use a whinin'
An' a wishin' you was there,
Fur things aint like they used to be,
There's changes everywhere.

An' I 'low 'twould make me lonesome
An' homesick, too, to see

Them strangers in the old house
A peekin' out at me.

But there is a time a comin'

When I'll visit that ere spot,
An' maybe some won't know me,
But they'll find I aint forgot.
An' some day, sure as shootin',
They'll ketch a glimpse of me,
On the cannon ball a scootin'
Down the road to Opedee.

The Tree and the Shade. "He talks a great deal about his family tree."

"That may account for the tales I've heard about his shady past."-Philadelphia Press.

Satisfied.

"You must not expect me to give up my girlhood's ways all at once," said the happy bride.

"Oh, I won't," he replied. "I hope you'll keep right on taking an allowance from your father just as if nothing had happened.”

His Own Medicine.

A book agent recently obtained admission to the office of Thomas Edison and assailed him with such an aggregation of arguments in favor of the publication which she represented that the famous inventor hurriedly subscribed. After a gradual restoration of his energies Mr. Edison said:

"How did you ever succeed in mastering such a long and convincing speech as that?" "Oh, our speeches are taught us at the home office," responded the lady, sweetly, "by means of the phonograph."-Harper's · Weekly.

Familiar.

Charles A. Mason tells the following story of a friend who was once a magistrate in Philadelphia:

He asked a young man brought before him, "Have you ever been arrested?"

"No, sir," was the reply.

"Have you ever been in this court before?"

"No, sir."

"Are you sure?" "Yes, sir."

"Your face looks decidedly familiar; where have I seen you before?"

"I am the barkeeper in the saloon on the corner."

Believing, He Got Ready to Dodge.

A Hudson River steamboat captain extended the hospitalities of his snug wheelhouse to a clergyman who could not find a seat on the crowded upper deck. The

visitor was chatty, and when he had plied the man at the wheel with sundry questions concerning his spiritual welfare, the skipper asked the reverend gentleman:

"Do you believe in predestination?” "Of course I do," was the emphatic reply.

"Then you believe that whatever is to be will be?"

"Certainly."

"Well, I am glad to hear it." "Why?"

"Because I'm going to pass that boat ahead in just fifteen minutes if there is any virtue in hard coal and safety valves. So don't be alarmed. If the boilers are not going to burst they won't, that's all."

The divine arose, put on his hat and was leaving the wheelhouse when the captain observed:

"I thought you believed in predestination ?"

"So I do, but, my good man, I prefer being little nearer the stern when it takes place."-New York Press.

A Costly Retort.

"When Chief Justice Chase, a man of great abilities and marked characteristics, was presiding in one of the county courts of Vermont," said a lawyer of the State, "an appeal case from a justice's court came up before him, so small and contemptible in its origin that he ordered it stricken from the docket. The case was where a turkey had trespassed upon the garden of a neighbor and got shot for his depredations. The owner brought suit to recover damages and, failing before the justice, had appealed the case. Judge Chase was angry, and when he ordered the case from the docket, said:

'The lawyer who consented to appeal this case ought to be thrown from the window of the courtroom. Why didn't he have the case referred to some of the honest neighbors for settlement?'

"'Because, your honor,' retorted the attorney, getting hot under the collar, 'it was our intention not to let honest people have anything to do with it.'

"True, this was a neat retort, but it cost the lawyer just an even $50 for contempt of court."

"DISMAL SOCIAL SCIENCE."

For a large number of years we have had in this nation, a monthly, exclusively dedicated to what we may call, "The dismal, conservative social science." That monthly lives and prospers, while all other papers, daily, weekly or monthly on "Advanced Social Science" come up and soon die or live a miserable existence. The monthly which manages to live and prosper is backed by a galaxy of important men in high religious, business or philosophic modes of existence. One of the recent productions of that monthly, copied by some labor organs, deals on the magnificent thought of "Industrial Peace." The finality of that article is as follows:

"The only industrial peace worth having is the peace born of freedom and established by the character, development and intelligence of the laborers and employers, and the only preparation for such conditions is the voluntary peaceful methods of adjusting disputes between economic groups, so as to make their bargains and enforce their demands by the exercise of organized economic power, never through any coercive interference or compulsory arbitration interfering with the voluntary actions of the workers or the employers."

A little before the article says: "Strikes have a wonderful educational influence. They develop the enterprise and individuality of the laborers. They educate both the laborer and the employer. They develop the spirit of independence which is an essential quality in good citizenship. Strikes are most numerous where prosperity and progress are most general."

In the September Arena, a Boston monthly, there is an article by a member of Congress from New York, where, under the title of "The Reign of Graft," we are told or reminded of some of the dreadful

deformities in our public life, they all coming from the absurdities of the legislation we all allow century after century, coming from that marvelous progress and prosperity of ours, resulting from that brilliant freedom and citizenship evoluted and produced by the conservative and dismal social science of all the despots that ever lived.

What do they mean by the word "graft," as applied to our recent social and political development? They mean, wholesale dishonesty through all the intricacies of civil and political corruption. They mean bribery through all conceivable tricks and manifestations so as to pervert and debauch the conscience of as many men as possible in the whole network of official life, and so crush honest labor in all directions. And what is the cause of that graft or dishonesty? And why should we have perpetual strikes in order to produce prosperity and progress? And why should we march towards industrial peace through the constant, insane, warlike processes of quarrels between labor and employers? And finally, why should intelligent men talk nonsense about the possible evolution of good citizenship and independence through social conditions stupid enough to show that we have not yet sound conceptions on the meaning of good citizenship?

Good citizenship ought to mean that we at least know and realize the immorality of laws of favoritism, and hence try to suppress them. Are we doing anything of the kind? Of course not. Year after year we load ourselves with hundreds and thousands of laws of favoritism, in national, State and local legislation. Year after year we vote blindly for this or that political status with which to prolong the agony of both labor and capital, employers and employes, classes and masses, the poor and the wealthy, always dealing on the quantity