it is an infernal condition that prompts manufacturers to ignore the voices of those raised in protest. I can not conceive what men are coming to when a condition like this prevails in Worcester. It is a city of fossils; of men so impregnated with their own stubborn ideas that there isn't room for the finer methods of dealing with men. According to the way of the high-headed, high-handed Worcester employer, men must be treated a good deal like beasts of burden; the owner shall decide what the load shall be and how much of it the beast shall carry."

HOW WE ARE PROTECTED.

Air Saves Us From the Celestial Bullets.

Is it not strange that we never hear of an accident from ordinary meteors, though accidents from aerolites have not been altogether unknown?

Here is this great vessel, the earth, sailing through space, and saluted every twenty-four hours by 400,000,000 of missiles, each flying toward her with many times the velocity of the swiftest cannon ball. This, comments Proctor in "Expanse of Heaven," goes on day by day and night by night, when living creatures are far from shelter, as well as when they are protected in their various abodes; and yet the inhabitants of the earth are perfectly safe from all danger. If one in a thousand struck a human being the inhabitants of the earth would be almost decimated in a single year.

It is not merely that they have been so far fortunate as to escape hitherto, but that they really are as safe as though the earth were protected by armor plates.

The real protection of the earth is the air which surrounds her. Soft as the air is, the resistance it opposes to swift motion is very great. The swifter the motion the more effective is the resistance. In the case of the meteoric missiles falling on the earth the resistance is so great, owing to their enormous velocity, that they are consumed and presently vaporized in their rush through the upper parts of the air.

Thus the air forms a perfect protection to our earth.

OPPORTUNITY.

They do me wrong who say I come no

more,

When once I knock and fail to find you in;

For every day I stand outside your door

And bid you wake and rise to fight. and win.

Wail not for precious chances passed

away,

Weep not for golden ages on the wane, Each night I burn the records of the day,

At sunrise every soul is born again.

Laugh like a boy at splendors that have fled,

To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb.

My judgments seal the dead past with the dead

But never bind a moment yet to come.

Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep,

I lend my arm to all who say "I can." No shame-faced outcast ever sank so deep

But yet might rise and be again a man. Art thou a mourner? Rouse thee from the spell.

Art thou a sinner? Sins may be for

given.

Each morning gives thee wings to fly from hell,

Each night a star to guide thy feet to Heaven. -Walter Malone.

Net earnings of the United Cigar Stores Company for the first eight months of the calendar year, which corresponds with the company's fiscal year, increased more than 50 per cent. over the same period a year ago.

An explosion had occurred on a battleship. Captain (making investigation)— How in the world did it happen?

Jack-Well, you see, sir, Tom Stewart went into the magazine and lit a match. Captain-Lit a match! I should have thought that was the last thing on earth he would do.