SUNDAY READING.

Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4314, 28 October 1882, Page 4

SUNDAY READING.

- » ... ; Making Things Go. £By the Bst. pafWiTT Talmaob, D.D.] rSometimes a man who seems, to succeed is at every step a failure.. There is more lawful fraud committed that unlawful. Penitentiaries and the Court of. "Oyer and Terminer," are .for those olumsy rogues who do not- know bow to ■teal. The purloining of one ..cabbage ends in the " Tombs," but tbe absconding ' with one hundred tbonsand dollars, wins a castle on the Bhine. So you fee that men get into jail, not because they steal, but because they do.not steal enough. There ' are estates gathering that have not within them, one boneit dollar. general rule is that moral sue . cesses worldly success. It is easier to -, make avfpermanent'fortune in honorable ways than by dishonorable conduct. The defil'iiTa' 1 poor financier/ When the gold -■*:. and the silrer were laid down in the earth, Vthey* were sworn to serve the cause of ' righteousness, and they never go into the " cwßfsof Ihfi dishonest without committing, perjury. Lawful enterprise in the long fun will declare larger dividends than dishonest scheming. The Oil Company of. which,the, Hon Bogus Grcaseback is ; iPresident^ and Hociis Pocus Esq., is Secretary; at first declares twenty per cent, then ten per cent, afterwards three per ' cent, and, last of all, nothing, leaving the widow^and orphans to play the beautiful gain&^f " Money ! money ! who has the money:? " But fraudulent estates do not average a continuance of more than five years, j Occasionally; an old man, having gathered j ..large property by ignoble means, may die ' in its. possession, bequeathing it. to his hem; but when the boys get it, what with, jheir wine, and what with their fast horses—ha 1 how they will make it fly. There is an honest work for every one to do. When a child is born, his work is already prepared for him. There is seme* "thing in "his nature, which says " YoDder is the field, the shop, the store ! Come my.little man! Be busy!" No doubt SainaW* when he was a boy, sometimes . gave premonition of what he was going to be, amusing himself by carrying off gates and' in ctfatjpg his playmates with the jawbone of a bleached carcass, and, long before he fired off the three hundred foxtails among the corn-shocks of the Philistines, had tried the same extreme measures on the eats of his father's house. Cowley evinced the' poet when in very early life he was wrought into enchant" ment by the reading of Spenser's " Fairy Queen. Joshua Reynolds, in boyhood, prophesied the . painter by hanging sketches on the side of a blacksmith's shop. Nature invariably hints for what she has made a child. Here is a boy cunning at a bargain.. At school he is. extrava* gantly fond of trading. He will not come home twice with the same knife, or hoop, or kite. To-morrow he will leave the houße with an ignominious yarn ball—a great trial to a boy on the play-ground— Uut at night will come back with one of India-rubber, which, under the stroke of . the bat, will soar almost out of sight, and then come down with long continued bounce ! bounce ! * Some morning, calculating on tbeJowness of the. apple-market, he will take a satchelful to' school. Immediately there is a rush in the market. He monopolises the business. He sells at just the right time. The vigilant schoolmaster, finding him bartering in what are not considered lawful business hours, brings him into port, and he is compelled *by" this government officer to discharge bis cargo in tbe presence of bis fellows-wbo gape upon him like a company of stevedores. Can you doubt for a moment for what occupation he was designed ? He must be a merchant. Here is a boy of different liking. Across the brook he has thrown a dam, and whiiling round is a water«wheel. He can construct anything he chooses —slesls for 1 the winter, wagons for the summer, and boats for the river. His knife is most of tbe time on a whittling excursion. Down on your best carpet be plants his muddy tools. You are so pestered on the > Saturdays, when there is no school, it requires all of Sunday, and sharp sermons at that, to get your patience unwrinkled. Pigeon-coops on the barn, and birdbouses inthe jtrees, attest bis ingenuity. Give him a trade. He must be a mechanic. Here' is another boy. ; You do not know what to do with him. He is always starting an argument.. Hp meets your reproof with a syllogism. He is always at the most inconvenient time asking, " Why P '! He is on the opposite aide of what you believe, but anything for an argument. If you promised him a flogging, be would file a caveat to stop proceedings, and dissatisfied with your decisions, he gets out a cerioirarA,. carrying matters to the Supreme Court of his own reason. With all this he has a glib tongue, and when fairly started it rattles like hail on a tin roof.* His destiny is plain ; he must be a lawyer. > , But if you should happen to have under your charge, as guardian or parent, a child not sharp enough to strike a bargain, yet ingenious enough to make a sled, not loquacious enough to start an argument, not inquisitive as to, the origin of things, always behind in the school, and slow en the play-ground—there is then only this alternative: If he be fat and chubby, of unconquerable appetite and enormous digestion, and lazy withal, then send him to the city, pull the wires, and make him an alderman. - But if he be long and lean, sallow cheeked, with nerves ever on the twitch, and a digestion that will not go, I know not what you will do with him unless you make him a minister. Alas ! for the absurdity rampant among families, that when, because of physical ihcompetency, a mas is fit for nothing else, he is fit to be a "legate of the skies." Beligion will never make up for lack of liver and backbone.