WAIFS AND STRAYS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 174, 28 July 1876, Page 15

WAIFS AND STRAYS.

Don't think yards and yards of ribbon, ruffles and lace, will add one particle to your real value. Don't make a walking milliner's shop, or jeweller's store of yourselves, covering all that is of true merit within you with that which will attract only the shallowbrained. Don't think sensible people are to be deceived with vain show ; they look for beauty of heart and mind. Dont flatter yourself it is smart to affect ignorance of labor, or to be ignorant of it. Don't give the subject of matrimony a thought while in your teens, except to qualify yourself for the responsible position it places you in ; you need all that time of your life to .fit yourselves for it. You need to study books, the laws of life and health, to be well experienced in the culinary art, as perhaps the health and happiof hundreds are depending on your knowledge of this. Don't give your time and talents to the world, or to seeking the things of time and seme that perishwith their using. God has created;you for a nobler purpose, and made you accountable forwhat He has given you. The beginning of learning is humility. This teaches us many things ; but those that follow do chiefly concern students. Make light of no science ; be not ashamed to learn of any one ; when thou art learned, do not look down upon others. Many have been led astray in wishing to appear learned before their time. They begin to pretend to be what they are not, and are ashamed to appear as they really are. I have known many ignorant of the lowest things, who will deal with none but lofty subjects, aad think themselves great because they have read the writings, or listened to the sayings of great and learned men. "We have seen them," they are wont to say : "We have {spoken with them; such a one knew us." *\ ould that nobody knew me, and I knew all things. — Hugh of St. Victor. Where men are subject to great and prolonged exposure to cold, says Dr. T. Lander Brunton, in the 'Practitioner,' experience has taught them the danger of taking spirits while the exposure continues. My friend, Dr. Fayer, told me that when crawling, through the wet heather, in pursuit of deer on a cold day he offered the keeper who accompanied him a pull from his flask. The old man declined, saying, "No thank you; it is too cold." The lumberers in Canada who are engaged, in felling timber in the pine forests, living there all winter, sleeping in holes dug in the snow and lying on spruce branches covered with buffalo robes, allow no spirits in their camp, and destroy any that may be found there. The experience of Arctic travellers on this subject is nearly unanimous ; and I owe to my friend, Dr. Milner Fothergill, an anecdote which illustrates it in a very striking way. A party of Americans crossing the Sierra Nevada encamped at a spot above the snow line and in an exposed situation. Some of them took a good deal of spirits before going to sleep, and they lay down warm and happy ; some took a moderate quantity, and they lay down somewhat but not very cold; others took none at all, and they lay down very cold and miserable. Next morning, however, those who had taken no spirits got up feeling quite well, while those who had taken a little got up feeling quite wretched and cold, and those who had taken a good deal did not get up at all ; they had perished from cold during the night. Those who took no alcohol kept their hearts warm at the expense of their skin, and they remained well ; those who took much warmed their skin at the of and they died. St. Aldheim, Bishop of Sherborn, translated the Psalter 'about A.D. 700. St. Gurthlac, Hermit, translated the Psalter also about A.D. 714. St. Bede translated the New Testament aad Psalter about A.D. 735. Aldred translated the Gospels before A.D, 800. Farman translated the Gospels before A.D. 1000. An unknown author trans* lated them about A.D. 1000. MMric translated much of the Bible before A.D. 1000. Bichard Rolle, Hermit, translated the Psalter into English about A.D. 1350. Epistles and Gospels translated by several about A.D. 1300. St. Mark, St. Luke, and several Pauline Epistles translated about A.D. 1350. The Bible, entire, about A.D. 1370. Wickliffe'i translation A.D. 1380. Catholic version mentioned by Sir Thomas More about A.D. 1400. New Testament, published by English College at Rheims A.D. 1583. Old Testament, Douav, A.D. 1609-10. First Testament, which Catholics succeeded in printing privately in England A.D. 1738. Dr. Challoner's Bible A.D. 1749-50. First Catholic Bible prinUd in the United S^ateß, 1790. The visit of Richard 11. in 1398 to Ireland to avenge the death of his cousin, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, and Lieutenant of Ireland, who had fallen in a skirmish in Leinster, has been chronicled in French by a Frenchman in the royal train. A copy of the chronicle among the Harleian MSS. contains some curious colored drawings representing different events in the campaign, three of which have been selected for reproduction in facsimile, in the forthcoming second volume of " Documents Illustrative of Irish History." The first of these drawings is supposed to represent the knighting of Henry of Monmouth, afterwards Henry V., though then •'but eleven yeais old. The royal army is depicted drawn out at the entrance of the dense woods in which the Irish had taken cover, and the king is laying the flat of his Bword across the shoulders of the youth. Picture the second represents the parley between the Earl of Gloucester and the Irieh chief MacMurrough ; the third represents the arrival of three vessels with provisions from Dublin, and the rush made by the soldiers for them. The text of the chronicle describes the men as fighting among themselves, plunging into the sea, and parting with clothes and money for food and drink. On that day he believes, there were more than a thousand men drunk. In the drawing the scramble in the water is given with great spirit, and a sailor is depicted leaning over the bows of one vessel and holding out a loaf of bread to the nearest soldier ; the other soldiers seem to wear an expression of profound indifference to the whole proceedings. The Harleian MS. from which these three specimens were selected, contains altogether sixteen similar pictures, forming very authentic representations of the persons and habits of that time.