Part 2 — VARIETIES.

Curious Fresco.

In the Carthusian Monastery of Garignano, a few miles from Milan, are some frescoes by Daniel Crespi, of Busto, which are said to be marvels of art and imagination. One of them is grim enough, at any rate, and awful. It represents a dead person rising from his bier, to announce to all whom it might concern that, although they were burying him in the abode of holiness, and were now adoring him as a saint, he was, as a fact, condemned to hell.

Perhaps one of our own famous modern divines was thinking of this fresco when he declared that one great source of surprise, to those who went to heaven, would be to find so many there they had not expected to see, and to miss so many they had thought to meet.

"No' the day, honest woman!"

Dr. John Erskine, a well-known Scottish divine, was remarkable for his simplicity of manner and gentle temper. He returned so often from the pulpit minus his pockethandkerchief that Mrs. Erskine at last began to suspect that the handkerchiefs were stolen by some of the old women who lined the pulpit stairs. So both to baulk and detect the culprit she sewed a corner of the handkerchief to one of the pockets of his coat tails. Half way up the pulpit stairs the good doctor felt a tug, whereupon he turned round to the old woman whose was the guilty hand, to say, with great gentleness and simplicity:—

"No' the day, honest woman, no' the day. Mrs. Erskine has sewed it in!"

A Brave Wife.

In 1872 a storm overtook a Boston ship on the banks of Newfoundland. The captain—Captain Wilson—had his shoulder-blade broken by the fall of a mast, and the first mate and part of the crew were at the same time disabled.

No sooner, however, had the captain been carried to his cabin than his wife, a woman of one-and-twenty, hurried on deck, told the men to work with a will, and she would take them into port. The wreckage was cleared, the pumps manned, and the gale was weathered. Then a jury-mast was rigged, the ship put before the wind, and in twenty-one days she reached St. Thomas. After repairing damages there, finding her husband still helpless, the indomitable woman navigated the ship to Liverpool.

Captain Wilson was never able to resume work, and for seven years his brave wife supported him and their only child by working as clerk in a dry goods store. Then he died, and Mrs. Wilson was deservedly appointed to a custom-house inspectorship by the American Government.

Old Friends.—The world has few greater pleasures than that which two friends enjoy in tracing back, at some distant time, those transactions and events through which they have passed together.—Dr. Johnson.

A Rare Companion.—She whom you can treat with unreserved familiarity, at the same time preserving your dignity and her respect, is a rare companion, and her acquaintance should be cultivated.

Things of Value.

Beethoven in Germany.—When the German talks of symphonies he means Beethoven; the two names are to him one and indivisible; his joy, his pride. As Italy has its Naples, France its Revolution, England its Navigation, so Germany has its Beethoven symphonies. The German forgets in his Beethoven that he has no school of painting; with Beethoven he imagines that he has again won the battles that he lost under Napoleon; he even dares to place him on a level with Shakespeare.—Robert Schumann.

A New Use for a Dog.—A farmer's daughter in the West of England received a hairy poodle dog from a friend in town. The unsophisticated damsel wrote back thanking her friend for the present, and saying that she found it very handy, when tied to a stick, to clean windows with.

The Worst of Success.—She that has never known adversity is but half acquainted with others or with herself. Constant success shows us but one side of the world, for, as it surrounds us with friends who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.

Rights and Duties.—There is no right without its duties, and no duty without its rights.