Against attacks of discontent.—Set out for the homes of the poor. Look at their narrow rooms, their hard beds, their poor clothes and shoes. Observe what is put on their breakfast, dinner and supper table. Ask what their earnings are, and calculate how you would fare with the same amount. When you get home again you will be no longer discontented.

Against despair.—Look at the good things God has given you in this world and remember the better things He has promised for the next. She who looks for cobwebs in the garden will find not only them but spiders as well. But she who goes to find flowers will return with perfumed roses.—From the German.

Thought and Action.

The ancestor of every action is a thought. Our dreams are the sequel of our waking knowledge.—Emerson.

A Lesson for a Choir-Singer.

One of the finest choral conductors whom this country has ever produced was Henry Leslie, whose choir was for many years one of the prominent features of musical London.

He was an autocrat, very difficult to satisfy, particular to nicety in regard to every phrase and mark of expression. He did not like to hear individual voices; the blending of the voices was his aim. There was a lady with a very rich contralto who gave him trouble in this way—her voice was heard separately. Mr. Josiah Booth, who was one of the members of the choir, says that he thinks Mr. Leslie had spoken to the lady privately, but without result. However, one day he said to her—

"You may have a very fine voice, but I don't want to hear it. I want to hear the choir."

"We went on singing," says Mr. Booth. "Sitting behind, I could not see the lady's face, but I guessed she was looking daggers at Mr. Leslie. At the next pause he fixed her with those searching eyes of his and said—

"'I've a great deal more reason to look like that than you have.'"

Chinese Doctors.

No pharmacopœia is more comprehensive than the Chinese, and no English physician can surpass the Chinese in the easy confidence with which he will diagnose symptoms that he does not understand. The Chinese physician who witnesses the unfortunate effect of placing a drug of which he knows little into a body of which he knows less, is not much put out: he retires sententiously observing, "there is medicine for sickness, but none for fate." "Medicine," says a Chinese proverb, "cures the man who is fated not to die." Another saying has it that "when Yenwang (the King of Hell) has decreed a man to die at the third watch no power will detain him to the fifth."

Doctors in China dispense their own medicines. In their shops you see an amazing variety of drugs; you will occasionally also see tethered a live stag which on a certain day, to be decided by the priests, will be pounded whole in a pestle and mortar. "Pills manufactured out of a whole stag slaughtered with purity of purpose on a propitious day" is a common announcement in dispensaries in China.