Limited means

mands of life, often confront it. make it impossible to translate the generous thought into equally munificent action. And so, as the year stores her warmth and light, her flavor and lustrous beauty into the ripening fruit and drops it in autumn, mellow, sweet and golden, into waiting hands, so love garners its gifts until the Christmas ushers in the week of joy and thankfulness, and then proudly places them in expectant hands, and reads its reward in the light of eyes sparkling with pleasure, or dimmed with a happiness which forces tears. holidays are the harvest-time of human love.

The

Now, too, we "post the books". -not the ledgers alone, but the account current of our lives-and see whether we are drifting toward yawning gulfs of sin, or rising with purer purpose toward nobler life. Of course one day is like another, and our division of time merely an arbitrary one, but yet in the future, as in the past, the advent of the New Year will continue to symbolize the youth of the world, the perennial joy of creation, the immortal spirit that, amid the ravages of death and decay and care and sorrow, still pursues its course to its celestial destiny.

AN EDITOR AND HIS PAPER. —A newspaper is not a person, but it is considerably more than a thing. It has a separate existence, an identity distinct from that of its editor or publisher, though its life is very closely connected with the brain of the one and the pocket of the other. It may be an object of love and respect, or of hatred and detestation. The relation between an editor and his paper is something which neither Webster nor Worcester has fully defined. The paper is not the editor, though it demands. his care and absorbs his thought, hanging on to him like a poor relation, as dependent as a participle on its parent verb. It interprets his ideas, and reflects his life is a sort of errand boy, carrying his thoughts, and has, moreover, a wise reticence, never communicating anything concerning its editor except what he wills to have known. The editor may be a harum-scarum fellow, with many little flaws on the surface of his daily life, but the paper is sober, staid, redolent with virtues, and solemn under the weight of "leaded articles. And so the editor grows to love his paper. Demanding his constant care, taxing his most patient thought, it becomes the object of his love and the absorbent of his life.

SOCIOLOGY.

We merely chronicle the fact. At Piqua, Ohio, one Thomas Wise courted and said he would marry Mary Macher. He backed out of his promise and engaged himself to another young woman. Last Sunday, with this guilt upon him, he went to the Catholic church; also to the same church went Mary, and took a seat immediately behind Thomas. After she had smoothed out the folds of her dress, she took a horse-pistol out of her muff, placed the muzzle against Thomas' back and fired, blowing a hole through his lungs. Thomas is not expected to recover. "But was there no-?" No, it don't appear that there was anything of that kind at all. Mary seems to have been as chaste as an icicle on the eaves of Diana's woodshed, and Thomas as free from all carnal sin as a graven image.

There is not much to be said about it. It all comes from the law of progress. A woman's right to homicide the man who has been too much allured by her charms has been so frequently affirmed by courts and juries that it may be considered a part of the common law of the country. But to scorn her for the allurements of some hated rival -this is a far greater outrage to sensitive womanhood, and progress demands that it be placed among the capital crimes also. This, at least, seems to have been Miss Mary's view of it when she pursued

Thomas into the sanctuary and slew him at the foot of the altar.

The circle of social ideas and requirements within which a man's life may be considered safe is becoming fearfully narrowed. The Mary Harris case we were not disposed to complain of-for, notwithstanding we thought the alleged offender in that case should have been tried before he was executed, still the moral of the case had no terrors for the young man of "correct habits." But push this Ohio case to its logical results, and where does the man of the period stand? He may enlarge his litany, and cry out, "From raging females and horse pistols in church, Good Lord deliver me!" He may fly to the horns of the altar, and cling to them for safety. In vain - he shall be made to feel that "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

The upshot of it all will be, we suppose, to make social intercourse between ladies and gentlemen impossible. In the present condition of the law of homicide we are not sure but that would be best.