in this country; dear old England was the place for them; if they could once get back to that blessed old home, there wouldn't be a wish left in their hearts to be satisfied. In about twenty years they found they were independent, sold out their business, and prepared to go back to England and the felicity of which they had been dreaming so long.

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Their old home was in Cheshire, so their port was Liverpool. They thought they would stay a few days in Liverpool to get a foretaste of the joy before they went forward to Cheshire; and so they went about Liverpool to enjoy themselves with all their might. At the end of three days, the old man said: "Wife, I don't think Liverpool is exactly what we expected, is it?' "Husband," the old wife said, "I don't think England is what we expected, either." And then he said again: "If things are no better when we get to the old place in Cheshire, I shall vote for going back to Milwaukee." "Oh, husband," she said, "I am ready to go back this moment. Let's go home." They called it home at last over here. And he answered: "Well, I don't know but you're right; but as we have come to try Cheshire and the old place, we had better carry out the programme." And so they did. They went back, stayed there six weeks, took their passage on a steamer at the end of that time, made a bee-line for Milwaukee, where he went again into business. They have been dead now some years, but when I knew them

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they were just as happy as the day was long. They had got home.

We

The bane of our life is our discontent. say we will work so long, and then we will begin to enjoy ourselves; but we find it is very much as Thackeray said: "When I was a boy," he said, "I wanted some taffy. It was a shilling. I hadn't a shilling. And then, when I was a man, I had a shilling, but I didn't want any taffy." I say not one syllable against that splendid discontent that all the time makes a man strike for something better, while he still holds on to what he has got already. I like this idea: that every boy born in America of the good American blood dreams some time of being President of the Republic. They say in Scotland that if you aim at a gown of gold you are pretty sure to get a sleeve: and I say no man has any right to be content not to be his best or do his best, and not do better tomorrow than he is doing to-day. But the truth I am after is that all this will come by keeping close to this manful and true life; and while we work steadily along to whatever fortune waits for us in the future, about the best thing we can do is to feel sure that this work we are doing, and the wife and the home and the children, these are the choicest earthward blessings Heaven has to give. It is our birthright to get the good of life as we go along, in these things that to a true man and woman are like the rain and sunshine to an apple tree. But when we will not believe this, and will still dream

that the best of our life is to come when we have made our fortune and exhaust the springs of life in making the fortune, then, you see, we sell our birthright, like Esau in the old time, for a mess of pottage: but we do not get even the satisfaction Esau got out of his bargain, because the mess of pottage is apt to give us the dyspepsia; and so we lose the good of birthright and pottage together.

CATHEDRALS

THE most wonderful and beautiful things in England to me are her Cathedrals, and I think they are the most wonderful and beautiful things to the majority of Englishmen who never leave home. When I was six years old I can remember what a sorrow came flying over our little country place at the news that the great Cathedral in York had been set on fire by a fanatic who thought he was obeying a voice from Heaven, hid himself in service time, piled up books and cushions after the sextons had gone out, set them on fire and then climbed out at a window by one of the bell ropes.

The fire spread in the vast spaces for many hours but the city went to sleep without a suspicion of the destruction which was gathering about the fairest jewel in the north, the pride of the great county, and the most perfect Gothic church in the world, until, at two o'clock in the morning, a man going through the church-yard fell on the frozen pavement, and, as he rose to his feet saw the glare in one of the windows, sounded the alarm, and then, from towns thirty and forty miles away, the engines went galloping toward the fire at the summons of the citizens, and all that human power could do to save the precious pile was done, but not before a

great part of the beauty was turned to ashes, the wonderful carving in stone and wood, the marvelous windows that flashed in your eyes as you stood on the hills forty miles away in the setting sun, and the ancient tombs of brass and marble running back into the dim centuries, all went down together in the fire.

I think our people felt the calamity as if it had struck their own homes. I can just see them, through my child eyes, talking about it as they met in the lanes and at the fireside, the cloud on their faces, the sadness in their voices, and the wonder what would be done now that the glory had gone out, while it seemed as if there was a flash out of the awful deeps no man may fathom, when they found on the very next Sunday that the Lesson read on that day ever since the times of Elizabeth held the words "Our holy and beautiful house where our fathers praised Thee is burnt with fire, and all our pleasant things are laid waste."

It was not really a place of worship so much as a place to be worshiped; not one in a thousand had ever stayed there through a service, and if they had it would hardly have been worth their while except as they might be touched by the matchless music and the singing.

But the Yorkshire folk like their own music best, as a rule, and do not take kindly to any other. They want to take part in it, to make a mighty noise unto God, and certainly they succeed. What they loved there was just the great, grand pile that had