Lives so precious to them, I said. Did you ever think when you thoughtlessly crushed the life out of some harmless little creature, that you had in an instant destroyed what the combined skill of all mankind could not restore? that you had wantonly taken away one happy being's whole share in the universe of being? Think how bountiful Nature has been to you, and how niggardly to your victim. Could you not, with your thousands of herds, have left it its one ewe lamb ?

If it is cowardly to treat an inferior with cruelty, why should not the cowardice be estimated in proportion to the degree of the inferiority? You say, we cannot look upon the human and the brute creation in the same light. This, in general, I have admitted. But pain is pain and death is death, whoever or whatever suffers them. The man or the boy who can inflict torture upon a dumb animal without a stirring of pity in his heart is not likely to be very tender of any suffering but his

own.

The timidity of the animal creation is a constant reproach to man. The wild deer spies him in the distance, and scours away in terror: birds that alight fearlessly upon the broad backs of the buffalo dart away at man's approach, while their shaggy steeds plunge headlong over the precipice in their mad attempt to escape.

It need not have been so. It is pathetic to witness the affection with which creatures so often maltreated return kindness. The Arab's steed loves his master with almost the love of a child for its father; the dog's affection for his master is entirely unselfish; birds can be tamed so that they will feed from your hand.

Louisa Thompson. Alexander Selkirk in his solitude laments that the beasts that roam over the plain "Are so unacquainted with man,

Their tameness is shocking to me."

Dr. Dix. And shocking it should be to any humane

heart, but not for the purely selfish reason which made it so to him.

It is well for us that there is no race on earth for whose sole benefit we ourselves are supposed to have been created. Who knows what there may be in future ages? Science has shown that we have been evolved from this same inferior creation that we sacrifice so ruthlessly to our needs and pleasures: John Fiske to the contrary notwithstanding, who knows positively that there may not be evolved from us an angelic race as far above us as we are above the anthropoid apes in all respects save the sense of what is due to inferiors?

Imagine these glorious beings hunting, wounding, and slaying us for the sake of angelic "sport," and for the sake of cultivating their strength, skill, and angelic courage and hardihood! Imagine them harnessing us into their chariots; peeling the skin from our tongues and setting our teeth into agony with icy bits; strapping our heads back till our necks ache beyond endurance, to make us look spirited; blinding our eyes lest we should notice things by the way too curiously; and then, perhaps, driving us until we drop dead with exhaustion. Imagine them forgetting us in our cages and letting us die of cruel hunger and still more cruel thirst, or leaving us to languish in unvisited traps and snares; transporting us thousands of miles so closely packed together that we can neither stand, sit, nor lie without pain, and neglecting to give us food or drink because it would take too much time and trouble; destroying our fair-haired women by the thousands for the sake of their tresses to adorn their angelic bonnets withal; coìlecting us for natural history museums and biological lectures. In short, imagine them inflicting upon us any of the myriad torments we so thoughtlessly and heartlessly inflict upon the unfortunate inferiors that Fate has thrown upon our mercy. Then, in fine, sup

pose we should hear them justify their cruelty with the plea: "They are only men, and it is impossible to look upon men and angels in the same light!

Florence Hill. But such things would not be possible with such a race of beings; they would be as superior to men in kindness to their inferiors as they were in all other respects.

Dr. Dix. You are right, Miss Hill. I supposed the exception only for the sake of helping us to see ourselves as others angels, for instance — might see us. Such a race as I have imagined may never exist on earth, but I have no doubt that the Coming Man will be greatly superior to the present representatives of the race in kindness of heart as well as in all other respects; and I believe that he will look back upon the atrocities of this age, those inflicted upon animals among the rest, as we look back upon the gladiatorial shows of ancient Rome or the torture of prisoners in ancient Carthage.

Geoffrey Jenkins. Dr. Dix, all people are not cruel to animals. There are some who seem to think more of them than they do of human beings. I have seen ladies take better care of a snarling little puppy than they would ever think of taking of a baby.

Joseph Cracklin. And I have seen girls pet a kitten while they were making mouths at their brothers.

Helen Sawyer [promptly]. That is because kittens always behave so much better than brothers do! [Laughter.]

Joseph Cracklin. While sisters are always such patterns of gentleness, patience, and sweet

Dr. Dix. The time to close our discussion has come.

XXXVI.

CHARITY.

Dr. Dix. In our last Talk we spoke of our duties to the lower animals: let us now return to our duties to our own race. We may dispose of Jenkins's remark, that some people think more of animals than of human beings, with the reflection that such sentiments can awaken only pity or disgust in any well-regulated mind. What should be our feelings and conduct towards our fellow-men, particularly those who need our sympathy and help, will be our subject this morning.

I said awhile ago that no life is more certain to fail in its object than that one which is devoted to selfish pleasure-seeking. The rule extends to all self-seeking of whatever kind. The purely selfish man may gain all he strives for wealth, power, learning, fame, idle amusement, all save the one thing that he most ardently desires, and to which all the rest are sought as merely stepping-stones-happiness.

Now how shall happiness be obtained? It has been defined as that condition in which all the functions of mind and body are in perfectly harmonious action, -perfect harmony with their environment. It is not probable that such a condition has ever yet been attained in this world, but the nearest approach to it has been where to a healthy body and mind has been joined a heart so filled with love for fellow-men that it has had little or no thought for self. For, scholars, Happiness comes to us most readily when she is not sought for her own sake. She is beautiful and sweet, but she is an arrant coquette. "Pursue her," says an old proverb, "and she will flee; avoid her, and she will pursue."

But the selfish man will not believe this. Day by day, and year by year, he goes on straining all his energies for that which is designed to benefit only himself; and with each successive triumph comes disappointment, astonishment, that the happiness he so fondly expected does not follow. He concludes, at length, that whatever satisfaction there is in life comes in the process of acquiring and not in the acquisition itself, and so - he goes on, still striving.

But he makes a fatal mistake. There is a satisfaction far greater than that of the mightiest and most successful struggle for self, a satisfaction, too, which does not end with success, but goes on ever increasing.

It would be well for him if the three spirits that visited Scrooge on that famous Christmas night would visit him also. Then, when he had seen how much wretchedness there is in this sad world that he might relieve, how many bitter tears that he might dry, how many heavy hearts that he might cheer, perhaps he could taste the happiness which all his years of labor and of triumph cannot bestow. Instead of feeling a dead weight of discontent, of unsatisfied longing for he knows not what, forever pressing down upon his heart, he might cry, like the transformed Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath,

"I don't know what to do! I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy, I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo, here! Whoop! Hallo!"

George Williams. Scrooge was a rich man: he had it in his power to do all those benevolent deeds. But if happiness depends on that sort of thing, there was n't much chance for the poor people he helped; and he could n't have succeeded in making them really happy, after all, however comfortable he may have made them. Dr. Dix. Ah, Williams, giving money is not the