The cloud which appeared to the prophet Ezekiel carried with it winds and storms, but it was environed with a golden circle, to teach us that the storms of affliction, which happen to God's children, are encompassed with brightness and smiling felicity.-N. Caussin.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.-Shakespeare.

In thy silent wishing, thy voiceless, unuttered prayer, let the desire be not cherished that afflictions may not visit thee; for well has it been said, "Such prayers never seem to have wings. I am willing to be purified through sorrow, and to accept it meekly as a blessing. I see that all the clouds are angels' faces, and their voices speak harmoniously of the everlasting chime."-Mrs. L. M. Child.

Amid my list of blessings infinite stands this the foremost, "That my heart has bled."—

Young.

Tears and sorrows and losses are a part of what must be experienced in this present state of life: some for our manifest good, and all, therefore, it is trusted, for our good concealed; for our final and greatest good.Leigh Hunt.

Afflictions clarify the soul.-Quarles. There is an elasticity in the human mind, capable of bearing much, but which will not show itself until a certain weight of affliction be put upon it; its powers may be compared to those vehicles whose springs are so contrived that they get on smoothly enough when loaded, but jolt confoundedly when they have nothing to bear.-Colton.

Calamity is man's true touchstone.-Fletcher.

In a great affliction there is no light either in the stars or in the sun; for when the inward light is fed with fragrant oil, there can be no darkness though the sun should go out. But when, like a sacred lamp in the temple, the inward light is quenched, there is no light outwardly, though a thousand suns should preside in the heavens.-Beecher.

Afflictions sent by Providence melt the constancy of the noble-minded, but confirm the obduracy of the vile. The same furnace that hardens clay liquefies gold; and in the strong manifestations of divine power Pharaoh found his punishment, but David his pardon.-Colton.

With every anguish of our earthly part the spirit's sight grows clearer; this was meant when Jesus touched the blind man's lids with clay.-Lowell.

God afflicts with the mind of a father, and kills for no other purpose but that he may raise again.-South.

Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward.-Bible.

The very afflictions of our earthly pilgrimage are presages of our future glory, as shadows indicate the sun.-Richter.

As the most generous vine, if it is not pruned, runs out into many superfluous stems, and grows at last weak and fruitless; so doth the best man, if he be not cut short of his desires and pruned with afflictions. If it be painful to bleed, it is worse to wither. Let me be pruned, that I may grow, rather than be cut up to burn.-Bishop Hall.

Corn is cleaned with wind, and the soul with chastening.—George Herbert.

No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.—Bible.

Fairer and more fruitful in spring the vine becomes from the skilful pruning of the husbandman; less pure had been the gums which the odorous balsam gives if it had not been cut by the knife of the Arabian shepherd.— Metastasio.

The good are better made by ill, as odors crushed are sweeter still!-Rogers.

No man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might. For it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose.-Emerson.

The loss of a beloved connection awakens an interest in heaven before unfelt.-Bovee.

The great, in affliction, bear a countenance more princely than they are wont; for it is the temper of the highest heart, like the palmtree, to strive most upward when it is most burdened.-Sir P. Sidney.

What seem to us but dim funereal tapers may be heaven's distant lamps.-Longfellow.

Extraordinary afflictions are not always the punishment of extraordinary sins, but sometimes the trial of extraordinary graces.Matthew Henry.

The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough.-Carlyle.

As they lay copper in aquafortis before they begin to engrave it, so the Lord usually prepares us by the searching, softening discipline of affliction for making a deep, lasting impres sion of himself upon our hearts.-J. T. Nottidge.

With the wind of tribulation God separates in the floor of the soul, the chaff from the corn.-Molinos.

Sanctified afflictions are spiritual promotions.
Matthew Henry.

God is now spoiling us of what would otherwise have spoiled us. When God makes the world too hot for his people to hold, they will let it go.-T. Powell.

How blunt are all the arrows of thy quiver in comparison with those of guilt!-Blair.

Afflictions are the medicine of the mind. If they are not toothsome, let it suffice that they are wholesome. It is not required in physic that it should please, but heal.-Bishop Henshaw.

"T is a physic that is bitter to sweet end.— Shakespeare.

There will be no Christian but what will have a Gethsemane, but every praying Christian will find that there is no Gethsemane without its angel!—Rev. T. Binney.

AGE.

There are three classes into which all the women past seventy years of age, that ever I knew, were to be divided: 1. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That old witch.— Coleridge. When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not the decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.-Madame de Staël.

The evening of life brings with it its lamps.-
Joubert.

Can man be so age-stricken that no faintest sunshine of his youth may revisit him once a year? It is impossible. The moss on our timeworn mansion brightens into beauty; the good old pastor, who once dwelt here, renewed his prime and regained his boyhood in the genial breezes of his ninetieth spring. Alas for the worn and heavy soul, if, whether in youth or age, it has outlived its privilege of springtime sprightliness!-Hawthorne.

There is a quiet repose and steadiness about the happiness of age, if the life has been well spent. Its feebleness is not painful. The nervous system has lost its acutenesss. Even in mature years we feel that a burn, a scald, a cut, is more tolerable than it was in the sensitive period of youth.-Hazlitt.

Old age is a tyrant, which forbids the pleasures of youth on pain of death.-Rochefoucauld.

Life grows darker as we go on, till only one pure light is left shining on it; and that is faith. Old age, like solitude and sorrow, has its revelations.—Madame Swetchine.

Old age likes to dwell in the recollections of the past, and, mistaking the speedy march of years, often is inclined to take the prudence of the winter time for a fit wisdom of midsummer days. Manhood is bent to the passing cares of the passing moment, and holds so closely to his eyes the sheet of "to-day," that it screens the "to-morrow" from his sight.-Kossuth.

To be happy, we must be true to nature, and carry our age along with us.-Hazlitt.

Winter, which strips the leaves from around us, makes us see the distant regions they formerly concealed; so does old age rob us of our enjoyments, only to enlarge the prospect of eternity before us.-Richter.

They say women and music should never be dated.—Goldsmith.

Old age is a lease nature only signs as a particular favor, and it may be, to one only in the space of two or three ages; and then with a pass to boot, to carry him through all the traverses and difficulties she has strewed in the way of his long career.-Montaigne.

Crabbed age and youth cannot live together.
Shakespeare.

Most long lives resemble those threads of gossamer, the nearest approach to nothing unmeaningly prolonged, scarce visible pathways of some worm from his cradle to his grave.-Lowell.

O sir, you are old; nature in you stands on the very verge of her confine; you should be ruled and led by some discretion, that discerns your state better than you yourself.—Shakespeare.

Age is rarely despised but when it is contemptible.-Johnson.

That which is usually called dotage is not the weak point of all old men, but only of such as are distinguished by their levity.-Cicero.

has that of things, which impress themselves according to the clearness of the conception of the thought which we wish to retain.—

De Bonstetten.

Old age has deformities enough of its own; do not add to it the deformity of vice.-Cato.

We should provide for our age, in order that our age may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from the meditation of the next. It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave!—Bulwer Lytton.

There cannot live a more unhappy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures nor sensible of doing them to others.-Sir W. Temple.

A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth; therefore instead of its introducing dismal and melancholy prospects of decay, it should give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world.-Palmer.

For my own part, I had rather be old only a short time than be old before I really am so.Cicero.

He who would pass the declining years of his life with honor and comfort, should when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember, when he is old, that he has once been young.-Addison.

The silver livery of advised age.-Shakespeare.

It is noticeable how intuitively in age we go back with strange fondness to all that is fresh in the earliest dawn of youth. If we never cared for little children before, we delight to see them roll in the grass over which we hobble on crutches. The grandsire turns wearily from his middle-aged, care-worn son, to listen with infant laugh to the prattle of an infant grandchild. It is the old who plant young trees; it is the old who are most saddened by the autumn, and feel most delight in the returning spring.— Bulwer Lytton.

The damps of autumn sink into the leaves and prepare them for the necessity of their fall; and thus insensibly are we, as years close round us, detached from our tenacity of life by the gentle pressure of recorded sorrows.-Landor.

The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse as we grow old.-Rochefoucauld.

Old age is never honored among us, but only indulged, as childhood is; and old men lose one of the most precious rights of man, that of being judged by their peers.-Goethe.

Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty; for in my youth I never did apply hot and rebellious liquors in my blood; nor did not with unbashful forehead woo the means of weakness and debility; therefore my age is as a lusty winter, frosty, but kindly.-Shakespeare.

We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.-Emerson.

I think that to have known one good old man-one man, who, through the chances and mischances of a long life, has carried his heart in his hand, like a palm-branch, waving all discords into peace-helps our faith in God, in ourselves, and in each other more than many sermons.-G. W. Curtis.

True wisdom, indeed, springs from the wide brain which is fed from the deep heart; and it is only when age warms its withering concep tions at the memory of its youthful fire, when it makes experience serve aspiration, and knowledge illumine the difficult paths through which thoughts thread their way into facts, -it is only then that age becomes broadly and nobly wise.- Whipple.

Our life much resembles wine: when there is only a little remaining, it becomes vinegar; for all the ills of human nature crowd to old age as if it were a workshop.-Antiphanes.

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind, than it does in the face, and souls are never, or very rarely seen, that in growing old do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all together, both towards his perfection and decay. Montaigne.

As we grow old we become more foolish and more wise.-Rochefoucauld.

The tendency of old age, say the physiolpleasant, to meet with an old man whose opinions are not ossified.-J. F. Boyse.

It is difficult to grow old gracefully.

Madame de Staël.

Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay.-Holmes.

Time has laid his hand upon my heart gently, not smiting it; but as a harper lays his open palm upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations.-Longfellow.

I venerate old age; and I love not the man who can look without emotion upon the sunset of life, when the dusk of evening begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding.-Longfellow.

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.-Bacon.

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they are merely making a sacrifice to God of the Devil's leavings.-Swift.

Time's chariot-wheels make their carriageroad in the fairest face.-Rochefoucauld.

I feel I am growing old for want of somebody to tell me that I am looking as young as ever. Charming falsehood! There is a vast deal of vital air in loving words.-Landor.

Years steal fire from the mind as vigor from the limb.-Byron.

Like a morning dream, life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious, and the crooked paths look straighter as we approach the end.-Richter.

What folly can be ranker? Like our shadows, our wishes lengthen as our sun declines. Young.

Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.-Swift.

Age and sufferings had already marked out the first incisions for death, so that he required but little effort to cut her down; for it is with men as with trees, they are notched long before felling, that their life-sap may flow out.-Richter.

We see time's furrows on another's brow; how few themselves, in that just mirror, see!— Young.

There is nothing more disgraceful than that an old man should have nothing to produce as a proof that he has lived long except his years. Seneca.

Old men's lives are lengthened shadows; their evening sun falls coldly on the earth, but the shadows all point to the morning.-Richter

How many persons fancy they have experience simply because they have grown old

Stanislaus.

Alcott.

As sailing into port is a happier thing than the voyage, so is age happier than youth; that is, when the voyage from youth is made with Christ at the helm.-Rev. J. Pulsford.

It is only necessary to grow old to become more indulgent. I see no fault committed that I have not committed myself.-Goethe.

Vanity in an old man is charming. It is a proof of an open nature. Eighty winters have not frozen him up, or taught him concealments. In a young person it is simply allowable; we do not expect him to be above it.— Bovee.

We grizzle every day. I see no need of it. Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young.-Emerson.

One's age should be tranquil, as one's childhood should be playful; hard work, at either extremity of human existence, seems to me out of place; the morning and the evening should be alike cool and peaceful; at midday the sun may burn, and men may labor under it.Dr. Arnold.

At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.-Grattan.

Depend upon it, a man never experiences such pleasure or grief after fourteen years as he does before, unless in some cases, in his first love-making, when the sensation is new to him. Charles Kingsley.

We hope to grow old, yet we fear old age; that is, we are willing to live, and afraid to die. Bruyère.

Some one has said of a fine and honorable old age, that it was the childhood of immortality.-Pindar.

Cautious age suspects the flattering form, and only credits what experience tells.-Johnson.

Each departed friend is a magnet that attracts us to the next world, and the old man lives among graves.—Richter.

AGREEABLE.

The character in conversation which commonly passes for agreeable is made up of civility and falsehood.-Swift.

The art of being agreeable frequently miscarries through the ambition which accompanies it. Wit, learning, wisdom, what can more effectually conduce to the profit and delight of society? Yet I am sensible that a man may be too invariably wise, learned, or witty to be agreeable; and I take the reason of this to be, that pleasure cannot be bestowed by the simple and unmixed exertion of any one faculty or accomplishment.—Cumberland.

If you wish to appear agreeable in society you must consent to be taught many things which you know already.-Lavater.

We may say of agreeableness, as distinct from beauty, that it consists in a symmetry of which we know not the rules, and a secret conformity of the features to each other, and to the air and complexion of the person.

Rochefoucauld.

Most arts require long study and applica tion; but the most useful art of all, that of pleasing, requires only the desire.—Chesterfield.

Nature has left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both who, by a very few faults, that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable.—Swift. AGRICULTURE.

Agriculture is the most certain source of strength, wealth, and independence. Commerce flourishes by circumstances precarious, contingent, transitory, almost as liable to change as the winds and waves that waft it to our shores. She may well be termed the younger sister, for, in all emergencies, she looks to agriculture, both for defence and for supply.-Colton.

The first three men in the world were a gardener, a ploughman, and a grazier; and if any man object that the second of these was a murderer, I desire he would consider that as soon as he was so, he quitted our profession and turned builder.-Cowley.

In ancient times, the sacred plough employed the kings, and awful fathers of mankind.

Thomson.

In the age of acorns, antecedent to Ceres and the royal ploughman Triptolemus, a single barley-corn had been of more value to mankind than all the diamonds that glowed in the mines of India.-H. Brooke.

He who would look with contempt upon the farmer's pursuit is not worthy the name of a man.-Beecher.