and check the fullness and freedom of the flow of the human River of Life?

What a miserable farce the life of men and women seems to us! Time, which is so precious that even the Creator will not give a second moment until the first is gone, they throw away as though it were water. Opportunities which angels covet they fling away as of no consequence, and die failures, because they have "no chance in life." Life, which seems so precious to us, they spurn as if but a bauble. Scarcely a mortal returns to us who has not robbed himself of years of precious life. Scarcely a man returns to us dropping off in genuine old age, as autumn leaves drop in the forest. If they could but see the wonders of the human body, whose exquisite beauties excite admiration even in heaven, they would not torture it with hideous dress, abuse its sacred functions with foolish excesses, or even neglect its thorough care. become so cheap that mortals thus throw it away?

Has life

The lesson is plain; the list is endless; the variety is infinite; but examples of well-spent lives are very

rare.

Have an ambition to be remembered, not as a great lawyer, doctor, merchant, scientist, manufacturer, or scholar, but as a great man, every inch a king.

CHAPTER XVIII.

VOCATIONS, GOOD AND BAD.

There are few questions in this world so frequently agitated, of which the solution is more important to each puzzled mortal, than that upon which starts every sage's discovery, every novelist's plot, that which applies to man's life, from its first sleep in the cradle, 'What will he do with it?"- BULWER.

Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing. - SYDNEY SMITH.

Many a man pays for his success with a slice of his constitution."

No man struggles perpetually and victoriously against his own character; and one of the first principles of success in life is so to regulate our career as rather to turn our physical constitution and natural inclinations to good account than to endeavor to counteract the one or oppose the other. BULWER.

FRANKLIN.

He that hath a trade hath an estate.
Nature fits all her children with something to do. — LOWELL.

As occupations and professions have a powerful influence upon the length of human life, the youth should first ascertain whether the vocation he thinks of choosing is a healthy one. Statesmen, judges, and clergymen are noted for their longevity. They are not swept into the great business vortex, where the friction and raspings of sharp competition whittle life away at a fearful rate. Astronomers, who contemplate vast systems, moving through enormous distances, are exceptionally long lived, as Herschel and Humboldt. Philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians, as Galileo, Bacon, Newton, Euler, Dalton, in fact those who have dwelt upon the exact sciences, seem to have escaped many of the ills from which humanity suffers. Great students of natural history have also, as a rule, lived

long and happy lives. Of fourteen members of a noted historical society in England, who died in 1870, two were over ninety, five over eighty, and two over seventy.

The occupation of the mind has a great influence upon the health of the body. The pursuit of science tends to long life by its atmosphere of harmony.

There is no employment so dangerous and destructive to life but plenty of human beings can be found to engage in it. Of all the instances that can be given of recklessness of life, there is none which exceeds that of the workmen employed in what is called dry-pointing, - the grinding of needles and of table forks. The fine steel dust which they breathe brings on a painful disease, of which they are almost sure to die before they are forty. Yet not only are men tempted by high wages to engage in this employment, but they resist to the utmost all contrivances devised for diminishing the danger, through fear that such things would cause more workmen to offer themselves and thus lower wages. Many physicians have investigated the effects of work in the numerous match factories in France upon the health of the employees, and all agree that rapid destruction of the teeth, decay or necrosis of the jawbone, bronchitis, and other diseases result.

During a period of thirty-four years and eight months there died in Massachusetts one hundred sixtyseven thousand, eight hundred and one men over twenty years of age, whose occupations were specified in the registry of their diseases. The average age was fiftyone. Those engaged in agricultural pursuits attained the highest average age, sixty-five and one half years, and comprised more than one fifth of the whole number.

We will probably find more old men on farms than elsewhere. There are many reasons why farmers should live longer than persons residing in cities or than those engaged in other occupations. Aside from the purer