Thoughts on Various Subjects.

It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next: "Future ages shall talk of this; this shall be famous to all posterity;" whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.

It is in disputes as in armies, where the weaker side setteth up false lights, and maketh a great noise, that the enemy may believe them to be more numerous and strong than they really are.

I have known some men possessed of good qualities, which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbors and passengers, but not the owner within.

If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last!

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

The reason why so few marriages are happy, is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages. Censure is the tax a man payeth to the public for being emi

nent.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.

Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion.

The common fluency of speech in many men and most women is owing to a scarcity of matter and scarcity of words; for whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of

words to clothe them in, and these are always ready at the mouth. So people come faster out of a church when it is almost empty, than when a crowd is at the door.

To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. Vain men delight in telling what honors have been done them, what great company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess that these honors were more than due, and such as their friends would not believe if they had not been told; whereas a man truly proud thinks the greatest honors below his merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a maxim, that whoever desires the character of a proud man ought to conceal his vanity.

Every man desireth to live long, but no man would be old.

If books and laws continue to increase as they have done for fifty years past, I am in some concern for future ages, how any man will be learned, or any man a lawyer.

If a man maketh me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keepeth his at the same time.

Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.

Princes in their infancy, childhood, and youth, are said to discover prodigious parts and wit, to speak things that surprise and astonish; strange, so many hopeful princes, so many shameful kings! If they happened to die young, they would have been prodigies of wisdom and virtue; if they live, they are often prodigies, indeed, but of another sort.

BRET HARTE.

RANCIS BRET HARTE was born in Albany, New York,

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August 25, 1837, and is now in the prime of life. His father died while Bret was very young. When but seventeen years of age, young Harte went to California and led a roving life for three years, sometimes digging for gold, sometimes teaching school, and finally acting as an express manager. He was schooled in active life as a miner and teacher, next as a compositor and contributor, subsequently as a member of the editorial staff, and finally as editor of the Californian, a literary weekly. From 1864 to 1870, he held the office of secretary of the United States branch mint in San Francisco.

In 1868 the Overland Monthly was started, and Bret Harte was selected as editor. In the August number of that year appeared his Luck of Roaring Camp, and still later, The Outcasts of Poker Flat. From the latter work, we have made our selection. "The Society upon the Stanislan,” “John Burns of Gettysburg," "The Pliocene Skull," and "The Heathen Chinee," are his well known productions.

"There is an amusing story to the effect that the proofreader, a young woman with a superabundance of modesty, reported to the publishers that his Luck of Roaring Camp was a most shocking article, unfit for publication, that the publishers took the alarm and besought Harte to withdraw it, and that he made its appearance the condition of his retaining the editorship. This sketch, which met with an enthusiastic reception from the entire reading public, was the