“The tell-tale body is all tongues.”  Mr. Emerson, we think that is true.

“How can I be beautiful?” Every boy and girl, man and woman, wants to know that.  Here is Mr. Emerson’s beauty recipe:  “There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.”  Do you suppose that recipe will work?  Think of the most beautiful people you know.  Ah, I knew some one would say “mother.”  Do you not think these people are those who try very hard to make others happy?  I know very many beautiful people who would have remained very plain had they sought only to please themselves.

We want to try Emerson’s rule for becoming beautiful, so it will not do to forget that “There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.”

“Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him.  But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor.  Then all goes well.”  Yes, Mr. Emerson, that is the only way to have things go well,—­following the Golden Rule.

“You cannot hide any secret.  ’Tis as hard to hide as fire.”  Perhaps you think that it is not so; but you just try how long you can keep a secret that even your dearest friend does not know.  I should not wonder if Emerson were right once more.

“There is much you may not do.”  True again.  We do not need Emerson to tell us that.  “You must not do that, you must not do this,” the little folks hear so often, that sometimes they wonder what they may do.

But we would like to have him tell us what things last longest.

He is all ready to tell whoever wants to know, “Beauty is the quality which makes to endure.  In a house that I know, I have noticed a block of spermaceti lying about closets and mantel-pieces for twenty years together, simply because the tallow-man gave it the form of a rabbit; and I suppose it may continue to be lugged about unchanged for a century.  Let an artist draw a few lines or figures on the back of a letter, and that scrap of paper is rescued from danger, is put in a portfolio, or framed and glazed, and, in proportion to the beauty of the lines drawn, will be kept for centuries.”  And there are beauties of heart, mind and character, that do not meet the eye, but are none the less powerful in “making to endure.”

THE OLD MAN AND THE NERVOUS COW.

BY R.E.

“There was an old man who said ’How
Shall I ’scape from this horrible cow? 
I will sit on the stile,
And continue to smile,
Which may soften the heart of the cow.’”

The old man was walking thoughtfully through the field, with his hands behind him, when the nervous cow saw him.  She wasn’t ordinarily a bad-natured cow, but she was mad just then.  An aggravating fly had been biting her half the morning, and, just as she was drinking at the brook, a frog had jumped up with a cry and bitten her nose.  These things had completely unsettled her nerves.