But though there can be no harm in a day’s fast, it is never safe to suffer for want of drinking water. The same doctor who passed nearly six weeks without a mouthful of food, took a sip of cold lemonade every few hours, and it is a curious fact that in warm weather a glass of water served with our dinner is by far the most important part of the meal. Hunger, or what we call a “good appetite,” often stops after the mealtime has passed without a chance of getting a mouthful of food, but thirst cannot be put off in that way, and becomes at last so intolerable that a starved traveler, after a three days’ journey in the desert, would give a wagon-load of food for a drink of cold water.
Felix L. Oswald, M. D.
WOULD AND SHOULD.
A PUPIL in a quiet boarding-school in —— displayed some time since no small degree of industry in collecting autographs of distinguished persons. The late James Russell Lowell was one of the number addressed. The address to him was in substance: “I would be very much obliged for your autograph.” The response contained a lesson that many besides the ambitious pupil have not learned: “Pray do not say hereafter ‘I would be obliged.’ If you would be obliged, be obliged and be done with it. Say ‘I should be obliged,’ and oblige yours truly, James Russell Lowell.”—Selected.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
YOU see it is most beautiful to the eye, though you Pansies of the great cities may think some of your churches quite as handsome. But none of them has such a history. This church was founded—started, as some would say—more than a thousand years ago! Now where’s your pretty “meeting-house” which was built only last year?
Old King Siebert, a Saxon, built Westminster Abbey, and many of the Saxons really believed that the Apostle Peter dedicated it, though Peter had died nearly one thousand years before!