A HINT TO BOYS.
If I were a boy again, and knew what I know now, I would not be quite so positive in my own opinions as I used to be. Boys generally think that they are very certain about many things. A boy of fifteen is a great deal more sure of what he thinks he knows than is a man of fifty. You ask the boy a question, and he will answer you right off, up and down. He knows all about it. Ask a man of large experience and ripe wisdom the same question, and he will say, "Well, there is much to be said about it. I am inclined, on the whole, to think so-and-so, but other intelligent men think otherwise."
When I was about eight years old, I travelled from Central Massachusetts to Western New York, crossing the river at Albany, and going by canal to Syracuse. On the canal-boat a kindly gentleman was talking to me one day, and I mentioned the fact that I had crossed the Connecticut River at Albany. How I got it into my head that it was the Connecticut River I do not know, for I knew my geography very well then; but in some unmistakable way I fixed it in my mind that the river at Albany was the Connecticut, and I called it so. "Why," said the gentleman, "that is the Hudson River." "Oh, no, sir," I replied, politely but firmly. "You're mistaken. That is the Connecticut River." The gentleman smiled and said no more. In this matter I was perfectly sure that I was right, and so I thought it my duty to correct the gentleman's geography. I felt rather sorry for him that he should be so ignorant.
One day, a short time after I reached home, I happened to be looking over my route on the map, and lo! there was Albany standing on the Hudson River, a hundred miles from the Connecticut. Then I did not feel half so sorry for the gentleman's ignorance as I did for my own. I never told anybody that story until I wrote it down on these pages the other day, but I have thought of it a thousand times, and always with a blush for my boldness. Nor was it the only time that I was perfectly sure of things that were not really so. It is hard for a boy to learn that he may be mistaken; but, unless he is a dunce, he learns it after a while. The sooner he finds it out the better for him.
W. G.
DIVINE GUIDANCE.
In the life of Mary Pryor, well known among the Quakers a hundred years ago, the following incident occurred on the occasion of her visit to the Quakers in America.
She visited several of the best ships of the period, but did not feel easy to take her passage in any of them. At length, on sitting down in an inferior vessel, called the Fame, she said she felt "so comfortable" that she must go in that ship. Her friends endeavoured to dissuade her, one of them saying he would not trust his dog in it. But having sought the Lord's direction, she saw no light on any change of plan, and she set sail in the Fame. She was now sixty years of age.