EASTERN BEDS.



IN India and other Eastern lands, the beds of the poorer classes are nothing more than quilts wadded with cotton, SO large as to enable the sleeper to wrap part of his bed around him, while he lies on the rest. A pillow is sometimes used, made of fine cane matting stretched over a light framework of bamboo, hollow, and open at the end. In Southern India a strip of mat, six or seven feet long, is often all the bed that is desired. In Syria it is often only a strip of carpet, which can be easily rolled up; the end portion is left unrolled, to form a pillow.

Such beds can be easily washed and dried again, and can be rolled up like a bundle of flannel and carried away by their owners under their arms.

The fashion and form of these beds will enable us to understand these two texts of Scripture: "For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it; and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it" Isaiah 28:20. "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk." John 5:8. 

There were, however, "beds of ivory" (Amos 6:4); and beds, or bedsteads, "of gold and silver." Esther 1:6.



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LESSEPS' LITTLE DAUGHTER.



THE great French civil engineer, M. De Lesseps, has a scheme for constructing an immense ship canal across the Isthmus of Panama. For the furtherance of his plan, he has been visiting the various commercial cities of France, and delivering lectures to awaken an interest in his favorite project. 

On these occasions he carries with him his little daughter Tototte, and she goes to the public assemblies which her father addresses. When she becomes drowsy, Mons. De Lesseps points to her, and says,"That little girl will tire the first mine when we come to quarry the canal 1" Then little Tototte rubs her eyes and awakes, and the crowd enthusiastically cheers.

We trust the little French mademoiselle may be permitted to see the great work of her father completed in which she is so deeply interested, and then safely ride from ocean to ocean in the first ship which sails across.



 G. w. A.




THE FIRE THAT CANNOT BE QUENCHED.


SOME fifty years ago, a gang of Belgian miners, angry with another set of underground workers, set a mass of coal on fire to smoke out their comrades. How well they succeeded, let the record of half-a century tell. Years have passed away, a generation has faded, the angry passion of those who thus sought revenge has become a thing of the past; but the fire started in that mine long ago blazes on, and no earthly skill has yet found the way to extinguish it. Burning on, ever consuming, it is a fitting type of the unceasing power of sin and passion. "One sinner destroyeth much good."



THE figures of arithmetic were brought into Europe by the Saracens, A. D. 901.