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A silence naturally followed, which I broke after awhile by asking for the end of the anecdote.

"Oh," said Valentine, "two of the other

lotte that the whole house was in despair at his absence; then one of the pupils administered further comfort by remarking that it never took more than a month to polish off" the whooping-cough; the oth-fellows and I talked seriously to him. He er tucked the blind boy under his arm in a is such a jolly muff. We said, Grainger, really kindly fashion, and they retired, af- we could not have thought it of you!' ter receiving a present of a little box of And we actually worked him up to such a eggs from Valentine, which the blind boy pitch that he vowed he would do it. But touching lightly with his finger-tips, named, he was very miserable. He said it made and, as it seemed, correctly. him so low to think of a long engagement; and, besides, what would his mother say ? We told him he ought to have thought of that before. We made a great deal of his always having carried her prayer-book to church for her. We said, that perhaps he was not aware that this was considered the most pointed attention you could possibly pay to a woman! Well, then we talked of honour, you know."

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"Old Tikey," Valentine afterwards observed, was a horrid coddle. Fellows must have the whooping-cough some time, and yet Old Tikey had actually sent him home on account of two boys who had not yet taken it. And isn't that sneak, Prentice, delighted?" he added.

"Who is Prentice?" I asked.

---

"He's a most odiously conceited fool;he's an intolerable young prig." “Come,” said Liz; "this is nothing but rank jealousy. Prentice is reading for Cambridge he is Val's rival, Dorothea." "He is only just nineteen-five months older than I am-and he is engaged to Charlotte. Only think of that!"

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Silly fellow !"

"Old Tikey doesn't know. Do you think those fellows who called just now looked older than I?"

"Older?" No, younger. Much shorter, and more boyish altogether."

"Ah! they are small for their years, but the oldest of those has made an offer! There never was such a muffin this world; we can make him do anything."

"It's quite true, I assure you," said Lou, seeing me look amazed.

"What a shame!"

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Yes," replied Valentine, "so it was; but then there was Prentice. We felt that we could not live in the same house with him, unless we could make him feel small. We were strolling under a clump of trees, not far from Old Tikey's house; and when we had worked at Grainger for some time, he suddenly darted off. And an old woman, who lives in a cottage close by, came out and talked to me about my cough, and said if I took three hairs out of a drover's dog's tail, just as he was going to London after the drover, he would carry the cough away with him. And those simple remedies,' she observed, would often succeed when all the doctors were posed.' Well, we went on talking to her, and wandering about; then we sat down on a bank, while I did a little coughing. It was the day before I was requested to go "Nothing of the sort; we made him do home to my disconsolate family. Then it. It was just after Prentice had informed we saw Grainger coming. He ran very me of his engagement to Charlotte, and fast, and looked very jolly. He flung himwe were all bursting with rage at the airs self down beside us panting. Well,' he he gave himself. And so, by a happy in- cried out, I've done it, and she won't spiration, I said to Grainger-that fel- have me; that's one good thing! But low whom you have just seen—well, I'll never make an offer again, I can tell Dick, I suppose your affair will be coming you, whatever you may say.' 'Won't have off soon? And we actually made him be- you!' we all cried out, screaming with lieve (that we might make Prentice ap- laughter. What, have you gone and done pear the more ridiculous, you know) - it already?' And he said he had. He we made him believe that he had paid met her in the shrubbery, and had said, great attention to Old Tikey's sister. She as we told him to say, that he was afraid is fat; more than forty; and we made she was getting thin. She said, 'What, him believe that he had stolen her affec- Grainger?' And so then he continued, tions, and must take the consequence."

"But I suppose he made it of his own free will?" I inquired.

"If I were you, I would keep these school-boy delinquincies to myself," said Liz.

"Very well, then; talk and amuse Miss Graham yourself."

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'I said to her what you told me about my hand and heart, and all that; and she won't have me- said she should not think of such a thing.' Well, we all shook hands with him. I'm a very moral fellow, so I talked to him. I said to him,

'Let this be a warning to you never to trifle with the feelings of the tender sex again.' He said it should.”

From The Contemporary Review. NORMAN MACLEOD.

ON the 20th of June, I followed to his grave, in Campsie Church-yard, Dr. Norman Macleod, the most manly man I ever knew, the most genial, the most many

"This is really true?" I asked. "Quite true. When he heard of it, Prentice almost gnashed his teeth. We told it to him as if it was the most com-sided, and yet the least angular. In his monplace thing in the world that Grainger should have made an offer."

"Isn't this a queer boy?" said Lou. "Then Prentice should not be such an ass," he burst out.

"Well, now we are going out for a walk, and Aunt Christie, too. I must go and find her," observed one of the girls.

I shall accompany you. Some other time I shall tell Miss Graham all about Charlotte, and how she and Prentice correspond. Prentice is such a fool that he even steals other people's jokes, and tells them all wrong. You know that the house of Daniel Mortimer, Esq., has one long wing?"

"Yes."

-

"Well, one day when we were making some experiments here, Préntice went up to my room for a bottle of steel filings, and Giles met him wandering about; so he said, by way of a mild joke, 'Don't you know that, like the albatross, he sleeps on the wing?' Well, Prentice actually was heard to tell that the next day thus, 'My friend Mortimer, I dare say you know that, like the albatross, he - he flies all night!' He had forgotten the point of it; but he came here to lunch with Charlotte soon after, and told St. Stephen how Old Tikey had bought some Irish pigs that would not stop in the stye. One ran away, and jumped clean through a cottage window. Mr. Tikey, in full chase, bolted in at the door and found the woman of the house boiling a dozen, at least of pheasant's eggs. Boiling pheasant's eggs!' said Giles; foolish woman. Why, they were poached already! If I had such a pig as that,' he went on, 'I would soon cure him.' Would you believe it! Prentice looked earnestly at him, and answered, 'How?'"

If Prentice had not been one of the chief arbiters of my fate-I may say the chief arbiter I would not have recorded all this nonsense of Valentine's. As it was, let me say, with due solemnity, that this was the first time Prentice rose on my horizon like a star.

funeral sermon on his kinsman, Dr. John Macleod Campbell, he said, "I have had the happiness of knowing, and of meeting once in his house, the late Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, the late Principal Scott of Owens' College, Manchester, and Professor Maurice; and such men of culture, both of intellect and of spirit, such 'outbuilt,' holy, living men, breathing an atmosphere of such lofty thought and deep devotion, I cannot hope again to meet together on this side the grave." This sermon printed in the May part of Good Words, with this note appended to the passage quoted :- "Alas! since this was written, the great and good Professor Maurice has departed!

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was

They are all gone to that world of light,” Short was the time during which the writer of that pathetic note had to

"alone sit ling'ring here."

He now is one of those whose

"Very memory is fair and bright."

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A more impressive funeral than his I never witnessed. From all parts of Scotland, from all parts of the kingdom, those who reverenced him—some of them forced, by his manly talent, faithful conviction, and goodness, to reverence him, in spite of great diversity of opinion had mustered to pay the last tribute of respect to his remains. Norman Macleod was mere paper and pulpit and platform good man, putting all his goodness into books and sermons and speeches. Where he was best known known as standing the crucial test of the "dreary intercourse of daily life"

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there he was most respected and beloved. Glasgow had known him for many a year as a most unpretentious, and yet most indefatigable, worker for his brethren's weal in this life and beyond this life; and money-making Glasgow struck work in the middle of the week to show that it felt it had lost its best citizen. one of the members of the Royal Family, who looked upon him as a friend, and gracefully manifested their estimate of him at the grave, been the occupant of the hearse, the pavements, the windows, the housetops of the funeral route could not

Had

have been more densely thronged, or with sincerer mourners

I esteem it no common honour to have known such a man as intimately, I believe, as anyone outside his family circle knew him. My acquaintance with him began in this way. When I was a young man of twenty-four, quite unknown, I formed a project of starting a magazine to contain (as Dr. Arnold puts it), not so much articles of a religious character, as articles of a general character written in a religious spirit. But where was I to find a fit editor for it? Whilst I was pondering this difficulty, I chanced to read in the Scotsman a report of a chat on "Cock Robin," and other nursery ballads and stories, which Dr. Macleod had had with children, at the close of an examination in an Ayrshire school-room. His words seemed to me so kindly, so wise as well as witty - there was so much broad humanity in his huthat I said to myself, "Here's the man, if I can but get him."

mour

-

I offered the editorship of my embryo periodical to Dr. Macleod. He drolly replied, that his only qualification for the post was the fact that for ten years he had conducted the Edinburgh Christian Magazine, with heavy loss to himself and all concerned. This did not frighten me, however. I continued to importune him, and at last prevailed. "I'll become the captain," he said, "provided you become the sailing-master. More than this I dare not undertake, in face of my heavy pulpit and parish duties."

the former had an uphill battle to fight for a year or two. Yet, when Dr. Macleod went to India, in 1867, he wrote thus to me:-"Go where I will I am received with open arms. Good Words is everywhere, and is a magical open sesame for me."

The rancorous opposition Good Words had to struggle against - perhaps, though, "rancorous "is rather too strong an adjective, since sometimes "things are not what they seem," and, as Carlyle says, even cant may be sincere the opposithen, then, Good Words had to breast and buffet before we fought it up to the first place in point of circulation among monthly magazines all that is an old story, and I have no wish to revive unpleasant bygones. The fable of the Viper and the File might be alluded to, were it not that I do not believe that the bulk of the assailants of Good Words were really venomous; and, though Dr. Macleod could give and take as well as any man, a hard rasping file is the last thing any one who knew him would think of likening him to. He had Celtic fire, Celtic sarcastic wit, in his composition, but also too much Celtic love of the liking of others, to suffer him to lapse into passive cynicism. Ecce signum, in this hitherto unpublished letter, addressed to one of the Professors in the University of Edinburgh :

"MY DEAR

I thank you for your letter, because I feel assured that you meant it kindly Yet I can hardly express to you the pain, and, I must add, the surprise, with which I received your objections to Good Words,' coming as they do from one for whose character and culture I entertain high respect.

Good Words did not please him as a title when I first suggested it to him. His religion was of a robust type, and he thought it sounded too "goody-goody." However, I hunted up the "worth much and cost little" motto from Herbert, and Dr. Mac-modify, the difficulties which you are pleased so kindly to express.

leod consented to take the command of

my venture when launched and christened

as Good Words.

His agreement with me was characteristic to wit, that there was to be no agreement; I was to pay him much or little, according to my estimate of what the magizine could afford. Such verbal agreements, as a rule, prove unsatisfactory to both parties; but we have no more definite agreement down to the end, and yet no question ever arose as to meum and tuum, nor did any cloud, even of the size of a man's hand, appear to darken our hori

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"Let me make the endeavor to meet, or at least

·

"There is, first of all, what you call the Sabbath reading question. You fear, as I understand it, that young persons may be tempted to read the secular articles of Good Words' on Sunday, and that the fiue tone' which we have so long associated, and very properly, with Sabbath reading, may thereby be deteriorated. Now, 'Good Words' is not specially intended, as too many Christian periodicals I think are, to furnish nourishment for the young or uneducated, but rather to give solid meat to intelligent men and women. But if any members of a Christian family are compelled to endure such severe and dry exercises on the Sunday as would make them long for even the scientific articles in Good Words'- or, what is still more likely, if they are so ill-trained as to read what parental authority has forbidden, let me ask, why not in such a case lock-up Good Words?' The poorest family has generally a press, or chest of drawers,

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volved in the Sabbath reading question,' what can I say? Ought I to leave out the sacred? Would the magazine thereby become more Christian? Would such a change make it really more religious, and, therefore, more worthy the support of Evangelical men? I have no sympathy with such notions. Either of us must have a way of looking at the matter which the other cannot understand.

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where this mechanical process could be achieved It must surely be acknowledged that the periodical, so far as its mere secular' element is concerned, may be admitted as a respectable and worthy visitor of a Christian family on at least six days in the week? And if so, why not take the visitor by the throat, say at 11.55 on Saturday night, just at the moment when he is being transformed into a dangerous intruder, and incarcerate him till he becomes once more respect- "Your third objection, however, is worthy of able at 12.5 on Monday morning? Or should a more lengthened and serious reply. I quite it be feared that the villain may escape on Sun-sympathize with those who urge it: - I mean day that John or James have become so at- the fact of writers belonging to different schools tached to him that they are disposed to pick the in theology, and different departments in literalock of his prison and let him out, might it not ture, - such as Mr. Trollope, Professor Kingsbe prudent, in such a case, to adopt the old or- ley, and Dr. Stanley, writing in the same thodox Popish fashion of burning him as a her- journal with men of acknowledged' Evangelietic? with this proviso only (for the great ad- cal' sentiments. Now, whether the idea of a vantage of the publishers!), that a new copy religious magazine which shall include among should be purchased every Monday morning. its writers men of all parties and churches be Even in this case, and in spite of all those hola- right or wrong, I beg to assure you that I am causts Good Words' would still be worth much willing to take on myself all the responsibility and cost little.' But then, my dear, you for it. Moreover, I can very sincerely say that must consider how to dispose of all your other it was not adopted without most grave, mature, secular literature upon the first day of the week. and prayerful consideration. I say prayerful, What of your other secular books and secular not as a mere phrase, but as expressing a real periodicals? and, what is a still more difficult fact. I admit also that we have been from the question, what of your secular conversation, if first alive to the possible offence this plan might science be secular? What, for example, are you give to some good and thoroughly sincere men to do with the secular sun, moon, and stars? who had been accustomed to associate with Are you to look at them? And if you look at Evangelical literature' a different idea. I was them, are you to think about them? And if you aware that our attempt involved the bold experithink about them, are you to speak about them? ment of revolutionizing to some extent popular And if you speak about them are you to do so religious literature, by placing it on a wider, scientifically that is according to truth? For truer, and therefore more lasting basis than it if so, you thereby immediately tread on danger- had before occupied but the attempt was one rous ground. You may be led into a talk on as- which, in my humble opinion, was every day tronomy, and may thus become as bad as Pro-more imperatively demanded from Christian fessor who, as you inform me, declared from the chair of the Royal Society that he had read an article on astronomy in Good Words' on a Sunday evening! Your theory carried to this extent is hard to practise in consistency with the most holy idea of the Sunday. But that is not my look-out. Let each man be fully persuaded in his own mind.' 'To him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.' It is enough for my defence that lock and key can enable any man to dispose of 'Good Words,' if he finds his family tempted, from want of principle or self-control, to read some of those articles which, I admit, are not intended for the Sunday, but for the other days of the week. But I am merely indulging in a little banter with reference to what appears to me to be a wrong application of principles on which we all agree to the condemnation of 'Good Words;' yet, my friend, I pray you do not suppose that I am speaking lightly of the Sunday, or of its becoming exercises. I yield to no man living in my profound thankfulness for the Lord's day and all its sacred influences; nor do I wish, God forbid! to weaken them, but much rather to strengthen them.

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men, in the right discharge of their duties, with reference to the present condition of society. I believed, that if our cheap religious publications were to exercise real influence upon our intelligent mechanics, much more upon that immense mass which occupies the middle ground between the extreme Evangelical' party on the one side, and the indifferent and sceptical on the other, they required to be made within, of course, certain limits- much wider, manlier, and more human,-i.e., more really Christian in their sympathies than they had been. With these convictions soberly formed, we resolved to make the experiment and to face all its difficulties. I frankly tell you, for I have nothing to conceal, that our purpose was to combine as far as possible in Good Words' all those elements which have made what are called secular' periodicals attractive, whether in good fiction, wholesome general literature, or genuine science, to have these subjects treated in a right and therefore religious spirit, and to add what are called religious articles,' containing a full and uncompromising declaration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in every number. I hoped that a journal so conducted would find its way into sections of society where other periodicals more exclusively religious' had not penetrated

The attempt has succeeded beyond my most san- Anyhow, I have little faith in the Index-Expur guine expectations. I have no cause whatever gatorius system being either wise or efficient as to regret it, but every reason to be deeply thank-respects people of ordinary education and intelliful for it. gence. For once that it makes a young man pious, in a hundred cases it makes him either ignorant, false, or sceptical.

"With every desire, then, to please the weaker brethren, much more the stronger, from whom I may unfortunately differ, I cannot consent to fashion Good Words' after their model. II may, and probably must, alas! sacrifice the good opinion of many good men, which I earnestly covet for the older I get, the greater pain does it give me to lose the sympathy of any honest man. They may in their hearts forbid me because I follow not with them; but I cannot, and will not, sacrifice to my own ease of mind, or to the wishes of even excellent men, what appears to me to be the interests of a higher, better, and truer Christian literature than has yet been produced by those who have different ideas

"It was essential, of course, that I should obtain writers capable of carrying out my idea the fittest men, in short, to write on the most fitting subjects. Now I had the good fortune of being personally acquainted with writers who were known in the literary and scientific world, and who would therefore command readers. number among my friends, for example, such inen as Trollope, Stanley, and Kingsley. The two latter are associated with me as chaplains to the Queen. I mention their names again merely because you and others specify them as being the chief stumbling-blocks in the way of Good Words.' I asked, and most kindly obtained, their services, and am grateful to them. My rule, you see, has been to get the best men in every church and party to write for me articles on such subjects as they were specially qual-as to the manner in which it should be conductified to treat, and such as all could read with ed; and who, though they have had the field to interest and profit. This rule is limited by one themselves for years, and every possible advanprinciple only, which has ever guided me, and tage for working out the experiment in their that is, never to accept the contributions of any own way, have failed, I think, to produce a writer, male or female, however talented, who literature which operates to any extent beyond is known to be anti-Christian in creed or life. the Church. To every periodical, such as the No one whom I could not receive, so far as char-Family Treasury,''Christian Treasury,'' Sunacter is concerned, into my family, has ever day at Home,' or 'Sunday Magazine,' I say, been permitted to write in the pages of Good with all my heart, God speed!' for they are Words.' Nay more, what they write must be doing a genuine work within the church which in harmony with the essentials of the Christian is full of blessing. But why may I not be perfaith. Short of this, I hold that he who is not mitted, not only without envy, jealousy, fear, or against Christ is for Him for him more espe- molestation, but cheered and encouraged by the cially when the author, whoever he be, is willing good wishes and prayers of all Christian men, to to write side by side with men who preach the do a work more especially beyond it? It seems Gospel out-and-out. And, therefore, I have no to me as if, from my previous education in life, hesitation in saying to you, that I believe every my knowledge of the world, my large acquaint person who has written in 'Good Words' public-ance with men, my freedom from the influence ly professes his faith in Jesus Christ, and main- of cliques and church parties, my ten years' tains a character not inconsistent with that pro- experience in conducting the Edinburgh Chrisfession. With my convictions, it would be nar- tian Magazine' (which never, by the way, paid), row, short-sighted, and most unrighteous to re- and from my vivid sense of the wants of the ject good articles solely on the ground that the time-that God has given me this special work writer has in some other publication expressed to do. I never asked for Good Words;' but when views with which I myself could not agree. Hence the Editorship was offered to me, these were the I received and published an admirable sermon conditions on which I accepted it. The first year. preached from a Roman Catholic pulpit, al- or two it was not a success, but since then it has though no man living has less sympathy than I become one, and that too with no church, party, have with the peculiar doctrines and practices or committee to back its editor and publisher. of Romanism. Thus, too, while I differ from I repeat, therefore, that I see no reason whatmany of the theological views of Kingsley and ever for altering, but many reasons for holding Stanley, I ask, with surprise, are such men by, though ever and anon modifying in their never to write, no matter on what subjects, an application, the general principles on which it article for Good Words'- the one not even has hitherto been conducted. on natural history, nor the other on Palestine.

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"As to the fear you express of persons being thus induced to read Kingsley or Stanley, surely most people who read general literature are already acquainted with their works. Yet I begin to think that their writings are condemned by many who have never studied them. I am not aware of anything they have ever written which should necessitate their being excommunicated from the pages of Christian periodical literature.

·

"Remember that I do not write this from any selfish fear whatever; for I feel assured that if every man in Christendom who sympathizes with the angry criticisms showered upon Good Words,' were to give up the magazine, it would not seriously diminish its circulation; or if it did so in one direction, would but increase it in another. But should our opponents succeed in raising a prejudice against me in spite of a ministry of a quarter of a century amongst you, and

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