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The Roung Secularist's Scrap Book.

He who devotes himself to the study of the true and the good, with perseverance and without relaxation, derives therefrom great satisfaction.—Confucius.

If there is another world, he lives in bliss—
If there is not, he made the best of this.

—Burns.

I have no respect for any book that does not treat woman as the equal of man. And if there is any god in this universe who thinks more of me than he does of my wife, he is not well acquainted with both of us.—Ingersoll.

I have always noticed that the people who have the smallest souls make the most fuss about getting them saved.—Ingersoll.

If in doubt whether an action is good or bad, abstain from it.—Zoroaster.

Thomas Henry Buckle, the celebrated author of the History of civilisation, became acquainted with Miss Marguerite Power shortly before his death; and she has left us the following sketch of her experience of this extraordinary genius : "For inexhaustibility, versatility, memory, and self-confidence, I never met anyone to compete with Buckle. Talking was meat, and drink, and sleep to him : he lived upon talk. He could keep pace with any given number of interlocutors on any given number of subjects, from the abstrusest point on the abstrusest science to the lightest jeu d' esprit, and talk them all down, and be quite ready to start fresh, . . . We met Buckle on several subsequent occasions, and his talk and his spirits never flagged; the same untiring energy marked all he said, and did, and thought, and fatigue and oppression appeared to be things unknown to him."

A soldier offered up the following prayer just before the battle of Blenheim :—"O God, if there be a god, save my soul, if I have a soul."

The confirmed prejudices of a thoughtful life are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life; and as some must trifle away age because they trifled away youth, others must labour on in a maze of error because they have wandered there too long to find their way out.—Bolingbroke.

Happy is the man advanced in years who can look back upon his former life with satisfaction.

I have generally found that the man who is good at an excuse is invariably good for nothing else.—Franklin.

A man built a life-boat, and sent it to sea,
A child in the wild forest planted a tree,
A pig, as he fed and grew fat in his stye,
Oft craved a fine apple that ripened hard by.
The boat saved a girl from a furious tide,
Years after the boat builder made her his bride;
The planter grew up in sorrow and shame,
The tree that he planted his gallows became;
The pig and the apple appeared on one dish,
As pork and as sauce, to the epicure's wish.
Oh ! tell me ye owners of craniums mental,
Was all this design, or was, it accidental?