Then said Daniel unto the king, "O king, live for ever. My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, and they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt." Then was the king exceeding glad and commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, because he had trusted in his God. And the king commanded, and they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces, or ever they came at the bottom of the den.

THE BIBLE.

THE SNOW-STORM

ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer

Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Mauger the farmer's sighs; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.

-RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

NEW ENGLAND WEATHER

I DON'T know who makes New England weather; but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather clerk's factory, who experiment and learn how in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it.

There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration and regret. The weather is always doing something there, always attending strictly to business, always getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in the spring than in any other season.

In the

spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours.

It was I that made the fame and fortune of the man who had that marvelous collection of weather on exhibition at the Centennial, that so astounded the foreigners. He was going to travel all over the world, and get specimens from all climes. I said, "Don't you do it: you come to New England on a favorable spring day." I told him what we could do in the way of style, variety and quantity.

Well, he came, and he made his collection in four days. As to variety why, he confessed he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never heard of before. And as to quantity, -well, after he had picked out and discarded all that were blemished in any way, he not only had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; weather to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor.

"Old Probabilities" has a mighty reputation for accurate prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it. You take up the papers, and observe how crisply and confidently he checks off what to-day's weather is going to be on the Pacific coast, down South, in the Middle States, in the Wisconsin region; see him sail along in the joy and pride of his power till he gets to New England. He can't any more tell that than he can tell how many presidents of the United States there are going to be.

Well, he mulls over it, and by and by he gets out something about like this: "Probably northeast to southwest winds, varying to the southward and westward and eastward and points between; high and low barometer, sweeping around from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and lightning."

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Then he jots down this postscript from his wandering mind, to cover accidents: "But it is possible that the program may be wholly changed in the meantime."

Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only one thing certain about it: you are certain there is going to be plenty of weather, a perfect grand review; but you never can tell which end of the procession is going to move first.

You fix up for the drought: you leave your umbrella in the house, and sally out with your sprinkling pot, and ten to one you get drowned. You make up your mind that the earthquake is due: you stand from under, and take hold of something to steady yourself, and, the first thing you know, you get struck by lightning. These are great disappointments, but they can't be helped.

Now, as to the size of the weather in New England - lengthways I mean. It is utterly disproportionate to the size of that little country. Half the time, when it is packed as full as it can hold, you will see that New England weather sticking out beyond the edges, and projecting around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighboring states. She can't hold a tenth part of her weather.

I could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the New England weather, but I will give only a single specimen. I like to hear the rain on a tin roof; so I covered part of my roof with tin, with an eye to that luxury. Well, sir, do you think it ever rains on the tin? No, sir; it skips it every time.

I have been trying merely to do honor to the New England weather; no language could do it justice. But after all there

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are at least one or two things about that weather which we residents would not like to part with.

If we had not our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates the ice storm; when a leafless for all its bullying vagaries tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top, ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; every bough and twig is strung with ice beads, frozen dewdrops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume.

Then the wind waves the branches; and the sun comes out, and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms, that glow and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity, from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold; the tree becomes a sparkling fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or - MARK TWAIN. nature of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence!

FAIR PLAY

It is especially necessary for us to perceive the vital relation of individual courage and character to the common welfare, because ours is a government of public opinion, and public opinion is but the aggregate of individual thought. We have the awful responsibility as a community of doing what we choose; and it is of the last importance that we choose to do what is wise and right. In the early days of the anti-slavery agitation a meeting was called at Faneuil Hall, in Boston, which a goodred mob of soldiers was hired to suppress.