564 The Silence of an Arctic Niglit. [December, 



Nature. The earnest man and Christian, loves flowers, and their 

 kindred, and his earnestness is exhibited in their care and planting. 

 But we wander. 



Material and substantial prosperity will never be ours, until we 

 stop rolling. Changes seldom fail to result in losses. The idler 

 rusts. We do not advocate idleness but contentment with moder- 

 ate prosperity, when it is sure. Stay at home after you have secured 

 one. We would not be misunderstood. We do not wish to' dis- 

 courase men from searchina; for a home. It is essential to content- 

 ment that there should be some effort and search made for such a 

 place. But we do seek to discourage speculation. It yields no one 

 a benefit without wronging a second party. It is the great bar to 

 agricultural progress. All good farmers should discourage it among 

 their own class. It unsettles the mind, and is seldom known to 

 ♦' settle" any body, unless it be lower in the scale of usefulness, 

 honesty and respectability. Settle down, we say, on a home of your 

 own acquiring, and then rise as a citizen and farmer, by your own 

 effort and integrity. Make a home your children shall cling to, 

 and remember that wisdom is greatly needed in order that unison 

 and peace reign there. A "soft answer" "settles down" turbulent 

 passion, and adds to the self respect of the parents. A general 

 settling down is essential to home happiness. 



THE SILENCE OF AN ARCTIC NIGHT. 



The following eloquent description of the silence of an Arctic 

 night occurs in Dr. Hay's lecture on the Arctic regions : " The 

 moonlights of this period (winter) are the most grand and impres- 

 sive of anything I ever witnessed. The clearness of the air, the 

 white surface of the snow and ice, give an effect monotonous and 

 cheerless, but truly grand. But there is a new element which makes 

 this mid-winter moonlight seem almost terrible in its impressiveness — 

 it is silence, 



" I have often, to escape from the trying monotony of ship-board 

 life, gone off six or eight miles into the interior in search of novel- 

 ty, and in order that I might be alone. There, seated upon a rock 



