All®. 24 
BRIC-A-BRAC. 
WHO ? 
Who ever read a swallow tale 
Or wore a coat of arms ? 
Who ever saw the water pale. 
Or (five great falls alarms ? 
Who? 
Who ever rode a wild saw horse, 
Or ever heard Baud's tone ? 
Who ever saw the sun’s rays course, 
Or heard a pane full grown ? 
Phew! 
] Hackensack Republican, 
Who ever saw a door a-jar, 
Or heard an oak lin-tel ? 
How many naves were in a church, 
Beside the organ “ swell ?” 
Who? 
Who ever saw a blaclr-kiug box, 
Or carpenter Gim-let ? 
His neighbor’s Bantam hatchets eggs, 
Within a!nail elawjset ? 
Few! [New York Newt. 
Whoever saw Anemone 
Love a Lamprey-kin ? 
Or, who would a bumble-bee 
And basque in muslin thin ? 
Who? 
IMITATION TORTOISE SHELL AND MOTHER-OF-PEARL. 
Tortoise shell, the product of the shield of a 
species of sea-turtle, has long been lu favor for 
the manufacture of ladles’ hair-combs and the 
like. The Hohuess of its color and the beauty 
of Its markings account for tbls. But it Is valua¬ 
ble, therefore beyond the reach of many a purse. 
It Is long since imitation combs, made of Horn 
and stained, and present ing a tolerably talr re¬ 
semblance to the original, were provided to meet 
the requirements of tho fair sex. We have now 
to direct attention to another simple method of 
getting up a “shell." On a piece or glass there 
Is placed a layer or clear gelatine, on which the 
distinctive marking of the tortoise shell are ob¬ 
tained by dotting It with a concentrated solution 
of an aniline color mimed “ vesuvln," to which 
a beautiful reddish tint may bs given with “tox¬ 
in,” another aniline color. Tho solution may 
also be scattered over the surface, and the drops 
allowed to ruu together. The whole when dry 
receives a coat of glue. 
Mother-of-pearl, which Is procured from the 
shells o! large mullusks found In tropical seas, 
can also be Imitated somewhat readily, though 
the process Is more difficult, on a piece or glass 
place a gelatine layer containing a concentrated 
solution of some salt, such as white vitriol, Epsom 
salts, etc. When this salt solution has dried 
and become crystallized, a soluiIon of so-called 
pearls Is spread over tho whole. This lat¬ 
ter material la derived from the very line and 
sHver-Hke " sounds” or air-bladders of fish, which 
possess considerable Iridescence. When the gel¬ 
atine layer thus treated has dried, a coat of glue 
Is applied, and the art icle is finished .—Cowell 
MagaztM'. 
We love to lie beneath the shade 
Aud quaff the cooling lemonade; 
We love to feel the cheerful ante 
Crawl calmly up our summer pants; 
We love to see the applcworm 
Prune on our shirl front equearn and squirm ; 
Wo love to watch with placid eyo 
The doodlebug go tumbling by; 
We love to hear in distant bogs 
The rueful rumbling of the frogs; 
We love to hear the slimy snake 
Wind in and out the verdant brake, 
We love to hear the crispy cry 
Of bumble bees bumb-bnmbiing by , 
We love to scent upon the air 
The balm of squashbugB biluiing there , 
With ivy trailing all the land. 
And poison oak on every band. 
Far from the city’s dusky strife. 
How sweet to lead a rural life ! [A. Tennyson. 
WHAT “ BASTLAKB” FURNITURE IS. 
Although tho archeology of Mr. Eastlake’s 
volume Is not always careful, most of the princi¬ 
ples that he enuucl ites lu It are beyond question 
and cm bo genei’ally stated la a few words. He 
would have no carving or mounting or other or¬ 
nament glued on—such work must be doue In the 
solid; he would have no mitred Joints made of 
the ngnt angle and secured oy mortise, tenon 
and pin; he would have woods lu their native 
color and un varuised, or else painted In flat color, 
with a contrasting line and a stencilled orna¬ 
ment at the angles; ho would have unconcealed 
construction everywhere, and purposes plainly 
proclaimed; and he would have veneering, round 
corners, and all curves weakening the grain of 
the wood absolutely forbidden. The furniture 
that he thus proposes lias straight, strong, square¬ 
ly cut members equal to their Intention. Tts 
ornaments are painted panels, porcelain plaques 
and tiles, metal trimmings and conventionalized 
carvings In sunk relief, a part, of tho construc¬ 
tion entering Into tho ornament, also In tho shape 
of narrow striated strips of wood radiating lu op¬ 
posite Hues, after a fashion not altogether un¬ 
known in the time of Henry III. It has tho hon¬ 
esty and solidity but not tho attraction, of tho 
Medlnsval; aud It It is stiff and somewhat heavy, 
and falls entirely to please, It has yet a whole¬ 
some and healthy air. 
TIME. 
Forenoon, aud afternoon, and night I Forenoon, 
And afternoon, and night! Forenoon, and— 
What ? The empty book repeatB itself. No more ? 
Yes, that ia life. Make this forenoon sublime. 
This afternoon a paalrn, this night a prayer, 
And Time « conquered, and thy crown is won. 
[Edinard II. Sill. 
Birds are entitled to justice. When a man Is 
Indulging in a frolic, to say he “ out on a lark” 
Is a libel on that bird. He Is really out on a swa'.« 
low. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
543 
Jflr ® ontra, 
CONDUCTED BY MISS FAITH BIPLEY. 
CHERISH THY MOTHER. 
Be gentle to thy mother; long she bore 
Thy infant freshness and thy silly youth; 
Nor rudely scorn the faithful voice that o’er 
The cradle pray’d, and taught thy lispings truth, 
Yes, she Is old; yet on thine adult brow 
She looks and claims thee as her own e’en now. 
Uphold thy mother; close to her warm heart 
She carried, fed thee, lull’d thee to thy rest, 
Then taught thy tottering limbs their untried art. 
Exulting in the fledgling from her nest; 
And now her steps are feeble, be her stay, 
Whose strength was thine in thy most feeble day, 
Cherish thy mother; brief perchance the time 
May be that she will claim the care she gave; 
Past are her hopes of youth, her harvest prime 
Of ,1oy on earth; her frieudB are in the grave; 
But for her children, she could lay her head 
Gladly to rest among her precious dead. 
Be tender to thy mother; words unkind, 
Or light neglect from thee, will give a pang 
To that fond bosom, where thou art enshrined 
In love unutterable, more than fang 
Of venom'd serpent. Wound not that strong trust, 
As thou wouldst hope for peace when she is dust. 
dominal muscles are relaxed and nearly Idle, 
but when we rise to walk there is a tension of 
them that can be felt by pressing the hand upon 
them. The tension and exercise of these mus¬ 
cles in standing and walking la what a great 
share of tte womeD'ln what are called *• easy cir¬ 
cumstances,''lack, and these muscles especially, 
as well (as all others Incidentally,) suffer or fall to 
obtain necessary tone and vigor to meet those 
emergencies to which all are liable. A lack of 
natural force is Induced by early restrictions In 
exercise; a lack of tone and an aversion to mus¬ 
cular action In womanhood Is the result, and ever 
after they never 3tand, walk or breathe enough 
to bring up and to keep the body In that vigor 
which Is tlielr natural birthright. 
There Is much more that might be said on this 
head, hut I am reminded that brevity is more ef¬ 
fectual than verbosity, and should the spirit 
move me again, and the mercury go down a few 
degrees, I may resume. s. b. p. 
--- 
BARREL CHAIRS. 
Mant articles of real utility maybe fashioned 
out or abandoned material that Is In everyone's 
way. We remember one Ingenious family whose 
success at converting such flotsam Into pretty 
serviceable things was the admiration and des- 
patrof imitating friends. 
O mother mine ! God grant I ne’er forget. 
Whatever be my grief, or what, my joy. 
The unmeasured unextiuguishablo debt 
I owe thy love; but wake my sweet employ 
Ever through tby remaining days to be 
To thee as faithful as thou wert to mo. 
[<Jeo. W. Bsthune. 
THE DEGENERACY OF WOMEN. 
What I desire to draw attention to Is not weak¬ 
ness of intellect, unfemlnlne habits or tastes, or 
any Impropriety of conduct. Far from It. I la¬ 
ment the general physical weakness, the lack of 
stamina and force In tuc “ well to do ” portion of 
tho sex, and If It Is In tny power to do or say any¬ 
thing to check this growing evil, or to enable wo¬ 
men to overcome this physical defect. I fee! 
bound In duty to say and do it, asking only that 1 
may be credited with sincerity of purpose. 
A very pertinent question is, what Is the cause 
of It ? The girls and the young matrons of hair 
a century ago were, as a rule, healthy and strong, 
and without any lack of remlnlne graces. They 
possessed a doe proportion, as compared with 
their brothers, of force, strength and agility, and 
the physical differences between the sexes w ere 
the same In man as in the lower animals, the 
male being the superior in size and strength of 
muscle, while the female exceeded In agility and 
grace of motion, with no disparagement of vigor 
or bodily health. But now when half a century 
has passed, now is It ? 1 need hardly answer the 
question; the majority of women under fifty are 
unhealthy and unfitted lor the duties of life. 
What shall we do? Let us seek for the cause. 
It la customary to charge the fault to tight lacing. 
This fashion nas, or has had Its votaries, and no 
doubt the grave now covers its many martyrs; 
but this is not all; the hum m body Is run of mus¬ 
cles designed by our maker for use, aud If used 
properly they increase lu size nnd strength; U 
allowed to remain Idle they fall to develop, and 
shrink away, and their attendant tendons and 
their attachments to the bones become powerless. 
Instead then, of that sprightly aud Joyful activity 
which, lu nature, characterizes the young of all 
mammals, there will he debility, languor, listless- 
ness, Impotence, premature old age and death , 
and.tn proportion as all these organs are disused, 
aud their Intended use perverted or neglected. In 
that proportion do alt these results follow. 
1 wish to treat this subject lu all fairness; men 
have their lolllos and imprudences, aud suffer 
for them, hut 1 do not design the discussion of 
their shortcomings for this chapter. It Is one of 
the great faults of the ago that mental develop¬ 
ment la crowding out the equally essential phys¬ 
ical; parents and teachers seem to Ignore the 
fact that a sound, strong and healthy mlml can¬ 
not Inhabit a weak, unheaUbful body. 
it has always been my opinion that the great 
prevalence of pulmonary and abdominal com¬ 
plaints and the general muscular weakness of the 
women of the present age are due maluly to the 
neglect of physical culture in early life. 
Fashion In dress and behavior Is the greatest 
tyrant on earth, and she who will not. conform to 
Its demands loses caste with her peers. Boys of 
ten years may run aud Jump, and they pride 
themselves on their fleetness, agility and 
strength, but git Is o' that ago are not permitted 
to Indulge in such masculine pastimes, for neither 
their mothers nor Mrs. Oruudy will allow it. Boys 
tUus develop and strengthen muscle, tendon, 
bones and lungs, but how Is It with the girls? It 
Is true that in country places aud backwoods 
district a girl nature will assert Us rights, but 
such girls when grown to womanhood and mother¬ 
hood need no hygienic advieo rrora roe, and it Is 
not for them that l write. The Creator has given 
to all au excess of physical force over and above 
the ordinary wautsof the animal; this Is brought 
Into use on extraordinary occasions; tho boy pre¬ 
pares himself for thesn extreme cases by aihlotlo 
competitions with his fellows; it is a pity the 
girl Is not allowed to do the same. Abdominal 
weakness amounting often to a displacement or 
some internal organ, is an almost universal com¬ 
plaint amODg women, and to reach the cause of 
this great evil, let us consider a few facts on the 
design and use of tne muscles, if we decide to 
perform any muscular act, the muscles that need 
to he brought Into play lu Its performance invol¬ 
untarily prepare themselves, or Uold themselves 
In readiness tor It. If, In walking In the dark, we 
accidentally step down a lew Inches, it producea 
considerable of a alioqk, when, if we had seen the 
depression In our path, the same step would have 
been taken with perfect ease. In sitting, the ab¬ 
Fio. 1. 
The disreputable barrels that have served their 
original purposes and are about to become un¬ 
sightly obstructions to back-yard travel, are ex¬ 
cellent subjects for an Illustration of the use of 
refuse. We give three cuts, showing how one of 
these barrels may he converted Into a comforta¬ 
ble rooktng-chalr. 
Fig. 2. 
Fig. 1 Is the barrel outlined the way It should 
he cut, and Fig. 2 shows how the seat Is to be 
placed; while Fig. 3 gives a plain view of the 
manner of adding tho rockers. It only remains 
to pad and cover the chair, and brighten up the 
rockers with a bit of color. 
Some one of the charming patterns In cretone 
that are now so cheap is tho prettiest covering 
that could be used. The details will depend 
greatly on the taste of the amateur upholsterer, 
hut with only a scintilla of “ knack ’’ the article 
can be made to grace even a sitting-room, and is 
delightful as an easy chair on the veranda, or In 
the bed-room. 
-- 
“I SUFFER NOT A WOMAN TO PREACH.” 
F.ach successive generation seems obliged to 
fight truth's battle anew; thus after centuries, 
stained with the record of wars waged against 
those who strove to walk m some new path, “ for 
conscience’ sakehere In America, In the golden 
dawn of the second oemuryot out natl nal his¬ 
tory; In this land born out of the claim that men 
had a right, “in freedom to worship God,” a 
Presbyterian Presbytery solemnly devotes three 
hours to the discussion ot the right of women to 
preach the gospel. 
Since these brethren base their opposition upon 
one or two texts In the Bible, arguing rrom these 
that revelation forbids women preaching, we de¬ 
sire in all earnestness to submit a few texts, 
which many or our clergymen seem to have utter¬ 
ly Ignored. In that same “ eleventh ” chapter of 
First Corinthians, the same “Paul," who is quoted 
so often as the author ot the command. 14 Let 
your women keep silence In the churches," writes, 
In regard to womau “ praying and prophesying 
“ But every woman that prayeth or prophesleth, 
with her head uncovered, dlahonoreth her head.” 
Yet, again, and la the sacred name of truth and 
justice, we ask every Biblical scholar to study the 
meaning of these words. In all their length and 
breadth, hlghts, and depths: “Neither was the 
man created for the woman [woman being com¬ 
plete In her spiritual nature), hut the woman for 
the man." “ For this cause ought the woman to 
have power on her head, because of the angels.”— 
I. Corinthians, eleventh chapter, tenth verse. 
We have consulted many Biblical scholars, and 
all have admitted that this verse referred to 
woman’s spiritual nature, being the necessary 
complement to man’s. It has never been part of 
our creed that women were so much better than 
men, but of late. Judging by tbe suicidal policy of 
our churches, we are beginning to conclude that 
womeu have finer spiritual Insight, and just here 
wc wish to call attention to one fact. Some of 
our most thoughtful statesmen have based their 
only objection to woman-suffrage on the ground 
that women, through tbetr religious zeal and 
fanaticism, would endanger freedom of conscience, 
and yet, in national convention assembled, the 
women of the nation voted almost unanimously 
“yea," upon a resolution for the taxation of 
church property. 
The Orthodox church has been almost suicidal 
In Its treatment of women. (And I write as one 
whose name stUl stands on the membership list 
of a Presbyterian Church; church beloved of me 
for Its sacred memories, not for its creed.) The 
course has however been beneficial in Its effects 
upon women. Persons who have not looked Into 
the subject, aye, persons who havo not walked, 
with wounded, lacerated hearts, through the ter¬ 
rible realities can form no idea of the suffering 
occasioned young women (whose consciences 
summoned them to speak for temperence and 
woman suffrage) by the persecutions encounter¬ 
ed In the church. We have kuown clergymen 
come straight from the pulpit where they have 
talked eloquently of 44 moral courage.” of the 
heroism of "Martin Luther," and “Calvin and 
Wesley,” and even of '‘Garrison” and “ Harriet 
Beecher Stowe,” to meet with a sneer some 
brave young woman who, with the same moral 
courage, was proclaiming the truth as revealed 
unto her. We wondered, sometimes In agony 
of soul, why such things are permitted to-day. 
We recognize that out of such warfare merge 
heroes ready for the race. If our young women 
had been petted, courted, and feted, as most 
of our male theological students are; If the 
church had made hasto to superintend their 
theological studies, they would have been, to¬ 
day, shut up In musty libraries, poring over 
the lifeless thought of a century ago, and would 
have emerged, catechism In hand, with only the 
husks of truth; hut they have been ostracised 
from theological schools; they have been com¬ 
pelled to go out into the by-ways and hedges; 
they have commenced their heaven-ordained 
ministry, not in the lofty pulpits of debt-bound 
cuurehea, hut In the unattractive halls where the 
people congregate; they have studied human na¬ 
ture ; they have commenced a gospel ot temper¬ 
ance, of peace, of purity, which the great sorrow¬ 
ing world was starving to hear; they have been 
persecuted tor righteousness’ sake, and their work 
Is blessed of truth, and that truth shall make 
them free. 
You may summon the theological world to dis¬ 
cuss the question, you may write over every pul¬ 
pit in Christendom,“ Sacred to men,” and though 
with closed doors you solemnly place the seal of 
tbe church upon your decree that women shall 
not preach, ere the deep amens die away into 
echoes, there shall float In through the partially 
opened windows some woman’s voice, falllDg In 
benediction upon the waiting crow d outside, “ Let 
us pray for a blessing.” 
You may decide that women shall not preach In 
Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, or Congrega¬ 
tional churches. (You have the power to thus 
decide. You have decided that two-thirds of all 
your membership shall be governed by the mas¬ 
culine one-thtrd, and It la well—women do not 
care to he held responsible tor the present con¬ 
dition of affairs In church or state.) But, despite 
your decisions, women will preach, and the world 
will listen. The world is listening, waiting, now. 
-Inter-Ocean. 
♦ - 
Woman’s Rebuke to Workingmen.—I f workmen 
refuse to recognize and be governed by the laws 
of nature, which bind men together as opposites 
tne complements of each other, they must suffer 
tUe consequences. He Is the workingman's true 
friend who says to each one, “ Paddle your own 
canoe.” All this twaddle about taking care of 
them, as ir they were a flock of tame pigeons, Is 
an Insult. It Is bad enough to be a womaD, and 
have men make spheres Uke toy balloons, and put 
one la to stay, but it must he worse to he a man 
and have to he taken care of like a little plaster- 
of-parts Samuel saying his prayers. A human 
biped with a beard must feel nice to have political 
economists discuss him as if he were one of a 
thousand hags ot wheat which were to be dis¬ 
posed of to the best advantage. 'Pears to me, if l 
were a man, with all tho waste cabins and idle 
fields la tbls country beiore me, I should save 
agitation committees and ex-secrerartes the 
tiouble of talking about me; for, If I did not raise 
my own pork and beans, It would be curious .—Mrs 
Swlsshelm, 
-A-M- 
A true woman is one who acts in harmony 
with tho laws ot her being, the laws of God and 
the universe, all the vast and varied germ of her 
spiritual nature as the offspring of God, a citizen 
ot the universe, a eaudtdato for eternity. Her 
potentialities are unmeasured and immeasurable. 
Neither wifehood nor mot herhood affords a mil¬ 
lionth part of the space or time which are re¬ 
quired for their full play. Womanhood is a tree 
organized ro strike the roots ot her sympathies 
deep and wide Into the realms of spiritual being, 
aud send forth ever-multiplying branches ot be¬ 
neficent Influence, shooting out in all directions 
and heavenward, from age to age. A true woman 
will always be a noble wife and a noble mother, 
hut Immeasurably more.—Free Methodist. 
