MARCH 40 
THE CHOICE. 
“ Which shnll It be, dear mother? 
To which homo shall I go? 
The Brand old castle bcslilo the sea. 
Or the little brown cot below? 
“ Which shall it he, dear mother? 
A plain white muslin gown. 
Or the richest and rarest of lace and silk 
To be found In Insleytown? 
“ Which shall It he, dear mother? 
A tiny plain gold ring, 
or wealth of gems or diamonds rare, 
That, would ransom a captive king?” 
My child, your heart must answer 
The question your lips have asked, 
I-est sowing In pride your sorrow, 
When the harvest Is overpast. 
Choose with your heart, my darling; 
Let pride be swept away; 
Flowers are. fairer than Jewels, 
Oathor them while yon may. 
Often glittering diamonds 
Conceal but. an aching brow. 
And the chill heart’s bitter throbbings 
Bear record of falsehood's vow. 
Truth Is the brightest jewel 
That womanhood can wear; 
Never a silken robe can cure 
A heart grown sick with care. 
TIiIr world Is not all sunshine, 
There’s many a stormy day. 
And love Is the sweetest shelter 
Where clouds obscure the way. 
So choose from your heart, my daughter. 
Remember this life of ours 
Must have some thorns and briers 
Among Its fairest flowers. 
But thorns, tears, and dark news 
Matter not, so love is true; 
While you climb, keep step together. 
With the higher life In view. 
CONCERNING FARMERS AND PUBLIC 
SCHOOLS. 
MARY WAOER-FISHKU. 
I know of no class of people more dependent 
upon public schools for the education of their 
children, tliau the agricultural class, and will 
it be an exaggeration to add that uo class takes 
so little practical interest in the public school as 
fanners? In writing from Pennsylvania, I 
write, I am well aware, at a disadvantage in 
regard to other localities, as the public schools 
here are much inferior, I am assured, to those 
of many other states. Philadelphia herself, 
abounds in private schools, aud all about the 
neighborhood of the city, the children of those 
who can “afford it,” patronize private schools, 
and declare that the public schools are “very 
bad,” at least, not good enough for their chil¬ 
dren. That the public schools are far below the 
standard they should reach, there is no ques¬ 
tion. The fault lies in the election of incom¬ 
petent and uninterested school directors—they 
are “trustees" in some states—and in altogether 
too great a number of studies. In the attempt 
to obtain a knowledge of many things, nothing 
is learned thoroughly and with accuracy, and 
a lack of thorough ness and accuracy is the- 
bane of most, American student life. Gi rls and 
boys obtain a smattering of various things aud 
pass for “smart” or “brilliant,” while they 
really know almost nothing, aud this desul¬ 
tory, superficial method runs through ail the 
brunches of work of adults. In no country, as 
in this, is it so difficult to obtain skilled native 
work people. A girl works a few weeks or 
months at the milliner’s or dressmaker’s trade, 
and is ready to start in the business, and com¬ 
pletes her apprenticeship during the next ten 
years by spoiling every piece of work given 
her to do. 
But to return to the public school. If it is not 
good it is a self-evident fact that no one is to 
blame but the patrons of it. Indifferent parents 
make indifferent teachers. The most intelli¬ 
gent, caphble and interested men and women 
in the school district should 1 >o elected to the 
school board, if it is possible to persuade them 
to hold such office. Some people—almost in¬ 
variably incompetent ones they are—have n 
fondness for holding office, and if they could 
not write a fair English letter, would feel en¬ 
tirely equal to tilling the office of school trustee, 
and directing the affaire of the public school, 
Now all argument aside, for these columns are 
not for argument. I assume (and I believe it) 
that there is no interest in a nirnl community 
so great ns that which centers or ought to in 
the public? school, and its usefulness should l)e 
guarded and sustained with a care that 
amounts to sucredness, A great, many Amer¬ 
icans are besot with the idea that we have the 
liest public schools in the world—as well as the 
best everything els«>-and act upon the feeling 
that any institution so good as our public 
schools will take care of itself, and if the school 
jogs along without much let or hindrance, aud 
the teacher keeps order, that it is all right and 
what it should be. 
My early education was obtained—aside 
from home instruction—in a public school in 
the State of New York. I had two brothers 
older than myself, so that in our family there 
was great interest in the public school. My 
father was much of the time a school trustee, 
and I remember one of the best teachers we 
ever had, was of his “hiring”—a tall, slender 
young man, of excellent character, and a bom 
teacher. How he made us work, and how we 
teamed! I look back upon those two winters 
under his tuition with great thankfulness, and 
nothing would give me greater pleasure now, 
than to meet with that most honored teacher. 
Not a day did we miss at school, for when the 
snow fell fence high, my father always man¬ 
aged somehow to get his horses and sleigh 
through it, and Riich merry rides we all had, 
with the sleigh crammed full of youngsters ! 
The neighbors helped as well, for the enthu¬ 
siasm for tiie school was general, and many 
visitors were attracted to it. When the teacher 
bade us a final good-bye he made me a present 
of a copy of “ Pollok’s Course of Time." I 
was 12 or 13 years old, and whenever I take 
the little volume down from my library 
shelves, it is with a reverence only equaled by 
the Bible my mother gave me in her dying 
hour. I remember another teacher with 
great pleasure, for no other reason perhaps, 
except that she taught me how to draw and 
paint maps. That such an innovation as 
drawing aud painting should be allowed in 
the public school, excited much comment in 
the “district.” War in England would not 
have raised greater discussion ! It is true 
that we did not learn so much arithmetic and 
“ parsing,” but we had a new field opened to 
us, which was picturesque and altogether de¬ 
lightful. If a child can be taught to draw 
well, it certainly is a matter of more practical 
usefulness to him than grammar or philoso¬ 
phy, and drawing and singing both belong by 
right to the public school. In Boston, where 
the public schools are conceded to be the best 
in the United States, sewiug is taught, since 
the advent of the sewing machine girls sew so 
badly, it is evident that, unless sewing is taught 
in the public schools, it must be taught some 
other day, in sewing or industrial schools. 
Why do not women who are accomplished, 
form classes in country neighborhoods for 
teaching the fine art of beautiful sewing and 
mending, aud starching and ironing ? I often 
hear from some of my young friends, “lam 
going to take music lessons,” or “ I am going 
to join a class in painting,” and both will be 
wretched instruction, which will result in 
dreadful “playing” aud hideous daubs. If 
they would write me that, they had just mas¬ 
tered the art of bread-making, or had learned 
perfectly how to laundry shirts and collars 
and cuffs, so that they looked like the polished 
one in a French or Chinese laundry, I should 
be delighted. Only a few days ago, one of my 
most lovable Sunday-school scholars sailed for 
England to learn a trade, because he saw no 
ebauce hero for learning a trade well 1 How 
humiliating it is, the shabby, superficial way 
we Americans have of doing so many things ! 
And the trouble lies lurgely in the way our 
public schools are? conducted. Only yesterday 
a bright boy—poor but ambitious—dined at 
my table, aud I asked him about the public 
school which he attends, and I lcarued that 
there were 70 scholars under one teacher aud 
that during each week he had recitations in 
reading, spelling, grammar, philosophy, ety¬ 
mology, arithmetic, algebra, history, familiar 
science, geography, composition, writing aud 
drawing. When I told him that I hail but 
three different studies at a time when I was at 
college, ho was amazed and he evidently 
thought I must have boon a stupid pupil. 
Upon talking with him further, he ad¬ 
mitted that he progressed very slowly in 
those several studies and knew very little 
of any one of them. And so far as that 
boy’s studies go, he is a fair represeuta ■ 
tive of the average public school pupil iu 
Eastern Pennsylvania. My husband asked a 
young girl who was “finishing” her education 
in Philadelphia about her studies and she 
named lfi different ones that she was giving 
her attention to every week ! It would be 
comical if it were not so deplorable. Boys 
and girls somehow obtain an idea that it is 
smart, or brilliant to have many studies. It 
is simply silly and lamentable. And who is to 
blame? 
REFORMING DRUNKARDS. 
1 believe it is a fact that “ marrying a man 
to reform him is like taking your measure for 
an umbrella—it may not be satisfactory.” 
And I also agree with Mary Wager-Fisher, 
that the young man who will not reform for 
his sweet-heart, would not do it for his wife; 
for I suppose it is scarcely to lx? presumed 
that a man’s wife can hold a securer place in 
his affections than his sweet-heart. I can 
heartily endorse any argument to induce a 
girl never to marry a drinking man. But in 
the interest of reformers and in the name of 
philanthropy I strenuously object to calling a 
man a brute simply because he drinks. If you 
call a drunkard a brute what are you going 
to call a murderer? 
So long as the present amount of wicked¬ 
ness exists, no matter what opinion individu¬ 
als may hold regarding drunkards or crimin¬ 
als, it is in the interests of society that philan¬ 
thropists should do what they can toward re¬ 
forms. 
Of course, each person must decide for him¬ 
self whether he shall “ waste” any sympathy 
upon the depraved or unfortunate. There is 
nothing attractive about the drunkard or the 
criminal, and probably the philanthropist has 
no sympathy for their sins or their crime, but 
he has a felif^v feeling for what was once a 
man and has a desire to reclaim them. Some 
of the grandest women that America has ever 
produced have lent their sympathy to the 
fallen, and spent years in their efforts to re¬ 
form drunkards and alleviate misery. Surely 
there is something noble in the one who can 
devote his energies to such a task. 
Mary Wager-Fisher says: “lam not one 
of those who waste pity or sympathy on men 
who get drunk. It is true, however severe it 
may appear, that people who haven’t it in 
them to help themselves do not deserve help. 
And it is equally true that when a man seems 
bent on going to rain without any reason 
therefore, except that he lacks moral sense or 
moral stamina, the sooner he gets there and 
out of the way the better for society.” 
That is a matter of opinion. Doubtless, Mrs. 
Fisher expressed her feelings honestly. But 
if everybody looked at it in that way there 
would be very little effort to reform people or 
make the world any better. Individuals 
may entertain such opinions, but Christianity 
or Philanthropy cannot afford to view the mat¬ 
ter in that light. 
It is said that “ the man who blushes is not 
quite a brute,” and one of our great moralists 
has told us that “no matter to what depths of 
sin a man may sink he is still deserving of our 
pity.” As the temper of a child is not im¬ 
proved by making faces at it. so a man is 
never made better by calling him a brute. 
The man who has no sympathy should not 
call himself a Christian, and there is no dan¬ 
ger of his ever becoming a philanthropist. 
The religionist who is so good that he is afraid 
of soiling his hands by trying to help a drunk¬ 
ard, is too good for this world. They should 
give him a pair of wings and send him above. 
Whenever 1 see an exhibition of this kid-glove 
religion I begin to think there is not so very 
wide a chasm between the good and the bad. 
The world can get along with very little of 
that kind of religion. 
Whether or not, we lay any claim to Christi¬ 
anity or philanthropy lie whocau pity his fel¬ 
low men. even though the manhood may be 
obscured by sin or crime is certainly a nobler 
type of man than he who has no feeling. 
It is an easy matter to see the mote in a 
brother’s eye, and as a great many of us im¬ 
perfect mortals live in glass houses we are al¬ 
ways safest in throwing no stones. 
Clem Aeldon. 
THE CONCIERGERIE IN PARIS. 
Comparatively few persons visiting Pails 
are aware that the prison in which Marie An¬ 
toinette spent the last hours of her life, and 
from which she went forth to undergo an igno¬ 
minious death upon the scaffold, is still in ex¬ 
istence, and that, excepting its enlargement 
by the removal of one of the side walls, it 
remains in exactly the same state as it was in 
when she occupied it. Of the Temple, in which 
the King and Queen and their companions in 
the disastrous flight to Varennes, were con¬ 
fined, after they had been pursued, captured, 
and brought back to Pains by order of their 
ferocious enemies in the National Assembly, 
nothing whatever remains. It was pulled 
down in 1811, and a public garden occupies its 
site, in which, however, a tree is still standing, 
under which, according to tradition, the royal 
prisoners were accustomed to sit when they 
were permitted to rake some exercise aud 
recreation in the grounds connected with their 
prison, After haring visited Versailles, and 
seen the suite of petits appartemeuts de la 
Heine, comprising her boudoir, libraries, bath¬ 
room, and saloon; the Petit Trianon, in which 
she spent some of the happiest hours of her 
life; and the Swiss taiterie, where the Queen 
and her maids of honor found some relief from 
the oppressive formalities of the Court—it is 
highly interesting to follow her footsteps to 
the last scene of her tragic history; and thence 
to repair to the Cathedral of St. Deuis, just 
outside Paris, in the crypt of which you are 
shown the coffin containing such of the remains 
of Mario Antoinette as could be l’escued from 
the common fosse into which they were con¬ 
temptuously thrown after her execution. The 
Coneiergerie itself is still used as a prison, but 
the Queen's ceil and its contents are carefully 
preserved as a historical monument. It forms 
part of the basement of Palais de Justice, 
occupying the site of the ancient palace of the 
Kings of France. 
Obtaining from the Prefect of Police an au¬ 
thorization to visit the Coneiergerie which 
can only be done on Thursdays, you are admit¬ 
ted by one turnkey to a court-yard, and by an¬ 
other to a spacious crypt-like edifice, into which 
you descend by a flight of stone steps and find 
yourself in a large Gothic hall, with a row of 
massive piers supporting the arches of the 
groined roof. It was in this hall that Marie 
Antoinette underwent the mockery of a trial, 
after haring been torn from the arms of 
her daughter and sister, and removed hither 
from her prison in the Temple on the 
night of the 1st of August, 171)3. But it was 
not until the 12th of November that “the 
widow of the ci-devant King” was finally 
arrainged by Fouquier Tonville, the public ac¬ 
cuser, before three judges and a very miscel¬ 
laneous jury. The proceedings took place by 
caudle-light, the charge brought against the 
fore-doomed woman being one of conspiracy. 
Among the “ proofs” adduced, one was that a 
missal was found in her apartment with the 
words, Jesn miserere mei emblazoned on it: 
and other was that, at table, her son had been 
accustomed to occupy the place of honor, and 
that his mother and his aunt wished him to be 
served first! She was condemned to death, of 
course after having been exposed for 20 honrs 
to every indignity which her accusers could 
heap upon her: and she was taken back to her 
cell, upon the door of which is the original 
iron bolt, which she must have often heard 
ringing in its staple. The arm-chair provided 
for her use, the crucifix before which she 
knelt, the lamp which illuminated the dark¬ 
ness of her dungeon, and the tiles of the pave¬ 
ment trodden by her weary fret, remain as 
they were in 1793, and here she wrote that pa¬ 
thetic letter to the Princess Elizabeth, which 
was handed over to Robespierre, by him in¬ 
tercepted. and stolon from his papers after his 
death, by another member of the Convention. 
Pinioned like a common malefactor, and ex¬ 
posed to the malignant jeers and contuma¬ 
cious reproaches of a Parisian mob—probably 
the most cruel and brutal mob in the world.— 
Marie Antoinette maintained a noble dignity of 
deportment. Once only, when a woman in 
the crowd held up her child to look at the 
Queen, the tears welled up into the eves of the 
royal widow as her thoughts floated away to 
her own orphaned children; and when she ar¬ 
rived at the scaffold, surrounded by a sea of 
upturned faces, most of them inflamed with 
the worst passions of human nature, she turned 
her gaze towards the Tuilleries, and then to the 
tov yrs of the Temple, and was heard to mur¬ 
mur, •• Adieu, my children: I am going to re¬ 
join your father." 
for Women. 
JONDOCTED BY MISS KAY CLV.KK. 
TO OUR LADY READERS. 
"W E stated that Feb. 15 would be the l imi t 
of time given for receiving prize articles. We 
have to thank our friends for their efforts in 
this direction, and as we have several hundred 
to read, it will be a week or two before the de¬ 
cision can be announced. We shall publish 
those which received prizes first, and the others 
will follow through Che year; thereby giving 
our readers a chance to learn many things 
from many people. If there is any one, desir¬ 
ous of being added to this list, who has not 
liad time before to send in an article, we in¬ 
vite them to do so as soon as possible. 
SOME WHO DO AND SOME WHO DO 
NOT CARE FOR PUBLIC OPINION. 
The good minister, when trying to lead 
people in the ways of truth and devotion, not 
insensible to public opinion, must be very 
cautions aud speak very gently of the sins of 
his fiock. The truth told with too much force 
will jar the church, and it is off like nitro¬ 
glycerine. Aud public opinion rules against 
him. 
The M. D. who lives in a healthy locality 
where patients are few, bv driving his horse 
desperately around town has impressed the 
people that there has suddenly broken out 
some dreadful epidemic, and immediately con¬ 
clude it is best to consult him before it is too 
late. He prescribes for the well and does not 
lose a case—saved by public opinion. 
A very few persons try to impress the public 
with elegant, refined manners, airs of great 
superiority, high morals, and immense wealth, 
when they in reality do not possess any of the 
qualities they so much desire. 1’hey may have 
elegant furniture upholstered with a costly 
mortgage, aud beautiful clothing elaborately 
tr imm ed with fur and feathers and unpaid 
bills. They often go across lots in the rare for 
public favor, to come out ahead of some one 
who is trying to reach the goal by going a 
little farther around in the road of integrity, 
and find “the more haste the less speed,” 
when in haste they find themselves entangled 
in a bari»ed wire fence, and in extricating 
themselves find a demonstrative family of 
