SCHO DEVOTED TO THE SUNDAY SCHOOL CAUSE AND THE SOCIAL, LITERARY, OF YOUNG MEN AND LADIES. Rev. B. Bausman, D. D., Editor. PHILADELPHIA: REFORMED CHURCH PUBLICATION BOARD, The "Guardian" entered upon its thirtieth volume with the 1st of January. It has reached a ripe age, and can refer with pride to its past history. It has strong claims on its various patrons, which, we trust, they will duly recognize, not only by prompt payment of their individual subscriptions, but also by earnest efforts to add new names to the list of subscribers. Address: The Guardian. VOL. XXX. Editorial Notes. SEPTEMBER, 1879, NO. 9. him for his early interest in the Home, and for placing his name at the head of our list of contributors. Resolved, That we regret to hear of his illness, and pray that the God of all grace may give him comfort in this life, and in the world to come, life everlasting. Resolved, That W. D. Gross, Treasurer of this Board, be instructed to furnish Mr. Plantz with a copy of this action. In the early part of 1863, Rev. E. Boeringer, through a German Sundayschool paper he was then editor of, appealed to the people of the Reformed Church to help him to found an Orphans' Home. In Buffalo, N. Y., there lived at that time a poor widow, who had an only son, Jacob Plantz. He In personal experience "hard times carried a basket with matches, needles, are often brought on by the people thread, and other notions, through the themselves, who have to endure them. streets of the city, and tried to earn a In prosperous times, when wages are meagre support for his widowed mother. high, and work and money plenty, He read pastor Boeringer's appeal. At many persons who get the most save once he sent him $1.50 of his scanty the least. They put all on their backs earnings to found an Orphans' Home. and into their stomachs. Thousands It was the first gift ever given to the in our country who are now without Home. One orphan was taken into the work, wages and bread, might, by pracgood man's private family; soon there ticing a little frugality, long since have Since then, in sixteen had their own home and a goodly sum years, over three hundred orphans have on interest. Many who now scream the been cared for and trained; the 150 loudest against people of means, and cents of Jacob Plantz have since then help to get up "strikes," are these been increased by the gifts of other thriftless don't-care sort of people, who people to the amount of $150,000. And for years have spent their earnings for Bethany Orphans' Home is the result. liquor, tobacco, and in riotous living, God has blessed the pedlar boy. Since Even with the present wages, a frugal then he has become one of the prominent person can live in comfort. If only Christian merchants of Buffalo, lives in people would learn the art of godly a palatial dwelling, and is beloved as living, they could make ends meet more an influential citizen, "zealous in good easily. were twelve. work." At the late anniversary of Bethany Orphans' Home, the Board took the following action: This Board, at the fifteenth anniversary of Bethany Orphans' Home, gratefully remembers Jacob Plantz, a pious boy of Buffalo, N. Y., who, sixteen years ago, gave $1.50 for the founding of an Orphans'' Home, the first gift our Home ever received. We rejoice that since then God has prospered him in spiritual and temporal things, but regret to hear of his serious illness. Be it IN the June number of the GUARDIAN we spoke a kind word for the "tramp." We wish to add a page to that plea. For since then we have been honored with a visit by some of this despised race. It was in the dead of night, when sleep and darkness had blinded us to danger. Could they have read our plea for the " tramp," and tried to test our sincerity? They must have had a literary turn of mind, for they rummaged our Resolved, That this Board, in the name of drawers, upheaved the accumulated Bethany Orphans' Home and its friends, sends hearty Christian greetings to Jacob scraps and selections of years, irrevePlantz, of Buffalo, N. Y., and hereby thank rently strewing the floor of our study with the sacred fruit of life's toil. Sid- ple articles of commerce, going back as ney Smith once prescribed to a nervous far as the year 1200, was published. friend, afflicted with sleeplessness, the It shows that wages during the thirreading of a volume of his sermons. teenth century were about fifty cents a Our tramp visitors did not even honor week. In the next century they adour sermons with a glance. Perhaps vanced some fifteen cent, and kept on fearful that they might put them to advancing slowly, until in the last censleep, or singe them with their fiery tury they reached $1.87. The average blows at rascality. The poor fellows for farm-labor at present is $3.80 per performed hard work for poor pay. week. Wheat in the thirteenth century Such a breaking of locks, or vain efforts averaged seventy one cents, or eight to break them, and eeling their wrig- and a half days' labor a bushel. Now, gling bodies through openings too small wheat at wholesale, is worth about $1.10 for that purpose, seeking treasures and a bushel, or two and a half days' lafinding none, must have required great bor. In six centuries meat has nearly trebled in price, but wages have increased more than seven-fold. Wages are now higher, and the cost of living lower than they were six hundred years ago. Yet people groan and grumble more than they did then. Our ancestors were less given to the use of luxuries, exertions. A burglar, as a rule, will not only break the lock of your door, but to gain his end your head. A non-resistant in ordinary conflicts, we should certainly give an unbidden visitor of this kind the full benefit of the bony, brawny powers which God has given us. A had fewer wants, and were more concertain Methodist minister, being greatly insulted by a ruffian, who presumed on the official restraints of his victim, said: "See here, we Methodists believe in falling from grace. If, under your insults I should fall from grace, I shall surely make it hot for you.' It is not necessary to fall from grace to thrash a scoundrel. We have respect for Peter Cartwright, when he dips and douses a hoosier rowdy into a western river to wash the villainy out of him; and for one of the Muhlenbergs of the last century, who mawled a highway robber until he screamed lustily for mercy. Minister or layman, we believe in the old-fashioned doctrine that a rod is the right thing for a burglar, no less than for a fool's back. And if we cannot find a rod, then a bootjack, brickbat, carbine, a bucket of hot water, or a pair of strong fists will serve the same purpose. To some people the gospel can only be preached in this form. And we owe it to them, to the protection of our neighbors and the safety of our lives, to speak the truth in a language that can be understood and felt. The foregoing is the application to our tramp sermon in the June number of the GUARDIAN. IN times like the present it is a common thing to hear people magnify their trials. Recently a table of wages and the cost of living, with the price of sta tented than the people of this generation are. The present age is cursed with a lot of artificial wants. Laziness, lust and luxury are the bane of modern society. BOOK-WRITING rarely pays. A few are well paid, the great bulk must be thankful if they receive the expenses of publication. After many an author has lived and died in want, sharp-witted publishers amass a fortune with the creations of his fertile brain. Milton received $25 for his "Paradise Lost." Not long ago a certain artist sold a painting of Milton and his daughter reading to her blind father, for $40,000. Edgar Poe received $10 for "The Raven," his most famous poem. Shakespeare was paid $25 for Hamlet. Pope $40,000 for his trauslation of " Homer." Dickens $15,000 for the copyright on "Barnaby Rudge" for six months. Bonner of the New York Ledger paid Tennyson $5,000 for a single poem, and not a long one at that. Dr. Holland, of Scribner's Monthly, was paid $12,000 for "Bitter Sweet," $8,000 for "Katrina," and $5,000 for the "Mistress of the Manse." Paine secured $1,200 for a poem on the "Ruling Passion," read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of a New England College, and for another on the "Invention of Letters," delivered at a Commencement, he received $1,500. แ "Beer Augusta Evans Wilson, author of there are more beer-guzzlers and less "Beulah," has made $100,000 out of her smokers than the usual class." novels in eight years. Sir Walter Scott guzzlers include all whoever imbibe, and made $250,000 out of his. Bret Harte all but twenty-eight who touch, taste, was paid $10,000 for "Gabriel Con- and handle not." "Eighty use tobacco; roy," and Stanley has already been only twelve do not engage in card-playpaid $50,000 for Through the Dark ing; sixty-four play billiards; seventy Continent." Works of fiction pay the bet." Eighty-four use vehement exbest. It is said that the late G. W. M. pressions, or, in other words, swear." Reynolds made from $200,000 to $300,- "One hundred and twenty-two patronize 000 in his sixty or seventy cheap sen-a- the theatre pretty extensively; seven tional novels. As a rule literary work others are not decided about the prois far less remunerative than that of priety of it." Deceiving the Faculty many other pursuits. The chief cook comes under the head of "Recitation of the Parker House of Boston, receives Room Morality," and leaves the impresa higher salary than the President of sion that Yale regards deception of this Harvard College, an institution en- kind as a trifling offence. dowed by millions of dollars. This looks like a battle between the brain and the belly, at least so far as pay is concerned. To our surprise we are told that half the Class are Church members. This simply shows that these young men have been favored with Christian homes OF LATE YEARS, the older New Eng- and a religious nurture and training. land Colleges have introduced and en- It shows how great the peril of such couraged "bodily exercise" among their College surroundings are. The body no students. And if they go on at the pre- less than the mind should be healthfully sent rate, they will not only prove that developed and educated. In their pro"it profiteth little," but that it damag- per place, "manly sports" are highly eth much. Athletics, base ball, boat- to be commended. But the Yale Coling, foot-ball, class-games, receive more lege sports are evidently unmanly. Colattention than College studies. Some leges ought to provi le pleasant but of their College papers discuss little else harmeless amusements. The authorities but sporting topics. At the opening of of our Colleges owe a solemn duty to a year in Yale College, the Freshmen their patrons. The several Faculties were admonished to maintain "the should see well to it that their students honor of the College by a good athletic record." To do this "take your two hours on the water every day; measure your chest and biceps every evening. In ball the College has high hopes of you," &c, &c. All this from a Yale College paper. An Amherst College paper asks, if "at this rate our College papers will not read altogether like the records of a sporting club, with all the accompaniments of betting, and whatever else belongs to such an institution." The Yale paper frankly answers: "It looks so." "The Statistics of 1879," recently published in a pamphlet, give a detailed history of one class, from September 21st, 1875. Little is said about the pursuits for which young men are usually sent to College. Their various studies seem to be of little account. In what the pamphlet calls the "Ethical," or moral department, we are told that are furnished with every healthful and pleasant muscular exercise and proper social amusements, but see to it that they are not systematically trained as sporting characters, who take more interest in "beer-guzzli g" and gambling than in their legitimate studies. Let us have muscular development. But let rest, not brawn usurp the rights of the brain, nor the brain those of the heart. Give the three their proper uniform culture. THE "WRECK OF THE HESPERUS was written in 1839, at midnight. A violent storm had occurred the night before; the distress and disasters at sea had been great, especially along the capes of the New England coast. The papers of the day were full of the news of the disaster. Longfellow was sitting alone in his study late at night, wheu the vision of the wrecked Hesperus came drifting upon the disturbed tides of thought into his mind. He went to bed, |