THE DESERVING POOR The real poor are not those cared for in asylums or homes of charity. The real poor are those who must pinch themselves to keep a roof over their head; the poor mothers who are struggling to keep the wolf from entering their little homes; the poor fathers who know not if the next Saturday will be for him pay day. These are the poor for whom the sentimental philanthropist never provides; these are the destitute whose tables the advertised charities never bless with a turkey. The really poor do not advertise themselves. They must be sought out and succored without noisy display. They are God's poor; and relief comes to them from those only whom the pure love of God moves.

The charitable hero is the man who hunts up the poor struggling widow, keeping house with her little ones in a single room; the delicate mother whose invalid husband is only an additional charge, and who has only her weak arms to depend on for what she and he, and the little ones that huddle around them, shall eat and wear; the man who slips a dollar or a dollar's worth every few days unostentatiously under the vase of the Crucifix on the mantel. The brave chevaliers of charity labor in secret and never advertise their good works; but the sound of their step on the threshold of the cabin sends a thrill of joy to the hearts of God's poor.

their children in the love and fear of
God, the very words "dance hall" are a
perpetual nightmare. Some, innocent
of certain evils, may not really know
of the degrading influences that lie
masked behind the lights and the
music and the merry laughter of the
dancers in these places, but the evil is
there just the same, and the most in-
nocent of the careless frequenters can
hardly fail to be contaminated by it.
Love of truth, of purity, of temperate
living, of the beautiful ideals of life
are not taught in the public dance hall.
Society, as represented by its public
officials and its reforming agencies,
should not hesitate to deal sternly with
this evil of life in our large cities.
The public dance hall has no record of
work done for the public weal that en-
titles it to plead at the bar of public
opinion for permission to take the
money of the young and inexperienced
and in return perhaps start these chil-
dren on the road that leads to the
graves where finis is written to the
record of the wrecked lives of men
and women whose first wrong start
was made in the public dance hall
缨

PENNIES IN THE BOX
A Niggardly Way of Helping God's
Church

We have seen the evolution of the copper penny from the rock mineral beds thousands of feet down in the mountains of Montana, through the smelters and refineries, from which it is shipped in three hundred pound blocks to the refineries at Baltimore, then through the United States Mint in Philadelphia, where it is stamped with its value and sent into circulation, and nowhere does the copper penny look so mean as in the collection box. Some people seem to save pennies for the collection plate, just as if that was the purpose for which they were minted and coined.

A preacher once, who was tired of seeing pennies on his plate Sunday, preached on the fact at one service and took for his text the words of St.

Paul: "The coppersmith hath done me great evil." It may sometimes be said that children may put pennies in the box-though they, too, should receive a more generous training-but when they grow up to be boys and girls and men and women, they should put off the things of a child and put on the plate the more substantial coin. It is not good form for grown people to contribute pennies, no more than it is respectable to put buttons or bad money in the box. Buy postage stamps or postal cards for your pennies. You can hardly buy anything else with them nowadays. A man should be as much ashamed to put a penny in the box as to be seen buying a sensational newspaper. It has been said that the beautiful St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York was built by pennies of Irish servant girls. That, as we all know, is all blarney or an oratorical brainstorm. Those who know the generosity of the Irish servant girl know that she does not contribute pennies to the church collections. The widow's mite is all right, and is as welcome to-day as it ever was and will be rewarded, but not all who donate pennies would want to be called widows. Put your penny in the slot machine and get your correct weight, and then be cheerful enough to put a more respectable coin in the collection box.

AS WE BUILD

Our success or failure as builders may be tested by looking at ourselves. We are the work of our own hands. What we are we have builded; not in marble or stucco, but in integrity, in character, in moral stamina, in resclution for the good, in grasp of fundamental things. Many men stand forth like beautiful palaces, symmetrical in every proportion. Others are like some old ramshackle building. They are tumbling to decay, because they have not put forth their hand to repair their character. They have permitted themselves to go to waste.

THE BOY WHO TAKES PRIDE IN HIS WORK

It

"Don't that look just fine?' was no vain conceit that made a certain boy say these words one day last summer, says a writer in the American Boy. American Boy. "His blue eyes were shining with honest pride because of the perfectness and trimness of the small garden he had finished weeding and hoeing. Three days before, the garden had been completely overrun with weeds and grass. Some of the grass had been of the variety called 'wire-grass,' and if you have ever tried to hoe out or pull up grass of this kind you know as well as that boy knew, that it is mighty hard grass to tackle. But this boy had tackled it with his teeth set and a determination to rid that garden of every spear of it, and it had disappeared root and branch. He was a small boy of French-Canadian parentage whom the farmer, with whom I was spending some weeks, had hired for the summer, and only that day the farmer had said to me, 'I never saw a boy take so much pride in his work as Louis does. That boy will get along all right in the world. He is not only so very industrious, but he is so thorough. Everything I give him to do is done just as well as it is possible to do it. He never gives anything a lick and a promise.'

"Give me a boy noted for being industrious and who takes so much honest and manly pride in his work that nothing but perfection will suit him, and I shall feel that I am safe in prophesying a successful future for

that boy.

"There is something fine and manly in the boy who takes pride in his work, who feels that it is a reflection on his character to be lazy and who likes to put an 'A 1' mark on all that he does.

"I remember that I once happened to be near two boys who had each been given a certain task to do. I do not know how long they had been working on it, but presently I heard one of them say to the other. There, Joe,

TURN ABOUT

"What do you mean, you naughty boy, pushing in that way?"

"I can't see! I want to see!" "But the procession hasn't come. You can wait."

"Don't you hear the music? They're coming out of the Cathedral. I am too little. I shall not see anything." And, trying to raise himself on tiptoe, he pushed first this one, then mashed the foot of another with his rough shoes, and set up an infernal racket in honor of the good God soun to pass.

The crowd around began to growl, and I said to him impatiently:

"Keep still! Must I hold you up that you may see better?" "Yes! Yes, sir!"

ders with his fists in time to a vigorous march.

"Oh! but that's fine!" he exclaimed.

Then, agile as a monkey, he slipped down the length of my august person. "Thank you, Sir! Thank you, Sir!" and off he ran toward the Cathedral.

The procession kept on its sinuous way along the streets hung with drapery, white and colored, and flowery garlands. It slowly advanced to the sound of sacred canticles sung by more than five hundred voices, and amid the fragrance of scattered rose petals.

A scrupulous historian, I must tell you that all this took place in 1869. In those days, people had the courage to believe in God, and not to be ashamed to let their faith be seen. I

do you?"

But already the little rascal, accustomed to climbing trees after bird's nests, had run up my legs and installed himself astride my shoulders without my being able to resist the invasion of my person, nor even to understand how it had been effected. There was, indeed, no chance to resist the band leading the procession was before us.

Behind the music came the gendarmes, then the schools, then the college, then the different associations, then the clergy, and, lastly, under a canopy of velvet and gold, the Bishop bearing the ostensorium. At the four corners of the canopy and holding the cords were the Prefect, our General, the President of the Tribunal, and the Mayor. After them, came the crowd, men of every age and profession, walking together in the truest, the holiest equality. A picket of dragoons brought up the rear.

"Oh! how fine!" exclaimed the little rascal on my shoulders in a low voice. "Oh! look, the choir-boys! How I would like to be in their place! And the Bishop, and the General!"

In his rapture, he kicked me on the breast with the nails of his horrible shoes, and beat a tattoo on my shoul

before he had scaled my height. He was a child of about ten, with bushy black hair, bold, intelligent eyes, slightly mocking lips, and yet withal a very honest countenance.

The procession passed, and and I sauntered back to the Cathedral. Two hours later, I was standing in the great square in front of it at the moment the cortege entered the church. I was looking on mechanically when, among the choir-boys before the canopy, whom should I see but my good little fellow of a short time ago in red cassock and white surplice.

The lad recognized me. He made me a discreet little sign of secret satisfaction, and disappeared pompously through the arched gateway. The Abbé, director of the choir-boys, did not perceive during the procession the presence of the intruder, but in the sacristy he came upon the delinquent, who was trying to conceal himself.

"Who are you? Where do you come from? How is it that you have those clothes on?"

"The thing is easily told, Sir. It was all so fine! You cannot imagine how beautiful that procession was! I was mounted on the back of an officer. I saw everything. But when I spied Perrain. Demonges, and Collin