Rambles & Reveries of a Modern Moralist.

I. CONCERNING DAY-DREAMS.

I believe that I am not overstating the truth when I say that I am a thoughtful man. I have always been thoughtful from a child; I always in my infant days liked to know the cause of things; this desire of mine was somewhat inconvenient at times to my friends and relations. I always liked to look at the back of a picture as well as the front; nay, I even remember that once when I had fallen down six stairs, I speculated after the pain was over what might have happened had I fallen down twelve instead of six. This I think shows very satisfactorily that I am of a thoughtful nature. I am, moreover, very observant. When I walk, which I do very often, I like to think and to speculate about everything I see, whether it be a human being in the crowd of Fleet Street, or a cab-horse struggling in the mud, or a flower-pot in an attic window.

I never like to walk the streets, nor the country lanes either, in that unenviable state of mind attributed by the poet to the "Jolly Young Waterman," who was in the habit of rowing along and "thinking of nothing at all." Now I do not envy the man who walks and thinks of nothing at all. If I am out on a matter of business I think over that business, and do not let other thoughts drive it out of my head, but when I am walking for my own particular pleasure, and with no definite object in view, I like to think about the things I see and hear; in fact, to dream about them. Yes, I must plead guilty to a habit of day dreaming which some people imagine totally disqualifies a man from attending to the duties of life.

But here I beg to differ from those people: when business or duty calls, as I said just now, I attend to it; but after business comes pleasure, and then I dream, and who shall blame me? I am the only sufferer from this habit; and I sometimes have to endure very hard knocks and startling collisions in the street when I have not been attending to my footsteps.

But, seriously, is this habit of day dreaming a very bad one? Surely it is better to dream, even at the risk of having your toes trodden upon, than to go as so many of us do, from Dan to Beersheba and "find all barren."

Another quality which I possess very strongly is that of inquisitiveness: this is also condemned by many, but I cannot help it; I am inquisitive; not rudely so, I hope, but still fond of looking into things and round things; and, in a word, finding out all about things

I never yet went so far as to knock at the door of a house in a quiet street and ask them why they always kept the blinds down in the front parlour, or why they never cleaned the windows; but I have asked a sturdy beggar who asked for a penny why he preferred begging to working, which I consider much the easier and pleasanter occupation. And I have more than once asked an hostler why when cleaning a horse he persisted in hissing like some enraged specimen of the python tribe.

Moved by the same spirit of enquiring, I once asked a pavier why he uttered a sound distantly resembling a groan, and not altogether unlike the hiccoughs when he was driving down a paving-stone, but to none of these enquiries did I receive a satisfactory answer. The beggar ran away precipitately, mistaking me, I presume, for an Officer of the Mendicity Society; the hostler said it pleased the horse when they hissed, and kept them from biting, an interesting fact in Natural History which I recorded, and mentally resolved to try its efficacy upon a fierce bull-dog of my acquaintance. Another of the stable tribe told me that hissing came quite natural to him, and he couldn't rub down a horse without it." The pavier, who was a bit of a wag, said his father and grandfather before him had both been of the same trade, and both had grunted in the very same way that he grunted, and so he supposed it ran in the family. I thought of Sam Weller and the philosophy which was hereditary in his family, and went away laughing, but not satisfied.

Talking of philosophy, what a time to test a man's pretension to that gift, is a wet day in London! I have lived too long in our aqueous climate to mind rain; umbrellas are a dead letter with me; and clad in vestments which have long been spoilt, and so cannot be spoilt again, I often roam about the sloppy streets, and watch how the sinister influences of Saint Swithin affect my fellow men and women. Many of the sublimest and most terrible of passions may be seen under such circumstances. Joy is depicted on the face of a well-dressed man who sees an omnibus with one vacant place inside, and takes it. Disappointment is shown in that of a lady who comes to a cab-stand and finds no one there but the waterman. Despair is depicted in the agonized glances of a parent with five small children, who sees six omnibusses pass him full "in and out!" Then the walkers, who know it is of no use standing up," and equally useless hailing vehicles already occupied, they show a variety of phases beneath their dripping umbrellas.

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There is the angry man who is not a philosopher, and who goes along with a fierce stride and set teeth, from which issue at times sounds which may be blessings, but which do not sound like them. Very likely he had an appointment with a cousin in the Park, or was going to a little fish dinner at Richmond, or perhaps he has a new hat on, who knows?

Then there is the patient, enduring man, with a good deal of the early martyr in his composition, who walks along grimly through the rain, and at times lowers his umbrella, and holds up his face to

the sky; then being quite convinced of the descent of much water therefrom, he sighs, re-erects his shelter, and goes on more resignedly than before.

The true philosopher is quite a different style of man. He comes along, smiling as cheerfully as if the sun were at his meridian, and the streets as clean as his dressing-room carpet, instead of its being very muddy, unusually windy, and, moreover, performing the anomalous operation of "raining cats and dogs." The philosopher know well enough that grumbling is of no use: he recollects that "the glass fell" last night, and that of course he ought to have expected rain; besides, as another philosophical friend of his had said, "it was very seasonable weather, very seasonable indeed!" How that man is to be envied! What an enviable blessing to be able to look out of window in the morning and find it raining without giving vent to objectionable expletives!

Talk of Alexander, or Alfred, or any one else who has borne the title of "Great!" Why the man who can bear the petty ills "which flesh is heir to" without grumbling; who can meet disappointment with a smile, and has "nil desperandum" written somewhere in his heart, is worth all the great men of antiquity put together. Alexander grumbled because there was not another world to conquer; Hannibal was never easy till he had crossed the Alps, and was not satisfied when he had; these men were not "great,' they could not bear disappointment. I have no doubt Julias Cæsar stamped and foamed if his despatches came too late, and it is well known that Augustus did not bear the loss of his legions with equanimity.

If the story of Sir Isaac Newton and his dog Diamond is true, (which I very much question) it is only another proof of that wonderful man's universal greatness; for Newton was a great man" in every sense, he was good as well as great.

All this has arisen out of a shower of rain! Truly, great things arise from small beginnings. The most natural object connected with a shower of rain is its so called antidote-an umbrella!

I wonder if it rained as much in England before the invention of umbrellas as it has since; it must have been expensive work travelling in those days if it did. The owners of coaches looked upon the inventor of umbrellas as a mean-spirited and low-minded person, and, moreover, their sworn foe. They reviled you openly in the streets if you sheltered yourself beneath one of the obnoxious articles instead of riding in their carriages, and in fact did all they could to shame people out of using so vulgar a convenience. Now everybody uses umbrellas. Tempora mutantur; indeed, even in the very use of umbrellas there are changes. The huge family article of the Mrs. Gamp class, adapted for large parties, but inconvenient when rolled up, now gives place to the elegant useless fabrics which display their rainbow colours in our streets.

But the sky has cleared, the rain-drops no longer patter on my window-pane, and the sun comes timidly through the broken clouds.

I have told you what I have seen when wandering on a wet day, let us go forth now into the sunshine.

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Mark that pale-faced woman who stands so still against that hospital railing; she is a beggar though she does not speak, and she stands there all day long, at least I see her sometimes when I start off in the morning, and she is still standing there when I return in the evening. She is not there every day; once or twice a week, perhaps, I suppose it is her station on certain days, for beggars have a method in their trade. She is an impostor," says one of the Mendicity Society: perhaps she is, or, on the other hand, perhaps she is not. At all events she is very thin and pale, and not over well clad: she is hungry, doubtless; if so, there is no imposition there people do not feel hungry for the pleasure of deceiving others. I think as I look at this beggar woman, if she is of an observant disposition what a picture of life she must meet with in that crowded London thoroughfare as she stands there for eight or ten hours with her back to the hospital railing. What a study for a moralist. She ought to be one, though I doubt if she understands the meaning of the name. Does she ever speculate, I wonder, on the character and modes of life of all the thousands that pass her in the day? Does she ever think what sort of homes they have, what sort of lives they lead, how many of them are better off than herself, how few worse off? There is Lord Glitter going past in his carriage, she knows it is he, for he once told his footmen to take her out of the way when she begged at his carriage door, and the footman had said, "Out of the way, woman; don't you know you're annoying Lord Glitter ?"

She wonders, perhaps, whether my lord is very happy; she thinks he must be with that carriage and all those servants, and the lots of money he has. Oh, yes! without doubt, Lord Glitter is very happy! But why is it that rich people do not like giving to the poor? That is the question which the thin white-faced woman is probably asking herself very often during the day. What difference could a few pence make to my lord with his thousands, or my lady with her lap-dog and two footmen to carry it? And then she may perhaps turn over in her mind that text which she learnt once, but did not quite understand, at a Sunday School, about the rich getting into Heaven with more difficulty than a camel can go through the eye a needle. Was it really so? Would the poor really have their good things, and were the rich so very wicked because they happened to be rich ?

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But, perhaps, after all, the beggar-woman never thinks of any such things, and I have been all this time attributing false sentiments to her. Perhaps she never thinks at all! And yet she must, she cannot stand all day and stare at the Park fences opposite, and think of nothing. If it is only of the wretched dirty room with the three small children who are always crying, which she calls "home," -surely she must think of something.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

The Voice of the Chimes.

Sweetly the tones from yonder Tower
Fall on the listening ear;

'Tis given to you loved bells to cry

"Let those who thirst draw near.

Ye were not placed in yon old Tower
To charm the ear alone;

Ye cry, "Cease ye from wordly toil,
The six work days are gone!"

In days long past ye called to those
Who then had ears to hear;

No sound may reach them now, till Christ
Commands them to appear!

And we perchance shall with them lie

Beneath the ivy'd tower;

How-while we yet have life and breath,—

Shall we best spend this hour?

Listen! the bells cry " Come," to all

Who hear their pealing chime.

Let us obey the call, for now,

Now is the precious time.

Seek in our loving Father's house

The Way, the Truth, the Life ;

Call on Him, with bent head and knee,
To guard us mid the strife.

Sing to His praise with heart and voice

Who gave His Son to die

For us-that we from sin and death

To Christ our Life might fly.

Thank Him for His most wondrous grace

Who now His Spirit gives,

By which He seals us for His own