LACONICS.

BEST THOUGHTS AMPLIFIED.

Everything is not always good, but all good things are great. -Demosthenes.

I will not go so far as to say, with a living poet, that the world knows nothing of its greatest men; but there are forms of greatness, or at least of excellence, which “die and make no sign;" there are martyrs that miss the palm, but not the stake; heroes without the laurel, and conquerors without the triumph.-G. A. Sala.

If wrecks and ruins and desolation of kingdoms are marks of greatness, why do we not worship a tempest, and erect a statue to the plague? A panegyric upon an earthquake is every jot as reasonable as upon such conquests as these.

-Collier.

No grief is so acute but time ameliorates it.-Cicero.

As a fresh wound shrinks from the hand of the surgeon, then gradually submits and even calls for it; so a mind under the first impression of a misfortune shuns and rejects all comforts, but at length, if touched with tenderness, calmly and willingly resigns itself.-Pliny the Younger.

The present moment is a powerful deity.-Goethe.

Make use of time, if thou lovest eternity: know, yesterday cannot be recalled, to-morrow cannot be assured; to-day is only thine, which if thou procrastinate, thou losest, which lost, is lost forever: one to-day is worth two to-morrows.-Quarles.

One of the illusions is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he learns that every day is Doomsday.-Emerson.

Taxes are the sinews of the state.-Cicero.

The taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement. -Franklin.

As the general rule in constitutional states, liberty is a compensation for the heaviness of taxation, and in despotic states the equivalent for liberty is the lightness of taxation.

-Montesquieu.

Kings ought to shear, not skin their sheep.-Herrick.

Taxing is an easy business.-Any projector can contrive new impositions; any bungler can add to the old; but is it altogether wise to have no other bounds to your impositions than the patience of those who are to bear them?—Burke.

Taxation without representation is injustice and oppression. It brought on the American Revolution, and gave birth to a free and mighty nation.

Millions for defense; not a cent for tribute.-C. C. Pinckney.

The repose of nations cannot be secure without arms, armies cannot be maintained without pay, nor can the pay be produced except by taxes.-Tacitus.

What a benefit would the government render to itself and to every city, village, and hamlet in the States, if it would tax whisky and rum almost to the point of prohibition! Was it Bonaparte who said that he found vices very good patriots? "He got five millions from the love of brandy, and he should be glad to know which of the virtues would pay him as much." Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give, and such harm as they do.-Emerson.

Quackery has no such friend as credulity.-C. Simmons.

Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally

successful. In this case it is literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.-Thoreau.

Said a clever quack to an educated physician,

"How many

of the passing multitude, do you suppose, appreciate the value of science, or understand the impositions of quackery?"—" Not more than one in ten," was the answer.- -"Well, said the quack, "you may have the one, and I'll have the nine."

Pettifoggers in law and quacks in medicine have held from time immemorial the fee simple of a vast estate, subject to no alienation, diminution, revolution, nor tax the folly ignorance of mankind.-Colton.

and

Man delights not me, nor woman either.-Shakespeare.

Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many actions of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud, and so gradually, from the two extremes, we pass to the proper medium; and feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope.-Bulwer.

The misanthrope is the man who avoids society, only to free himself from the trouble of being useful to it; who considers his neighbors only on the side of their defects, not knowing the art of combining their virtues and their vices, and of rendering the imperfections of the other people tolerable by reflecting on his own.-He is more employed in finding out and publishing the guilty, than in devising means to reform them; and because he thinks his talents are not sufficiently valued and employed by his fellow citizens, or rather because they know his foibles and do not choose to be subject to his caprices, he talks of quitting cities, towns, and societies, and living in dens or deserts.-Saurin.

The proper study of mankind is man.-Pope.

Omit a few of the most abstruse sciences, and mankind's study of man occupies nearly the whole field of literature. The burden of history is what man has been; of law, what he does; of physiology, what he is; of ethics, what he ought to be; of revelation, what he shall be.-George Finlayson.

Every man is a volume, if you know how to read him-Chonning.

Now the basest thought possible concerning man is, that he has no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has, or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual, coherently and irrevocably so: neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other.-Ruskin.

It is not by books alone, nor chiefly, that one becomes in all points a man. Study to do faithfully every duty that comes in your way. Stand to your post; silently devour the chagrins of life; love justice; control self; swerve not from truth or right; be a man of rectitude, decision, conscientiousness: one that fears and obeys God, and exercises benevolence to all; and in all this you shall possess true manliness.—Anon.

A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.-Marcus Aurelius.

An acorn is not an oak when it is sprouted.-It must go through long summers and fierce winters, and endure all that frost, and snow, and thunder, and storms, and side-striking winds can bring, before it is a full grown oak.-So a man is not a man when he is created; he is only begun.-His manhood must come with years. He that goes through life prosperous, and comes to his grave without a wrinkle, is not half a man.-Difficulties are God's errands and trainers, and only through them can one come to the fulness of manhood.-H. W. Beecher.

Half dust, half deity, alike unfit to sink or soar.-Byron.

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, how wonderful, how complicate is man! distinguished link in being's endless chain! midway from nothing to the Deity! dim miniature of greatness absolute! an heir of glory! a frail child of dust! helpless immortal! insect infinite! a worm! a God!-Young.

EDUCATIONAL STATISTICS.

FROM "WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA."

Following a suggestion which seemed to contain within it much of value, an effort has been made to ascertain the educational advantages enjoyed by the people mentioned in this volume, as far as such statistics could be collated from the various autobiographical statements. In all there are 8602 people embraced in the complilation. The educational inquiry has necessarily been kept down to certain defined limits, and only partial discrimination could be made. Thus it will be found that of the total, 3970 are disclosed as educated in colleges and universities. Some of these have attended several colleges, but each name could only be counted once as to general education, and no account has been kept as to post-graduate degrees or courses. Of the Collegians, about 80 per cent. took baccalaureate degrees. This, of course, includes graduates of the smaller colleges as well as of the great universities.

The figures of those below collegiate grades indicate, in each case, the highest class of institutions attended by the number of persons enumerated.

The graduates in technical and professional schools are in some cases also enumerated in statistics of general education, while in other cases, physicians, clergymen, lawyers, etc., have given the details of their professional preparation, but have omitted all other reference to their educational career,

Those enumerated as having furnished no scholastic details are not covered by any of the other items, the absence of information in these cases including both general and special education. The figures ascertained are as follows: