GARDENS OF THE SEA. REV. DR. TALMAGE ON THE BOTANY OF THE BIBLE.

He Draws a Parallel Between Physical Science and Revelation--The Surpassing Wonders of the Depths of the Sea--An Eloquent Discourse.

BROOKLYN, Oct. 1.--In his sermon this forenoon in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, as in many other discourses, Rev. T. De Witt Talmage took his hearers and readers through an untried region of thought and found a subject for most practical

gospelization in "The Gardens of the Sea." The text selected was Jonah ii, 5, "The weeds were wrapped about my head."

"The Botany of the Bible; or, God Among the Flowers" is a fascinating sub-

ject. I hold in my hand a book which I brought from Palestine, bound in olive wood, and within it are pressed flowers which have not only retained their color, but their aroma. Flowers from Bethlehem, flowers from Jerusalem, flowers from Gethsemane, flowers from Mount of Olives, flowers from Bethany, flowers from Siloam, flowers from the valley of

Jehoshaphat, red anemones and wild mignonette, buttercups, daisies, cycla-

mens, camomile, bluebells, ferns, mosses, grasses and a wealth of flora that keep me fascinated by the hour, and every time I open it it is a new revelation. It is the New Testament of the fields. But my text leads us into another realm of the botanical kingdom. Having spoken to you in a course of sermons about "God Everywhere"--on "The Astronomy of the Bible; or, God Among the Stars;" "The Ornithology of the Bible; or, God Among the Birds;" "The Ichthyology of the Bible; or, God Among the Fishes;" "The Mineralogy of the Bible; or, God Among the Amethysts;" "The Conchology of the Bible; or, God Among the Shells;" "The Chronology of the Bible; or, God Among the Centuries"--I speak now to you about "The Botany of the Bible; or, God In the Gardens of the Sea." Although I purposely take this morning for consideration the least observed and least appreciated of all the botanical products of the world, we shall find the contemplation very absorbing. In all our theological seminaries where we make ministers there ought to be professors to give lessons in natural history. Physical science ought to be taught side by side with revelation. It is the same God who inspires the page of the natural world as the page of the Scriptural world. What a freshening up it would be to our sermons to press into them even a fragment of Mediterranean seaweed! We should have fewer sermons awfully dry if we imitated our

blessed Lord, and in our discourse, like him, we would let a lily bloom, or a crow fly, or a hen brood her chickens, or a crystal of salt flash out the preservative qualities of religion.

The trouble is that in many of our theological seminaries men who are so dry themselves they never could get

people to come and hear them preach are now trying to teach young men how to preach, and the student is put between two great presses of dogmatic theology and squeezed until there is no life left in him. Give the poor victim at least one lesson on the botany of the Bible.

WONDERS OF THE DEEP. That was an awful plunge that the recreant prophet Jonah made when, dropped over the gunwales of the Mediterranean ship, he sank many fathoms down into a tempestuous sea. Both before and after the monster of the deep swallowed him, he was entangled in sea-

weed. The jungles of the deep threw their cordage of vegetation around him.

Some of this seaweed was anchored to the bottom of the watery abysm, and some of it was afloat and swallowed by

the great sea monster, so that, while the prophet was at the bottom of the deep after he was horribly imprisoned he could exclaim and did exclaim in the words of my text, "The weeds were wrapped about my head."

Jonah was the first to record that there are growths upon the bottom of the sea as well as upon land. The first picture I ever owned was a handful of seaweeds pressed on a page, and I called them "the shorn locks of Neptune." These

products of the deep, whether brown or green or yellow or purple or red or inter-

shot of many colors, are most fascinat-

ing. They are distributed all over the depths and from Arctic to Antarctic.

That God thinks well of them I conclude from the fact that he has made 6,000

species of them. Sometimes these water plants are 400 or 700 feet long, and they cable the sea. One specimen has a growth of 1,500 feet.

On the northwest shore of our country is a seaweed with leaves 30 or 40 feet long, amid which the sea otter makes his home, resting himself on the buoy-

ancy of the leaf and stem. The thickest jungles of the tropics are not more full of vegetation than the depths of the sea.

There are forests down there and vast prairies all abloom, and God walks there as he walked in the Garden of Eden "in the cool of the day." Oh, what entrancement, this subaqueous world! Oh, the God given wonders of the seaweed! Its birthplace is a palace of crystal. The cradle that rocks it is the storm. Its grave is a sarcophagus of beryl and sapphire. There is no night down there. There are creatures of God on the bottom of the sea so constructed that, strewn all along, they make a firmament besprent with stars, constellations and galaxies of imposing luster. The gymnotus is an electrician, and he is surcharged with electricity and makes the deep bright with the lightning of the sea. The gorgonis flashes like jewels. There are anemones ablaze with light. There are the starfish and the moonfish, so called because they so powerfully suggest stellar and lunar illumination. Oh, these midnight lanterns of the ocean caverns; these processions of flame over the white floor of the deep; these illuminations three miles down under the sea; these gorgeously upholstered castles of the Almighty in the underworld! The author of the text felt the pull of the hidden vegetation of the Mediterranean, whether or not he appreciated its beauty, as he cried out, "The weeds were wrapped about my head." Let my subject cheer all those who had friends who have been buried at sea or in our great American lakes. Which

of us brought up on the Atlantic coast has not had kindred or friend thus sep-

ulchered? We had the useless horror of thinking that they were denied proper resting place. We said: "Oh, if they had lived to come ashore and had then expired! What an alleviation of our trouble it would have been to put them in some beautiful family plot, where we could have planted flowers and trees over them." Why, God did better for them than we could have done for them. They were let down into beautiful gardens. Before they had reached the bottom they had garlands about their brow. In more elaborate and adorned place than we could have afforded them they were put away for the last slumber. Hear it, mothers and fathers of sailor boys whose ship went down in our last August hurricane! There are no Greenwoods or Laurel Hills or Mount Auburns so beautiful on the land as there are banked and terraced and scooped and hung in the depths of the sea. The bodies of our foundered and sunken friends

are girdled and canopied and housed with such glories as attend no other Necropolis.

They were swamped in lifeboats, or they struck on Goodwin sands or Deal beach or the Skerries, and were never heard of, or disappeared with the City of Boston, or the Ville de Havre, or the Cymbria or were run down in a fishing smack that put out from Newfoundland. But dismiss your previous gloom about the horrors of ocean entombment. THE MISTAKES OF JONAH. When Sevastopol was besieged in the Anglo-French war, Prince Mentchikof, commanding the Russian navy, saw that the only way to keep the English out of the harbor was to sink all of the Russian ships of war in the roadstead, and so 100 vessels sank. When, after the war was over, our American engineer, Gowan, descended to the depths in a diving bell, it was an impressive spectacle. One hundred buried ships! But it is that way nearly all across the Atlantic ocean. Ships sunk not by command of admirals, but by the command of cyclones. But they all had sublime

burial, and the surroundings amid which they sleep the last sleep are more imposing than the Taj Mahal, the mau-

soluem with walls incrusted with precious stones and built by the great mogul of India over his empress. Your departed ones were buried in the gardens of the sea, fenced off by hedges of coralline. The greatest obsequies ever known on the land were those of Moses, where no one but God was present. The sublime report of that entombment is in the book of Deuteronomy, which says that the Lord buried him, and of those who have gone down to slumber in the deep the same may be said, "The Lord buried them." As Christ was buried in a garden, so your shipwrecked friends and those who could not survive till they reached port were put down amid iri-descence--"In the midst of the garden there was a sepulcher." It has always been a mystery what was the particular mode by which George G. Cookman, the pulpit orator of the Methodist church and the chaplain of the American congress, left this life after embarking for England on the steamship President, March 11, 1841. The ship never arrived in port. No one ever signaled her, and on both sides of the ocean it has for 50 years been questioned what became of her. But this I know about Cookman--that whether it was iceberg or conflagration midsea or collision he had more garlands on his ocean tomb than if, expiring on land, each of his million friends had put a bouquet on his casket. In the midst of the garden was his sepulcher. But that brings me to notice the misnomer in this Jonahitic expression of the text. The prophet not only made a mistake by trying to go to Tarshish when God told him to go to Nineveh, but he made a mistake when he styled as weeds those growths that enwrapped him on the day he sank. A weed is something that is useless. It is something you throw out from the garden. It is something that chokes the wheat. It is something to be grubbed out from among the cotton. It is something unsightly to the eye. It is an invader of the vegetable or floral world. But this growth that sprang up from the depth of the Mediterranean or floated on its surface was among the most beautiful things that God ever makes. It was a water plant known as the red colored alga and no weed at all. It comes from the loom of infinite beauty. It is planted by heavenly love. It is the star of a sunken firmament. It

is a lamp which the Lord kindled. It is a cord by which to bind whole sheaves

of practical suggestion. It is a poem all whose cantos are rung by divine goodness. Yet we all make the mistake that Jonah made in regard to it and call it a weed. "The weeds were wrapped about my head." Ah, that is the trouble on the land as on the sea! We call those weeds that are flowers. Pitched up on the beach of society are children without home, without opportunity for anything but sin, seemingly without God. They are washed up helpless. They are called ragamuffins. They are spoken of as the rakings of the world. They are waifs. They are street arabs. They are flotsam and jetsam of the social sea. They are something to be left alone, or something to be trod on, or something to give up to decay. Nothing but weeds. They are up the rickety stairs of that garret. They are down in the cellar of that tenement house. They swelter in summers when they see not one blade of green grass, and shiver in winters that allow them not one warm coat or shawl or shoe. Such the city missionary found in one of our city rookeries, and when the poor woman was asked if she sent her children to school, she replied, "No, sir, I never did send 'em to school. I know it,

they ought to learn, but I couldn't. I try to shame him sometimes (it is my husband, sir), but he drinks and then beats me--look at that bruise on my

face--and I tell him to see what is comin to his children. There's Peggy goes sellin fruit every night in those cellars in Water street, and they're hells, sir.

She's learnin all sorts of bad words there and don't get back till 12 o'clock at night. If it wasn't for her earnin a

shillin or two in them places, I should starve. Oh, I wish they was out of the

city. Yes, it is the truth. I would rather have all my children dead than on the street, but I can't help it." Another one of those poor women found by a reformatory association, recited her story of want and woe and looked up and said, "I felt so hard to lose the children when they died, but now I'm glad they're gone." Ask any one of a thousand such children on the streets, "Where do you live?" and they will answer, "I don't live nowhere." They will sleep tonight in ash barrels, or under outdoor stairs, or on the wharf, kicked and bruised and hungry. Who cares for them? Once in awhile a city missionary, or a tract distributor, or a teacher of ragged schools will rescue one of them, but for most people they are only weeds. Yet Jonah did not more completely misrepresent the red alga about his head in the Mediterranean than most people misjudge these poor and forlorn and dying children of the street. They

are not weeds. They are immortal flow-

ers. Down in the deep sea of woe, but flowers. When society and the church of God come to appreciate their eternal value, there will be more C. L. Braces and more Van Meters and more angels of mercy spending their fortunes and their lives in the rescue. Hear it, O ye philanthropic and Christian and merciful souls--not weeds, but flowers. I abjure you as the friends of all newsboys' lodging houses, of all industrial schools, of all homes for friendless girls and for the many reformatories and human associations now on foot. How much they have already accomplished! Out of what wretchedness, into what good homes! Of 21,000 of these picked up out of the streets and sent into country homes only 21 children turned out badly.

In the last 30 years a number that no man can number of the vagrants have been lifted into respectability and usefulness and a Christian life. Many of them have homes of their own. Though ragged boys once and street girls, now at the head of prosperous families, honored on earth and to be

glorious in heaven. Some of them have been governors of states. Some of them are ministers of the gospel. In all de-

partments of life those who were thought to be weeds have turned out to be flowers. One of those rescued lads from the streets of our cities wrote to another, saying: "I have heard you are studying for the ministry. So am I."

My hearers, I implead you for the newsboys of the streets, many of them the brightest children of the city, but

with no chance. Do not step on their bare feet. Do not, when they steal a ride, cut behind. When the paper is 3 cents,

once in awhile give them a 5 cent piece and tell them to keep the change. I like the ring of the letter the newsboy sent

back from Indiana, where he had been sent to a good home, to a New York newsboys' lodging house: "Boys, we should show ourselves that we are no fools, that we can become as respectable as any of the countrymen, for Franklin and Webster and Clay were poor boys once, and even George Law and Van-

derbilt and Astor. And now, boys, stand up and let them see you have got the real stuff in you. Come out here and make respectable and honor-

able men, so they can say, 'There; that boy was once a newsboy.'" My hear-

ers, join the Christian philanthropists who are changing organ grinders and bootblacks and newsboys and street arabs and cigar girls into those who shall be kings and queens unto God forever.

It is high time that Jonah finds out that that which is about him is not weeds, but flowers. CORONALS OF BEAUTY. As I examine this red alga which was about the recreant prophet down in the Mediterranean depths, when, in the words of my text, he cried out, "The weeds were wrapped about my head," and I am led thereby to further examine this submarine world, I am compelled to exclaim,

What a wonderful God we have! I am glad that, by diving bell, and "Brooks' deep sea sounding apparatus," and ever

improving machinery, we are permitted to walk the floor of the ocean and report the wonders wrought by the great God.

Study these gardens of the sea. Easier and easier shall the profounds of the ocean become to us, and more and more its opulence of color and plant unroll, especially as "Villcroy's submarine boat" has been constructed, making it possible to navigate under the sea almost as well as on the surface of the sea, and unless God in his mercy ban-

ishes war from the earth whole fleets of armed ships wil yet far down under the

water move on to blow up the argosies that float to the surface. May such sub-

marine ships be used for laying open the wonders of God's workings in the great deep and never for human devastation!

Oh, the marvels of the water world!

There so called seaweeds are the pasture fields and the forage of the innumerable animals of the deep. Not one species of them can be spared from the economy of nature. Valleys and mountains and plants miles underneath the waves are all covered with flora and fauna. Sunken Alps and Apennines and Himalayas of

Atlantic and Pacific oceans. A continent that once connected Europe and Ameri-

ca, so that in the ages past men came on foot across from where England is to

where we now stand, all sunken and now covered with the growths of the sea as it once was covered with growths of the land.

England and Ireland once all one piece of land, but now much of it so far sunk-

en as to make a channel, and Ireland has become an island. The islands, for the most part, are only the foreheads of sunken continents. The sea conquering the land all along the coasts and crumbling the hemispheres, wider and wider become the subaqueous dominions. Thank God that skilled hydrographers have made us maps and charts of the rivers and lakes and seas and shown us something of the work of the eternal God in the water worlds.

Thank God that the great Virginian, Lieutenant Manry, lived to give us "The Physical Geography of the Sea, and that men of genius have gone forth to

study the so called weeds that wrapped about Jonah's head and have found them to be coronals of beauty, and when the tide receded those scientists have waded down and picked up divinely pictured leaves of the ocean, the naturalists, Pike

and Hooper and Walters, gathering them around from the beach of Long Island sound, and Dr. Blodgett preserving them from

the shores of Key West, and Professors Emerson and Gray finding them along Boston harbor, and Professor Gibbs

gathering them from Charleston harbor, and for all the other triumphs of algol-

ogy, or the science of seaweed.

Why confine ourselves to the old and hackneyed illustrations of the wonder

workings of God, when there are at least five great seas full of illustrations as yet

not marshaled, every root and frond and cell and color and movement and habit of oceanic vegetation crying out: "God! God! He made us. He clothed us. He adorned us. He was the God of our ancestors clear back to the first sea

growth, when God divided the waters which were above the firmament from

the waters which were under the firma-

ment and shall be the God of our descend-

ants clear down to the day when the sea shall give up its dead. We have heard his

command, and we have obeyed. 'Praise the Lord, dragons and all deeps.'"

DAVID'S MARINE DOXOLOGY. There is a great comfort that rolls over upon me from this study of the so-called seaweed, and that is the demonstrated

doctrine of a particular providence.

When I find that the Lord provides in the so called seaweed the pasturage for

the thronged marine world, so that not a fin or scale in all that oceanic aqua-

rium suffers a need, I conclude he will feed us, and if he suits the alga to the ani-

mal life of the deep he will provide the food for our physical and spiritual needs. And if he clothes the flowers of the deep with richness of robe that looks bright

as fallen rainbows by day, and at night

makes the underworld look as though the sea were on fire, surely he will clothe you. "O ye of little faith!"

And what fills me with unspeakable delight is that this God of depths and

heights, of ocean and continent, may, through Jesus Christ, the divinely appointed means, be yours and mine to help, to cheer, to pardon, to rave, to

imparadise. What matters who in earth or hell is against us if he is for us?

Omnipotence to defend us, omnipresence to companion us and infinite love to en-

fold and uplift and enrapture us.

And when God does small things so well, seemingly taking as much care with the coil of a seaweed as the out-

branching of a Lebanon cedar, and with the color of a vegetable growth which is

hidden fathoms out of sight as he does with the solferino and purple of a summer sunset, we will be determined to do well all we are called to do, though no one see us or appreciate us. Mighty God! Roll in upon our admiration and holy appreciation more of the wonders of this submarine world. My joy is that after we are quit of all earthly hindrances we may come back to this world and explore what we cannot now fully investigate. If we shall have power to soar into the atmospheric without fatigue I think we shall have the power to dive into the aqueous without peril, and that the pictured and tessellated sea floor will be as accessible as now is to the traveler the floor of the Alhambra, and all the gar-

dens of the deep will then swing open to us their gates as now to the tourist

Chatsworth opens on public days its cascades and statuary and conservatories

for our entrance. "It doth not yet ap-

pear what we shall be." You cannot make me believe that God hath spread

out all that garniture of the deep merely for the polyps and crustacea to look at.

And if the unintelligent creatures of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic

ocean he surrounds with such beautiful grasses of the deep, what a heaven we may expect for our uplifted and ransomed souls when we are unchained of the flesh and rise to realms beatific! Of the flora of that "sea of glass mingled with fire," I have no power to speak, but I shall always be glad that, when the prophet of the text, flung over the gunwales of the Mediterranean ship, descended into the boiling sea, that which he supposed to be weeds wrapped about his head were not weeds, but flowers. And am I not right in this glance at the botany of the Bible in adding to Luke's mint, anise and cumin, and Matthew's tares, and John's vine, and Solomon's cluster of camphire, and Jer-

emiah's balm, and Job's bulrush, and Isaiah's terebinth, and Hosea's thistle,

and Ezekiel's cedar, and "the hyssop that springeth out of the wall," and the "rose

of Sharon and lily of the valley," and the frankincense and myrrh and cassia

which the astrologers brought to the manger at least one stalk of the alga of the Mediterranean.

And now I make the marine doxology of David my peroration, for it was written about 40 or 50 miles from the place

where the scene of the text was enacted. "The sea is his, and he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Oh, come, let us worship and bow down: let us

kneel before the Lord, our Maker. For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture." Amen.

Self Medication as a Science. Imagination has too much to do with a man's practice on himself. One who reads the little textbook on physiology in the schools will immediately discern in every rumble of his intestines the kind of action the gastric juices are tak-

ing on the food that has gone into the stomach, and he soon becomes, if he

pushes his investigation further, a monomaniac on hygiene. It is true that a man or woman who has arrived at the

age of 40 years ought to be able to decide at a glance the kind of food suited

best to their digestive organs, and experience ought to teach them never to touch any food that disagrees with them. This is true also of drinking. When a man is 40 years of age, he ought to understand himself sufficiently to guard against all imprudence in either eating

or drinking or working, but that is about all he ought to know about it. He ex-

pects to be employed as an expert on others in his own line of study, and he ought to be willing to reciprocate by employing a physician when he is sick.--Austin Statesman.

A Large Cross In an English Church. The largest cross in any church in this country is the "Great Rood," which the Duke of Newcastle presented to the Church of St. Albaus, Helbern. It is an enormous crucifix, the cross of which is over 25 feet in height, and hangs suspended from the chanced arch. The cross itself is colored dead olive green, and the arms have terminals of flower de luce and Tudor roses. The sacred figure is painted and gilt, while on either side stand presentments of St. John the Divine and the Virgin as "the Mater Dolorosa." The idea of the work has been chiefly borrowed from the rood crosses to be seen still at St. Peter's, Louvain, and at Ophinter in Brabant.--London Tit-Bits.

A Clock That Registers the Tide.

The chamber of commerce of Rouen has erected a clock tower which gives the time on three sides and the height of

the tide on the fourth, namely, that front-

ing the harbor. The tide indicator con-

sists essentially of a float, which, by means of a cord and counter weight hung

on a drum, actuates a series of shafts

with bevel wheel gearing and moves a hand or pointer on a dial that like that of a

clock, marks with the necessary figures

to show the level of the tide. The dials are of opal glass and are illuminated at night. The clock has an apparatus for distributing the time to other clocks in Rouen and also for unifying the time after the method adopted in Paris.--London Globe.

ODDS AND ENDS. Siam, it is said, can boast of tailless cats with purple eyes. Pet dogs are now dyed to harmonize with the prevailing tint of their mistress' boudoir.

The average weight of men in Eng-

land, is 155 pounds and that of a woman 123 pounds.

This is perhaps our first duty toward our vermin: To be sure that they are ver-

min--that is to say, noxious--before de-

claring war on them.

The oldest town in Texas, and by some believed to be the oldest town in the United States, is Ysleta, on the Rio Grande, in El Paso county.

Zoar, O., is the abiding place of a mystic band of German communists, who hold all property in common, the place being a miniature kingdom within itself.

The figures usually spoken of as "Arabic numerals," represented by 1, 2, 8, etc., are really of East-Indian origin. They were first used in Arabia by Mohammed Ben Musa in 900 A. D.

The record for the ratio of persons of

advanced age to the entire population is

said to be borne by Aumone, a little French hamlet, which has but 40 inhabitants, 24 of whom are over 80 years of age.

The age of the lobster is a debated question. The small, marketable specimens are generally supposed to be from 4 to 6 years old, but some lobsters are believed to live to the green old age of 25 years. The embalming customs of the Egyptians were against heathen precedent. The funeral pyre prevailed in most of the Mediterranean nations. In Rome cremation was an honor denied to suicides and young children. The English laugh at our slang names for money, forgetting that their own slang is as nonsensical. A joey is a fourpence, a tanner is a sixpence, a bob is a shilling, a bull is 5 shillings, a quid is £1, a pony is £25 and a monkey is £500. The seven cities which are said to have gone to war to establish the fact of Homer's birth having taken place within their walls (each claiming the honor) were Chios, Athens, Rhodes, Colophon, Argos, Smyrna and Salamis. The narrowest part of the Strait of Florida, through which the gulf stream flows at the rate of five knots an hour, is 50 miles wide and has a mean depth of 350 fathoms. If this were stopped up, the climate of this country in winter would be totally changed. Many years ago a beekeeper named Wildman surprised all Europe with the case with which he handled bees compelling a swarm to settled where he pleased. His secret was to get possession of the queen bee, when the others would follow wherever she was placed.

The Man Who Stays In Town. There was an unusual number of men in town during the summer, and there seems to be a growing disposition on the part of those young men who occasionally think to leave the watering places to the young women and their mammas. Of recent years there has been more or less complaint crudely but significantly shadowed forth in comic and other newspapers of the absence of young men from places where the refining hop and ennobling moonlight flirtation hold sway. The absence has been charged up against the young men in the cursory account books of the summer, but the young men have found the debt an easy one to pay by a little extra exertion in the winter. "Why is it that the young men linger in the shade of the apartment house instead of seeking the cool verandas of summer hotels?" we can fancy some modern Glaucon asking of Socrates, the mondain. "Because the young men of today," answers the philosopher, "understand that the summer is set apart for the recuperation of the energies exhausted during the winter." "But," asks Glaucon, "is it not so that the country is the place for recuperation in the summer and not in the city?" "True it is," responds Socrates, "that

the country is the place for rest and re-

cuperation."

"Why, then, do not the young men go to the country?"

"They do when they can afford long railway travel, guns, dogs and rods or

yachts or other expensive muniments of

rural liberty, including time."

"Then it is not the country, the rural, recuperative country," foolishly speaks Glaucon, "that the maidens hie?" "Is silk gingham? Is a plank piazza an umbrageous forest? Is a cut glass goblet a tin cup? Is a Jersey cow a grizzly

bear?"--Harper's Weekly.

Novel Conversational Scheme. "It is quite fatal to appear stupid and uninterested when you are out in soci-

ety, you know," said the pretty girl to an amused listener to her prattle, "and I have discovered a capital recipe against looking dull, which I will give to you gratis. "At Mrs. A.'s the other day I found myself at a big luncheon with a lot of older people present, and on taking our place at the table I was dismayed to

find that one of my neighbors was an elderly woman and a total stranger, who

turned her shoulder to me during a greater part of the repast, and the other was Milly B----, who is a dear girl, but has not an idea in her head. "After the first few minutes had passed in total silence a bright idea struck me.

'Milly,' I said suddenly, 'let's count; we will look just as if we were talking, and

it's ever so much easier. When I leave off, you begin.' And I began in my most

vivacious manner--'1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7'--then I paused, and Milly, showing her little

white teeth in bona fide merriment, went on--'8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15'--and

we both ended with a burst of genuine laughter.

"'What a good time those girls are having!' I heard our vis-a-vis saying to her neighbor rather enviously, I thought. 'I wonder what they are talking about.'" --New York Tribune.

A New Attraction. Pete Amsterdam got married without consulting his parents or friends. After seeing the bride one of his friends asked him:

"How did you come to marry that girl? There is nothing attractive about

her. She has not got a pretty face; her figure is not good; she is not rich; nei-

ther is she intelligent. What do you find attractive about her?" "You ought to see how prettily she sneezes," replied Pete ecstatically.--Texas Siftings.

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R. CURTIS ROBINSON, Real Estate and Insurance Agent, 744 ASBURY AVENUE, OCEAN CITY, N. J. who has on hand a number of desirable furnished and unfurnished cottages. Full information furnished on application. Building lots for sale in every section of the city. I also have 150 lots near Thirty-eighth street, which I will offer to a syndicate, five lots to the share.

Money to loan on Bond and Mortgage on improved property.

Y. CORSON, REAL ESTATE AGENT, AND LICENSED AUCTIONEER, No. 721 Asbury Avenue, OCEAN CITY, N. J. Properties for sale. Boarding Houses and Cottages for Rent in all parts of the city. Correspondence solicited.

WM. LAKE, C. E., REAL ESTATE AGENT, Surveying, Conveyancing, Commissioner of Deeds, Notary Public, Master in Chancery. Sec'y Ocean City Building and Loan Association. Lots for Sale or Exchange. Houses to rent, furnished or unfurnished. Deeds, Bonds, Mortgages, Wills and Contracts carefully drawn. Abstracts of titles carefully prepared. Experience of more than twenty-five years. Office--Sixth Street and Asbury Avenue. P. O. BOX 825. WM. LAKE.

Honesty is the best policy.--B. Franklin. Therefore get the policies issued at the office of H. B. Adams & Co., by HONEST, Sound, Liberal, Solid and Successful Fire Insurance Companies. Your choice of 18 of the best American and English Companies. LOTS FOR SALE in all parts of the city. Hotels and Cottages for Sale or Rent. Money to loan on mortgages. H. B. ADAMS & CO., Eighth Street, opposite W. J. R. R. Station, OCEAN CITY, N. J.

E. B. LAKE.

SUPERINTENDENT OF

OCEAN CITY ASSOCIATION From its Organization, and also REAL ESTATE AGENT Having thousands of Building Lots for sale at various prices, Some very Cheap and located in all parts of Ocean City. Now is the time to purchase property before the second railroad comes, as then property will greatly advance. I have a good many Inquiries for Property between 6th and 12th streets. Any one having property for sale might do well to give me their prices. All persons desiring to Buy, or Sell, or Exchange property, would do well before closing any transaction to call on or address E. B. LAKE, Association Office, No. 601 Asbury Ave., Ocean City, N. J.