GATES TO PERDITION. HOW THEY SWING IN TO GIVE EN-

TRANCE TO THE DOOMED.

Rev. Dr. Talmage on Impure Literature, the Dissolute Dance, Indiscreet Attire and Alcoholic Beverage--Great Evils of Society--God's Infinite Mercy.

NEW YORK, June 30.--In his sermon for today Dr. Talmage chose a momen-

tous and awful topic, "The Gates of

Hell," the text selected being the familiar passage in Matthew xvi, 18, "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Entranced, until we could endure no more of the splendor, we have often gazed at the shining gates, the gates of

pearl, the gates of heaven. But we are for awhile to look in the opposite direction and see, swinging open and shut, the gates of hell.

I remember, when the Franco-Prussian war was going on, that I stood one day

in Paris looking at the gates of the Tuileries, and I was so absorbed in the sculpturing at the top of the gates--the masonry and the bronze--that I forgot myself, and after awhile, looking down, I saw that there were officers of the law scrutinizing me, supposing no doubt I was a German and looking at those gates for adverse purposes. But, my friends, we shall not stand looking at the outside of the gates of hell. In this sermon

I shall tell you of both sides, and I shall tell you what those gates are made of. With the hammer of God's

truth I shall pound on the brazen panels and with a lantern of God's truth I shall flash a light upon the shining hinges.

A Mighty Gate For the Lost.

Gate the First.--Impure literature. Anthony Comstock seized 20 tons of bad books, plates and letterpress, and when our Professor Cochran of the Polytechnic institute poured the destructive acids on those plates they smoked in the righteous annihilation, and yet a great deal of the bad literature of the day is not gripped of the law. It is strewn in your parlors. It is in your libraries. Some of your children read it at night after they have retired, the gas burner swung as near as possible to their pillow. Much of this literature is under the title of scientific information. A book agent with one of these infernal books, glossed over with scientific nomenclature, went into a hotel and sold in one day 100 copies and sold them all to women! It is appalling that men and women who can get through their family physician all the useful information they may need, and without any contamination, should wade chin deep through such accursed literature under the plea of getting useful knowledge, and that printing presses, hoping to be called decent, lend themselves to this infamy. Fathers and mothers, be not deceived by the title, "medical works." Nine-tenths of those books come hot from the lost world, though they may have on them the names of the publishing houses of New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. Then there is all the novelette literature of the day flung over the land by the million. As there are good novels that are long, so, I suppose, there may be good novels that are short, and so there may be a good novelette, but it is the exception. No one--mark this--no one systematically reads the average novelette of this day and keeps either integrity or virtue. The most of these novelettes are written by broken down literary men for small compensation, on the principle that, having failed in literature elevated and pure, they hope to succeed in the tainted and nasty. Oh, this is a wide gate of hell! Every panel is made out of a bad book or newspaper. Every hinge is the interjoined type of a corrupt printing press. Every bolt or lock of that gate is made out of the plate of an unclean pictorial. In other words, there are a million men and women in the United States today reading themselves into hell!

When in one of our cities a prosperous family fell into ruins through the misdeeds of one of its members, the amazed mother said to the officer of the law: "Why, I never supposed there was anything wrong. I never thought there could be anything wrong." Then she sat weeping in silence for some time and said: "Oh, I have got it now! I know, I know! I found in her bureau after she went away a bad book. That's what slew her." These leprous booksellers have gathered up the catalogues of all the male and female seminaries in the United States, catalogues containing the names and residences of all the students, and circulars of death are sent to every one, without any exception. Can you imagine anything more deathful? There is not a young person, male or female, or an old person, who has not had offered to him or her a bad book or a bad picture. Scour your house to find out whether there are any of these adders coiled on your parlor center table, or coiled amid the toilet set on the dressing case. I adjure you before the sun goes down to explore your family libraries with an inexorable scrutiny. Remember that one bad book or bad picture may do the work for eternity. I want to arouse all your suspicions about novelettes. I want to put you on the watch against everything that may seem like surreptitious correspondence through the post-office. I want you to understand that impure literature is one of the broadest, highest, mightiest gates of the lost.

Improper Dancing. Gate the Second--The dissolute dance. You shall not divert to the general subject of dancing. Whatever you may think of the parlor dance or the methodic motion of the body to sounds of music in the family or the social circle. I am not now discussing the question. I want you to unite with me this hour in recognizing the fact that there is a dissolute dance. You know of what I speak. It is seen not only in the low haunts of death, but in elegant mansions. It is the first step to eternal ruin for a great multitude of both sexes. You know, my friends, what postures and attitudes and figures are suggested of the devil. They who glide into the dissolute dance glide over an inclined plane, and the dance is swifter and swifter, wilder and wilder, until, with the speed of lightning, they whirl off the edges of a decent life into a fiery future. This gate of hell swings across the axminster of many a fine parlor and across the ballroom of the summer watering place. You have no right, my brother, my sister, you have no right to take an attitude to the sound of music which would be unbecoming in the absence of music. No Chickering grand of city parlor or fiddle or mountain picnic can consecrate that which God hath cursed.

Gate the Third.--Indiscreet apparel. The attire of woman for the last few years has been beautiful and graceful beyond anything I have known, but there are those who will always carry that which is right into the extraordinary and indiscreet. I charge Christian women, neither by style of dress nor adjustment of apparel, to become admin-

istrative of evil. Perhaps none else will

dare to tell you, so I will tell you that there are multitudes of men who owe their eternal damnation to what has been at different times the boldness of

womanly attire. Show me the fashion plates of any age between this and the time of Louis XVI of France and Henry VIII of England, and I will tell you the type of morals or immorals of that age or that year. No exception to it. Modest apparel means a righteous people. Immodest apparel always means a contaminated and depraved society. You wonder that the city of Tyre was destroyed with such a terrible destruction. Have you ever seen the fashion plate of the city of Tyre? I will show it to you: "Moreover, the Lord saith, because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet, in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, the rings and nose jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins." That is the fashion plate of ancient Tyre. And do you wonder that the Lord God in his indignation blotted out the city, so that fishermen today spread their nets where that city once stood?

A Stupendous Gate.

Gate the Fourth.--Alcoholic beverage. Oh, the wine cup is the patron of impurity! The officers of the law tell us that nearly all the men who go into the shambles of death go in intoxicated, the mental and the spiritual abolished, that the brute may triumph. Tell me that a young man drinks, and I know the whole story. If he becomes a captive of the wine cup, he will become a captive of all other vices. Only give him time. No one ever runs drunkenness alone. That is a carrion crow that goes in a flock, and when you see that beak ahead you may know the other beaks are coming. In other words, the wine cup unbalances and dethrones one's better judgment and leaves one the prey of all the evil appetites that may choose to alight upon his soul. There is not a place of any kind of sin in the United States today that does not find its chief abettor in the chalice of inebriety. There is either a drinking bar before, or one behind, or one above, or one underneath. These people escape legal penalty because they are all licensed to sell liquor. The courts that license the sale of strong drink license gambling houses, license libertinism, license disease, license death, license all sufferings, all crimes, all despoliations, all disasters, all murders, all woe. It is the courts and the legislature that are swinging wide open this grinding, creaky, stupendous gate of the lost.

But you say: "You have described these gates of hell and shown us how they swing in to allow the entrance to the doomed. Will you not, please, before you get through the sermon, tell us how these gates of hell may swing out to allow the escape of the penitent?" I reply, But very few escape. Of the thousand that go in 999 perish. Suppose one of these wanderers should knock at your door. Would you admit her? Suppose you knew where she came from. Would you ask her to sit down at your dining table? Would you ask her to become the governess of your children? Would you introduce her among your acquaintanceships? Would you take the responsibility of pulling on the outside of the gate of hell while the pusher on the inside of the gate is trying to get out? You would not. Not one of a thousand of you would dare to do so. You would write beautiful poetry over her sorrows and weep over her misfortunes, but give her practical help you never will. But, you say, "Are there no ways by which the wanderer may escape?" Oh, yes! Three or four. One way is the sewing girl's garret, dingy, cold, hunger blasted. But, you say, "Is there no other way for her to escape?" Oh, yes! Another way is the street that leads to the river at midnight, the end of the city dock, the moon shining down on the water making it look so smooth she wonders if it is deep enough. It is. No boatman near enough to hear the plunge. No watchman near enough to pick her out before she sinks the third time. No other way? Yes; by the curve of the railroad at the point where the engineer of the lightning express train cannot see a hundred yards ahead to the form that lies across the track. He may whistle "down brakes," but not soon enough to disappoint the one who seeks her death. But, you say, "Isn't God good, and won't he forgive?" Yes, but man will not, woman will not, society will not. The church of God says it will, but it will not. Our work, then, must be prevention rather than cure.

A Call to Christians. Those gates of hell are to be prostrated just as certainly as God and the Bible are true, but it will not be done until Christian men and women, quitting their prudery and squeamishness in this matter, rally the whole Christian sentiment of the church and assail these great evils of society. The Bible utters its denunciation in this direction again and again, and yet the piety of the day is such a namby pamby sort of thing that you cannot even quote Scripture without making somebody restless. As long as this holy imbecility reigns in the church of God, sin will laugh you to scorn. I do not know but that before the church wakes up matters will get worse and worse, and that there will have to be one lamb sacrificed from each of the most carefully guarded folds, and the wave of uncleanness dash to the spire of the village church and the top of the cathedral tower. Prophets and patriarchs and apostles and evangelists and Christ himself have thundered against these sins as against no other, and yet there are those who think we ought to take, when we speak of these subjects, a tone apologetic. I put my foot on all the conventional rhetoric on this subject, and I tell you plainly that unless you give up that sin your doom is sealed, and world without end you will be chased by the anathemas of an incensed God. I rally you to a besiegement of the gates of hell. We want in this besieging host no soft sentimentalists, but men who are willing to take and give hard knocks. The gates of Gaza were carried off, the gates of Thebes were battered down, the gates of Babylon were destroyed, and the gates of hell are going to be prostrated. The Christianized printing press will be rolled up as the chief battering ram. Then there will be a long list of aroused pulpits, which shall be assailing fortresses, and God's redhot truth shall be the flying ammunition of the contest, and the sappers and the miners will lay the train under these foundations of sin, and at just the right time God, who leads on the fray, will cry, "Down with the gates!" and the explosion beneath will be answered by all the trumpets of God on high, celebrating universal victory. But there may be one wanderer that would like to have a kind word calling homeward. I have told you that society has no mercy. Did I hint, at an earlier point in this subject, that God will have mercy upon any wanderer who would like to come back to the heart of infinite love?

A Lost Wanderer.

A cold Christmas night in a farm house. Father comes in from the barn, knocks the snow from his shoes and sits

down by the fire. The mother sits at the stand knitting. She says to him, "Do

you remember it is the anniversary to-

night?" The father is angered. He nev-

er wants any allusion to the fact that

one had gone away, and the mere sug-

gestion that it was the anniversary of that sad event made him quite rough, although the tears ran down his cheeks.

The old house dog that had played with

the wanderer when she was a child comes up and puts his head on the old man's

knee, but he roughly repulses the dog.

He wants nothing to remind him of the anniversary day.

A cold winter night in a city church. It is Christmas night. They have been decorating the sanctuary. A lost wanderer of the street, with thin shawl about her, attracted by the warmth and light, comes in and sits near the door. The minister of religion is preaching of him who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, and the poor soul by the door said: "Why, that must mean me! 'Mercy for the chief of sinners; bruised for our iniquities; wounded for our transgressions.'" The music that night in the sanctuary brought back the old hymn which she used to sing when, with father and mother, she worshiped God in the village church. The service over, the minister went down the aisle. She said to him: "Were those words for me? 'Wounded for our transgressions.' Was that for me?" The man of God understood her not. He knew not how to comfort a shipwrecked soul, and he passed on, and he passed out. The poor wanderer followed into the street.

Return of the Lost.

"What are you doing here, Meg?" said the police. "What are you doing here tonight?" "Oh," she replied. "I was in to warm myself." And then the rattling cough came, and she held to the railing until the paroxysm was over. She passed on down the street, falling from exhaustion, recovering herself again, until after awhile she reached the outskirts of the city, and passed on into the country road. It seemed so familiar. She kept on the road, and she saw in the distance a light in the window. Ah, that light had been gleaming there every night since she went away. On that country road she passed until she came to the garden gate. She opened it and passed up the path where she played in childhood. She came to the steps and looked in at the fire on the hearth. Then she put her fingers to the latch. Oh, if that door had been locked she would have perished on the threshold, for she was near to death! But that door had not been locked since the time she went away. She pushed open the door. She went in and lay down on the hearth by the fire. The old house dog growled as he saw her enter, but there was something in the voice he recognized, and he frisked about her until he almost pushed her down in his joy.

In the morning the mother came down, and she saw a bundle of rags on the hearth, but when the face was uplifted, she knew it, and it was no more old Meg of the street. Throwing her arms around the returned prodigal, she cried, "Oh, Maggie!" The child threw her arms around her mother's neck and said, "Oh, mother!" And while they were embraced a rugged form towered above them. It was the father. The severity all gone out of his face, he stooped and took her up tenderly and carried her to mother's room and laid her down on mother's bed, for she was dying. Then the lost one, looking up into her mother's face, said: "'Wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities!' Mother, do you think that means me?" "Oh, yes, my darling," said the mother. "If mother is so glad to get you back, don't you think God is glad to get you back?" And there she lay dying, and all their dreams and all their prayers were filled with the words, "Wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities," until, just before the moment of her departure, her face lighted up, showing the pardon of God had dropped upon her soul. And there she slept away on the bosom of a pardoning Jesus. So the Lord took back one whom the world rejected.

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Painter and Glazier.

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CUPID HAS AN ENEMY. PERSISTENT SOLICITORS WHO DETER WOULD BE BENEDICTS. Matrimonial Ventures Made Extra Hazardous by the Rent for Business--A Hair Raising Warning From a Life Insurance Man.

When the young man walked into the newspaper office and timidly asked the society editor if she would kindly insert a notice of his approaching marriage, he little thought of the trouble he was bringing down upon his head.

The announcement was printed Sunday. When he reached his office Monday, he found a stack of letters waiting for him, every one addressed in a handwriting he did not know. He whistled when he opened the first, ditto the second, looked a bit surprised at the contents of the third and swore fluently through the balance of the pile. At noon there were more. At night there were others. Despite the evident curiosity of his fellow laborers in the office he did not take a soul into his confidence until the third day. Then he remarked to his designates: "Say, the great American life insurance man isn't overlooking any bets these days, is he?" "Wherefore this outburst?"

For answer the groom to be went to a drawer and produced a stack containing 147 letters--he said that was the exact

number, though his friend did not count them--the accumulation since that fateful Sunday morning.

"Every blamed one of them is from some agent for some life insurance company who wants to insure my life. Each one represents the best company on the face of the earth. Each pays the largest dividends. Each invests the money of its patrons to the very best advantage.

Each moralizes on the uncertainty of life and seeks to impress upon me the

solemn duty I owe to my wife that is to be to get my life insured for a million or two dollars. And each blessed one

has come since the announcement of my approaching wedding was printed."

The young man paused a moment, then he dug into the pile and after a few moments' search produced a document which he shoved at his friend, simply saying:

"Just look at the devilish ingenuity

displayed in the construction of that thing!"

The "thing!" was about the size of a theatrical poster known as a three sheet,

in other words, three of them will paper

the side of a barn. Down the center, at regular intervals, were a lot of mottoes

and warning exhortation printed in type three times the size of the context, and

in red ink. Here is one choice extract from the document: "In the midst of life we are in death."

"Let us call your attention that it is every husband's duty--his solemn duty--to provide for those dependent upon him. No one knoweth when the angel of death may knock at the door of hovel or mansion and how can one be prepared for his coming unless time is taken by the financial forelock? Think of the ray of hope which breaks through the clouds of bitter bereavement when the sorrowing ones reflect that by the careful forethought of the dear departed poverty has been prevented from adding its horrors to those of the grave. It is your duty to provide for your loved ones. Do not put it off until tomorrow, for in the language of the poet, 'Tomorrow never comes.'"

There was another paragraph in the document that showed the touch of a master hand. It ran something like this: "Our policies are devised and designed to meet the wants and needs of all people desiring insurance. They are liberal. They are honest. They bring the very best returns. We have ideal policies which we can safely recommend. We can and will guarantee endowment results at much less than endowment rates. And again we pledge ourselves to furnish paid up policies at far below the usual cost. Our dividends are often five times as large as those of other companies on similar policies. We also make a specialty of making liberal loans to our clients on their policies. We are in the field for business and we mean to get it. And don't you forget it." "Do not leave your wife and babies dependent on charity." The elocutionary effect the benedict to be threw into the reading of these extracts gained him a round of applause from his companions. It also brought to him the knowledge that every other man in the office who was married--in Chicago--had been similarly afflicted. But that brought no balm to his soul, and he continued to kick. He didn't think it the proper thing to do and he announced the intention of writing a circular letter to the various individuals who had importuned him to "take a risk" and informing them of his feelings. "Don't do it, my boy," said the head bookkeeper. "Wait until after you are married. You will get forty of these things then to one now, and then you'll have to get out another letter. Wait till then, and then you can address yourself at one and the same time to the life insurance agent, the furniture dealer, the grocer, the man who has a second hand sewing machine to sell, the philanthropist who wants to see young people get along and who offers you a lot way out in the suburbs that will make you rich in five years, the rental agent, the iceman, the milkman, the cockroach exterminator, and all their kith and kin. You'll hear from them all, for they all read the society columns of the daily papers and the newly married are their legitimate prey."--Chicago Tribune.

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A Short Way With Intruders. Hans von Bulow was taking infinite pains in drilling his orchestra for an early performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and the musical epicures of Meiningen were reveling in the anticipation of a huge treat. A high personage at court, more impatient than the rest, expressed an ardent wish to attend one of the rehearsals. The conductor was greatly annoyed, but could not decline the honor. However, he planned a little scheme for speedily getting rid of his unwelcome audience. When the exalted lady and her attendants had taken their seats and the rehearsal was about to begin, Bulow called upon the bassoonist to play his part alone from beginning to end. The man obeyed, and began to draw from his weird instrument a series of incoherent grunts and groans which were painful to listen to when unaccompanied by the other parts. It was the most horrible solo that had ever been heard. Bu-

low occasionally stopped the performance, demanding a repetition of certain particularly discordant passages with suggested modifications, and when the bassoonist had finished he ordered him to play the whole of his part over again.

This was too much for the great lady.

She hastily rose and confessed to the

conductor that the affair had been rather

different from what she had been led to

expect, adding that "it was very interesting no doubt, but somewhat fatiguing," whereupon she took her departure.

Bulow's face beamed with satisfaction, and he gave the signal for the rehearsal

proper to commence.--Musikzeitung.

OCEAN CITY. A Moral Seaside Resort. Not Excelled

as a

Health Restorer Finest facilities for FISHING, Sailing, gunning, etc.

The Liquor Traffic and its kindred evils are forever prohibited by deed.

Every lover of Temperance and Morals should combine to help us. Water Supply, Railroads, Steamboats, And all other Modern Conveniences.

No More Wild Men In Borneo.

Lammerts Van Beuren, manager of one of the great tobacco plantations in British North Borneo, came over from Japan on the Belgic and is on his way to his native country, Holland. The plantation of which he has charge cov-

ers about 10,000 acres.

Mr. Van Beuren states that, contrary

to the general impression abroad, Bor-

neo is a safe place for foreigners to do business in. The native race, though piratical in its dealings with Chinese, is, on the whole, friendly to the whites.

The only industrial work the aborigines do is to raft bamboo and rattan down the rivers for the use of the estates. The most civilized class among them are the Dyaks, who used to be head hunters, but

are now some use to the British government in the local military service. Work on the plantation is done by the Chinese, Malays and Javanese.

In the intervals of tobacco farming Mr. Van Beuren does a good deal of hunting, and his description of the game resources of Borneo will be of interest to sportsmen. There are plenty of rhinoceri, of which he has killed seven, and of wild cattle, of which he has slew over 50. The orang outang and a long nosed monkey peculiar to Borneo abound. There are also elephants in the northwestern part, but these are protected by the game laws.--San Francisco Chronicle.

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Altogether Too Honest. Hotel Clerk--That lawyer stopping with us is the most honest man I ever heard of. Landlord--Why? Clerk--He sets up in a chair and sleeps at night. Landlord--What's that got to do with it? Clerk--He says after his day's work is over he doesn't think he ought to be in bed.--Detroit Free Press.

York--An Ancient Prophecy.

The suggestions that the city and state of New York shall drop the prefix "New" and be called simply "York"

recalls an ancient saying which has long been prevalent in the north of England, in Lincolnshire, if not in Yorkshire. It runs thus:

"Boston was, London is and York is to be the greatest seaport of the three."

The age of this prophecy is unknown, but is [sic] undoubtedly dates back to a time when Boston in Lincolnshire had recently been a rival of London as a seaport. In 1204 its shipping was next to that of London, and nearly as great. Perhaps not very long before that time it had exceeded the shipping of London. But how "York was yet to be" the greatest seaport was a difficult problem until the settlement of America and the foundation of the New York in the new world. The English York is an inland city that has no facilities for commerce. It is nearly 100 years ago when some Lincolnshire people, recalling this ancient prophecy, decided that if York was to be a greater seaport than London it must be the American, or New, York, which commanded the most important harbor on the entire Atlantic coast.

NOT SO EXPENSIVE AS YACHTING. But the Man Found That a Cycling Outfit Cost More Than $100.

"If it weren't for the expense, I think I should ride a wheel myself," said a young clubman, into whose ears talk about bicycling had been [?] all year.

"There's where you make the biggest mistake of your life," declared one of the listeners. "Why, that's the thing about bicycling--it's so cheap. You pay $100 for your machine, and that ends it. You get a guarantee for a year and have the cheapest and best fun of your life."

"That's what the fellows said when they got me to buy that yacht," responded the first speaker dubiously. "It was only a little boat, and they said that after I paid for her the running expenses would be a mere trifle. You know how that turned out. It cost me $1,000 to have the bow remodeled. I had to get new sails and everything else new. The skipper robbed me right and left and ran the yacht on a rock up the sound. I was buying things and paying for things week in and week out, and the summer's sport cost me just double what I set out to spend."

"Of course it did," said the friend. "Yachting's always [?]. But bicycling is different. You [?] spend $150 on it all [?] laid awake nights studying up [?]. There is no call to entertain your friends, as there is when you own a yacht."

There was a further discussion, and it wound up in the purchase of a bicycle by the man who wanted to economize. After all, $100 seemed very little for six months of fun, [?] he was persuaded that it would be best to buy a special make of a wheel, at a cost of $125. Of course he must have a bell, but that was only $2, and a lantern, and that was $3, as cheap ones would leak and wouldn't stay lighted, and a cyclometer, which cost $2. Then came a stand, at $1.50, and toe clips, at $1, and lubricating oil (only 25 cents), and illuminating oil (only 40 cents), and graphite (a modest 25 cents), lock and chain ($1.50 was the figure for these) and a pump ($2.50).

When it came to clothing, there was a pretty penny to pay. A handsome suit cost $25 to make. It was so light in color that mud would ruin it, so the clubman before long bought a second one for possible rainy weather. This one was $15. Kangaroo bicycle shoes cost $4, two pairs of Scotch woolen stockings $8, two woolen shirts $1, and a sweater $3. The young man wanted to go touring, and $3 more went for road maps. A leather luggage carrier, also for trips out of town, was $6.50. One of his tires sprang a leak at the valve and had to be sent back to the factory, so he bought an extra one for $7.50 to use meanwhile. He had one collision, and came off pretty luckily, the bill for repairs being only $6.50. It cost $1 to have two punctures mended. A [?] to be fastened to the handle bar, with [?], was $4. His first saddle didn't suit, and a second one involved the expenditure of another $5.

"Well, how do you like bicycling?" some one asked the young man who was economizing. "It's great. I hope to have a complete outfit of [?] by next spring if they don't invent too many new appliances in the meantime. Expensive? Well, it isn't as cheap as it's cracked up to be, but it's away behind yachting--several thousand dollars behind."--New York Tribune.

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A Daring Forgery.

A neat forgery was recently committed by a Parisian criminal, one Altmayer, which in his adroitness and audacity was worthy of "Jim the Penman" himself.

The accused had lately had several hearings at the Palais de Justice before M. Villiers, juge d'instruction. Several times during these hearings M. Villiers was summoned from the room for a few minutes at a time. During one of these absences the culprit contrived to get possession of a sheet of paper and an envelope with official printed heading, and also to affix the official seal. Then he drew up at his leisure a document [?] his own [?] immediate release, counterfeiting with rare skill the judge's signature. On quitting the court one day he handed the letter thus prepared to the sentinel stationed in the corridor and remarked, in an offhand manner, "The judge wants you to carry this letter immediately to the director of the Mazas prison." The soldier, suspecting nothing, took the letter and accompanied the prisoner to Mazas. A few minutes later Altmayer was summoned to the director's office and was informed that he was a free man.

With an outburst of simulated joy and surprise he at once took his departure, and as the fraud was not discovered until the following day he had plenty of time to get beyond the reach of the clutches of French justice.

C. THOMAS, NO. 108 MARKET STREET, PHILADELPHIA. HEADQUARTERS OF SOUTH JERSEY FOR FINE FAMILY GROCERIES. ALWAYS THE FRESHEST AND BEST TO BE FOUND IN THE MARKET. Full Flavored Teas, Choice Brands of Coffee, Sugars of all Grades, Canned Fruits, Pickles, Spices, Raisins, Dried Beef, Butter and Lard. Hams of Best Quality, Weighed when Purchased by Customers. No Loss in Weight Charged to Purchasers. Stop in and make selections from the best, largest and freshest stock in Philadelphia. Orders by mail promptly attended to and goods delivered free of charge at any railroad or steamboat in the city. LOW PRICES. Satisfaction Gauranteed. [sic]

SMITH & THORN, 846 Asbury Avenue,

PLUMBING & DRAINAGE. All kinds of Pump, Sink, Drivewell Points and Plumbing Material constantly on hand. All kinds of Jobbing in our line promptly attended to. Best of Material used. Experienced workmen constantly on hand.

W. L. DOUGLAS $3 SHOE IS THE BEST. FIT FOR A KING.

$5. COROVAN, FRENCH & ENAMELLED CALF. $4. $3.50 FINE CALF & KANGAROO. $3.50 POLICE, 3 SOLES. $2.50 $2. WORKINGMEN'S. EXTRA FINE $2. $1.75 BOYS' SCHOOL SHOES. LADIES $3. $2.50 $2. $1.75 BEST DONGOLA.

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Over One Million People wear the W. L. Douglas $3 & $4 Shoes

All our shoes are equally satisfactory

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