IS THAT MAN A HUSBAND? Is that man a husband whose idea of a woman is that she is some sort of inferior being, who knows nothing, and has no right to know anything beyond cleaning, and scrubbing, and cooking?

Is he a husband who, in seasons of domestic affliction, leaves the home to its sorrow, to seek "pleasure" elsewhere?

Is he a husband whose affections grow cold, and whose conduct is harsh to a wife because, through illness or anxiety, the maidenly bloom has fled from her cheeks, and she has grown less beautiful than she was?

Is he a husband who grudges the bare expenses of the household, and yet spends more each week in selfish enjoyment?

Is he one who has never a kind word or a smile for his wife, but who yet cannot see a cloud on her brow but he breaks forth into complaint and reproach?

Is he a husband who suffers his wife to work hard daily at her needle or the washtub, to maintain the house, to the ruin of household comfort, and the neglect of the little children who need her most watchful care and attention?

None of these, nor many others, such as the drunkard, the gamester, and, above all, the man who has some great defect in character, have any right to become husbands. "How much must innocence suffer when it is conjoined to vice and badness of heart!

IS THAT WOMAN A WIFE? Is that woman a wife who thinks more of her new dress than her children, and who stints her family to provide finery for herself unbecoming her station?

Is that woman a wife who passes the morning amongst the gossips and scandal-mongers of the neighbourhood, to the utter neglect of her household affairs?

Is that woman a wife who sits reading some novel, or other nonsensical book, while her husband stands before a glass vainly trying to pin together a buttonless shirt-bosom?

Is that woman a wife who is all smiles and good humour when out among friends or acquaintances, and reserves her frowns and ill-temper for her own fireside?

Is that woman a wife who expects her husband to swallow bad coffee, smoky tea, and ill-cooked victuals, because she will not be at the trouble to cook them properly?

Is she a wife who contracts debts without her husband's knowledge, or means of payment ?

SLEEP.

THE unwisest of all economies is time saved from necessary sleep, for it begets a nervous irritability, which masters the body, and destroys the mind. When a man becomes sleepless, the intellect is in danger. A restored lunatic, of superior mental endowments, said:-"The first symptom of insanity, in my own case, was a want of sleep; and from

the time I began to sleep soundly, my recovery was sure."

Let this be a warning to all who are acquiring an education. Every young person at school should have eight hours sleep out of every twenty-four; for, as the brain is highly stimulated all the time, in the prosecution of study, it will break down, just as any other part of the frame, unless it have time for full recuperation. Better, a thousand times, to give another year to the completion of specified studies, than, by curtailing sleep, to endeavour to get through that much sooner, at the risk of madness.—Journal of Health.

SOUND SLEEP.

ANY man who can bound out of bed as soon as he wakes of a mid-winter's morning, is worth something. No fear of his not making his way through the world creditably, because he has the elements of a promptitude, decision, and energy, which guarantee success. To invalids we make a comfortable suggestion worth knowing. If you have force of will enough to keep you from taking a second nap-and it is the "second nap" which makes its baleful influence felt on multitudes-it is better for you to lie awhile and think about it, until that feeling of weariness passes out of the limbs which

you so commonly feel. But to sleep soundly, and to feel rested and refreshed when you wake up of a morning, four things are essential:*

1. Go to bed with feet thoroughly dry and warm.

2. Take nothing for supper but some cold bread and butter, and a single cup of weak, warm tea, of any kind.

3. Avoid over-fatigue of body. 4. For the hour preceding bedtime, dismiss every engrossing subject from the mind, and let it be employed about something soothing and enlivening in cheerfulness.Journal of Health.

MANY have been forward to celebrate the genius of Robert Stephenson, but few have dwelt upon, or even mentioned, his piety. That, however,

MARRIAGE.

SOME lover of wedlock thus discourses to the Benedicts, old and young :

"Get married! Marry, it gives dignity to your profession, inspires confidence, and commands respect. With a wife, the lawyer is more trusty, the doctor more esteemed, the mechanic throws the hammer with increased power, and shoves the plane with a more dexterous hand; the merchant gets a better creditin short, a man without a wife is no man at all! She nurses him while sick, she watches for him in health. Gentlemen, get a wife."

was his grand ornament. The following are the facts of his history. Robert Stephenson first saw the light in the village of Willington,

at a cottage which his father occupied after his marriage with Miss Fanny Henderson-a marriage contracted on the strength of his first appointment as "breaksman" to the engine employed for lifting the ballast brought by the return collier ships to Newcastle. Here Robert was born on the 17th of November, 1803. As the cottage looked out upon a tramway, the eyes of the child were naturally familiarized from infancy with sights and scenes most nearly connected with his future profession. At this time, George Stephenson's means were small, as, indeed, may be guessed from the fact that nearly ten years later he thought himself a happy man when he succeeded in obtaining a post as engineer to a colliery with a salary of £100 a year. Notwithstanding these slender resources, the liberal-minded father found means to give his son such an education as could be obtained in a provincial town, to which the energy and industry of the son superadded such of the rudiments of mechanics and engineering science as he could pick up in the long winter evenings in the library of the Literary and Philosophical Institute at Newcastle. Mr. Smiles tells us how keenly the father felt, as he grew up, the want of a solid education, and how perseveringly he laboured, after reaching the years of manhood, to make up for schooltime during his leisure moments; and how he resolved that, poor as he was, his son should not suffer in like manner by the want of early instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, to which he added mechanics as a fourth desideratum.

The rudimentary and experimental knowledge which Robert picked up in his father's workshop, came in naturally to the aid of the theoretic teaching of books, and supplemented his science by practical capacity. As an early proof of the latter, we may mention that there still stands over the door of the cottage at Killingworth, then occupied by George Stephenson, a sundial, the production of the hands of the son, at the age of thirteen-a work to which the elder Stephenson looked back with an honest pride to his dying day.

It is now just forty years ago since Robert was taken from school and taught to feel the truth of the old saying of Persius, Magister artis venter. In 1818 or 1819 we find him apprenticed as an under-viewer to a coal-mine in the neighbourhood of the place in which he had spent his childhood. Having devoted a year or two to making himself practically acquainted with the machinery and working of a colliery, he was sent to the University of Edinburgh, where he spent a session in attending the courses of lectures on chemistry, natural philosophy, and geology. How far he may have profited by this opportunity of increasing his scientific knowledge we have the means of ascertaining, for he brought home a prize for mathematics, much to the delight of his father. He knew the value of opportunities, and he had the great secret of successthe art of availing himself of them. His mind was too eminently practical to forego any study or pursuit which was calculated, even in its remoter bearings, to help him on in the great struggle of life; and happy,

indeed, are they who can look back with regret upon so few opportunities missed, so few court-cards thrown away out of their hands as Robert Stephenson.

Having spent a year or two as an apprentice in his father's manufactory of locomotives at Newcastle (even at that time a school, if not of thought, yet of action), and two or three more years in South America, whither he was sent to examine and report upon the gold and silver mines of Columbia, he returned to England at the close of 1827. He found the public mind greatly excited upon the railway question. "Can locomotives be successfully and profitably employed for passenger traffic?" was still a moot point, of which his father sustained the affirmative, alone against a host. It was almost a repetition of Athanasius contra mundum when George Stephenson fought the battle of the Locomotive -of the Rail and Wheel-or, as he himself termed them, "Man and Wife." Mr. Smiles tells us how he struggled for their conjunction in the Committee-room of the House of Commons; and when men deemed him all but a maniac for persevering in his theory, how bravely and tenaciously he persisted till he had succeeded. Joining forces with Mr. Joseph Locke, the eminent engineer, the son not only wrote the ablest pamphlets on the subject in debate, but he greatly aided his father in the construction of the Rocket, the celebrated prize locomotive, the powers of which, as displayed at Liverpool, at once settled the question at issuejust as the trial trip of the Great Eastern has settled, we presume, the

much debated point as to whether so large a ship can possibly be manageable in a heavy sea.

One of those best qualified to speak to his contributions to the development of the locomotive engine, informs us that, from about five years from his return from America, Robert Stephenson's attention was chiefly directed to its improvement. "None but those who accompanied him during the period in his incessant experiments can form an idea of the amazing metamorphosis which the machine underwent in it. The most elementary principles of the application of heat; of the mode of calculating the strength of cylindrical and other boilers; of the strength of rivetting and of staying flat portions of the boilers, were then far from being understood, and each step in the improvement of the engine had to be confirmed by the most careful experiments, before the brilliant results of the Rocket and Planet engines (the latter being the type of the existing modern locomotive) could be arrived at."

Stephenson's time was not, however, so fully taken up during the above interval as to preclude attention to his other civil engineering business, and he executed within it the Leicester and Swannington, Whitby and Pickering, Canterbury and Whitstable, and Newton and Warrington railways, while he also erected an extensive manufactory for locomotives at Newton, in Lancashire, in partnership with the Messrs. Tayleur. About the middle of the above period, also, the first surveys and estimates for the Lon

don and Birmingham Railway were framed, leading eventually to the obtaining of the Act. Then followed the execution of that line; and here Robert Stephenson had an opportunity of showing his great talent for management of works on a large scale. This was the first railway of any magnitude executed under the contract system; perfect sets of plans and specifications (which have since served as a type for nearly all the subsequent lines) were prepared -no small matter for a series of works extending over 112 miles, involving tunnels and other works of a then unprecedented magnitude.

Many other railways in England and abroad were executed by him in rapid succession; the Midland, Blackwall, Northern and Eastern, Norfolk, Chester and Holyhead, to

gether with numerous branch lines, were executed in this country by him; and among railways abroad may be enumerated, as works either executed by him or recommended in his capacity of a consulting engineer, the system of lines in Belgium, Italy, Norway, and Egypt, and in France, Holland, Denmark, India, Canada, and New Zealand..

The career of this eminent man, which was but short, was brought to a sudden and unexpected close: but he was ready. Preparation had been made for that event some time before, and in the settlement of his affairs the governing principle was clearly the good of man and the glory of God. Stewardship was recognised in the appropriation of every penny.

it in the kajak, and with this protect the boat from large waves; and, in case of need, keep it upright, by taking hold of the side.

The good missionary set out in the large boat, with six women to row. With much labour, they managed to row three miles through the ice by twelve o'clock. They had another mile to go, and they were just saying to each other, "This next mile will not be so dangerous," when the steersman suddenly cried out, "Look there, up to the rock, Sir! A dreadful storm is rising, which will soon overtake us." Saabye saw it, and answered, "We cannot go on the waves are too strong against us; let us put back. We shall find some place in the neighbourhood where we can stop till the storm is over.' They tacked about, but while they were doing so, the storm came up, and would have overset the large boat,

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