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Oamaru Mail, Volume X, Issue 4203, 3 September 1888, Page 4

ITEMS.

Enthusiasm poshed even to fanaticism, la a useful motive-power—perhaps»an in- ■ 'dispensable one. It is clear that the ardent politician wonld never endute the labors and make the sacrifices he does did he not believe that the'reform he fights for is the one thing needfal. Bat for his con"vlctlonthat drunkenness is the rqofc of all social evils, the teetotaller wonld agitate - far less energetically. In philanthropy, as in other things, great advantage results from division of labor; and .that there may be division of labor, each class of -philanthropists mast be mors or les3 subordinated to ita function—mast have an exsgerated faith in its work. Hence, of those who regard educition, intellectual or moral, as the panacei, we may say that their uodoe expectations are not without use, and that perhaps it is a part of the beneficent order of things that tbeir confidence cannot be shaken.—Herbert Spencer. Sleep ia Death's younger brother, and so like him that I dare never trust him without my prayer.—Sir Thomas Brown. Tou have a fixed income of physical energy. Tonr pluck is mental force. The two together accomplish the finest resnlts of which human nature is capable. The . bodily powers are the treasure house in which Nature deposits your wealth. "Worry, the fever of the mind, is as dificult of exact description as its physical counterpart. But unfortunately it is as -well-known in this age as its twin-sister, Hurry. It is more than anxiety or ironble, as fever is more than heat or pain. It is a fire which burns up in a few hours— | even as the other does on its plane—the . vitality which would have sufficed for days of quiet labor. Some few years since a i paper by aa eminent London physician appeared in the Nineteenth Century, in I which he declared as the result of a long experience that he had hardly known a single case of breakdown caused by work, pure and simple; that in his opinion there- • was no limit, except that of time, to the amount of work which mi<;6t be safely undertaken, provided a sufficient amount of sleep was obtained and reasonable attention paid to diet ; that he had always . found it was the pace that killed, not the distance—" worry," not " work." The following story is told by a writer in the Auckland Herald. It seems incredible, but the truth of it is vouched for :—A woman in this city was visiting a ""neighbor, who was nursing an Infant eighteen months old—it was unweaned, at all events. Well, the infant began to cry for,something, and to the horror of the visitor, the mother deliberately lit a .cigarette -and inserted it between the child's lips. " She cries for it, and I let ber have it to pacify her," said the mother. Farther inquiry showed that a ten yew old son had frequently been sent ' by Us mother to take the child for an airing. " Oia many of these occasions it ■eemdd that the youth smoked cigarettes, . and had actually taught his little infant sister to take a whiff. . The boy admitted this himself to his mother.